Depression is a Bitch

It has become painfully obvious to me over the past month that I am struggling with depression. This is not a completely new development in that I have dealt with this off and on for the past two years or so. Over the past couple of months, though, it has become much worse. Enough so that it is interfering with my life. I have moments where I feel I am crashing hard and I don't know if I'll recover. If I don't do something, I fear I will.

To that end, I am going on a retreat. Alone. My friend, Jeromy, told me about a place in Minnesota, Pacem in Terris. It is a Catholic retreat where one can go to "get away from it all." There is no electricity or plumbing. A basket of bread and fruit is provided daily. You are alone with your thoughts. I'm taking a notebook, some pens, and my camera; that's it. I'll be gone from Sunday until Thursday.

I can't wait.

I seem to have a natural inclination toward melancholy, but it wasn't a big deal until I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Since then it has been an ongoing issue. I don't get depressed over the fact that I have MS, but the MS does affect my brain and one of the side-effects (a fairly common one) is depression. It is without a doubt the worst side-effect I have had to deal with. Even the constant fatigue is not as bad. Of course I have not yet had any physical debilitations, but I have a hard time imagining even those to be as bad as the depression.

Everything going on in my life over the past year has not made things any easier, either. I fought for custody of my daughters and won which I am eternally grateful for, but it also means that I now have to be a dad full-time instead of one day a week. I love it, but it's not easy. My daughters came out of a very negative environment and so on top of the normal parenting challenges I am trying to help them overcome their issues from their previous home. Also at home has been a lot of chaos due to...well, due to a number of issues. I've been trying to do school. It seems like I've been going forever and I'm so close to finishing my degree, but it feels so far away. At work, my job duties have nearly doubled since December. And, of course, dealing with my health and the discovery that I have two incurable autoimmune diseases does little to help matters.

So, I've had a lot on my plate and really no respite from it. Lately I honestly haven't really cared about much of anything and things in my life - school, my relationship with my family and friends, work - have all suffered for it. I don't expect this trip to be a cure all, but it will be an important step. I need to get away from everything for a few days, to have time to think, refocus, and clear my head. When I come back, I expect to have the will and the energy to re-tackle my life head on and get to where I want to go.

I also promise to start blogging more. Writing is hard when you're depressed.

The Sixth-Grade Demographic

Judging by comments to this post, I'm guessing that my daughter, Erica, is attempting to garner a larger audience for me. I'm touched really, but I don't think she realizes that much of what I write on here is not suitable for kids (or anyone with taste).

Hmmmm...it makes me wonder, though? Could a blog be used as a teaching tool for children? What would it be like? Would it be one author with comments? Could kids post entries? Hmmmm...

Gravity in the Land of Mario

Aren't geeks great? Here is an analysis of gravity in the Super Mario Bros. games. I found it very cool, but, that's just me.

Star Trek Opera

Star Trek II: The Opera of Khan

Parenting Tips

As a parent, I am always on the lookout for good advice on the subject and this guy seems to have a lot of wisdom.

The Honeymoon is Over

My blood sugar has been up higher lately and I've had a harder time keeping it down. Part of it has certainly been the numerous amounts of sweets around during the holidays combined with my own sweet tooth. Even when I've been good, though, it has been up. I'll eat the same thing I usually do, take the same amount of insulin, and my sugar will still be up 20-30 points.

I saw my doctor last week and he told me the "honeymoon is over." Type 1 Diabetics often go through a honeymoon period during the first year after their diagnosis as their pancreas ekes out the last bits of insulin before finally throwing in the towel. He had me increase my nightly Lantus injection from 20 units to 25. He also strongly recommended I start a regular exercise regimen. It's not that I don't want to, but between working full-time, going to school, raising two daughters, and helping my mom out, I don't know when I'm supposed to exercise.

I suppose I'll need to find some way of doing it, though. High blood sugar can lead to all sorts of complications that I can't afford to get. Maybe I'll start sleeping even less...

Isn't It Ironic

I've written that one of my biggest problems with the school my girls were attending was the anti-science nature of it. I was very excited to get them in a public school which would obviously not have that issue, right?

Sigh. My oldest daughter, Erica, informed me today that her teacher told the class that she is not going to teach the evolution portion of their science curriculum because she is a Christian and doesn't believe humans came from monkeys.

Great! Neither do I, but I still adhere to evolutionary theory and definitely think it should be taught. If she can't teach stuff like this in a secular school, then maybe she should be teaching at a private, Christian school that also doesn't believe in science. I could recommend one to her if she'd like.

Empty Faith

This video was nearly over before I realized that it was not a parody.



Attempts like this one to convert people have always really puzzled me. Does anyone watch something like this and say, "Dude, I totally did not know that Jesus could be extreme! How awesome is that? I am so becoming a Christian now that I know JC is down with skiing!" This video seems so empty, so vacuous, that it almost makes me question my faith. Almost.

I sort of understand the notion of keeping the issue simple in order to get people in the door and then introducing them to a more fully realized vision of Christianity. I don't see that happening, though. It seems that too many churches keep making things more simple, more dumbed down just to try to keep growing (in terms of the number of parishioners) and to keep current members from going somewhere else. Where is the challenge? Where is the idea that trying to live up to the standards of Jesus is not easy and calls for more than extreme skiing, singing rock music, going to church once a week, and saying a single prayer. Maybe I'm reading a different Bible, but when I read mine I'm constantly thinking, "Wow. I have a lot to live up to if I am going to call myself a Christian. It's going to take a lot of hard work, failure, and trying again and again."

I suppose that's intimidating for many people in our me-first-no-pain culture, but I think that we underestimate people. I think that there are a lot of people out there who do want more; they just don't know how or what to do. They need leaders, real leaders, not people like Joel Osteen telling you that God wants you to be rich. People who will challenge those around them, to say "I know you can do better. We can do better, in fact. Let's see what happens." I think the economic crisis is the perfect time for these people to be stepping forward. More than ever, we need them.

"They feel very guilty."

Oh, no doubt they do.

"Hey, honey, Adam's missing."

"Really? Oh, he'll turn up anytime now."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Kids are tough. He'll be fine."

Ten years later.

"Hey, honey, you realize Adam's still missing?"

"Is he? Hmmm...what do you think we should do about it?"

"Well, gee, I don't know. I don't think we need to do anything. He'll be fine."

"Yeah, you're right."

Wow. What do you even say about something like this? What sort of parents don't report their child missing, even if he or she is an adopted child? It's just sick.

Mileage Tax

I'm not an expert on this, but taxing mileage sounds like a bad idea. Wouldn't making more roads toll roads and putting up more parking meters accomplish a similar end with less worry about privacy issues?

Get Off My Lawn

This post is not about Clint Eastwood's new movie, Gran Torino, which does look awesome, but I haven't seen it, yet. No, this is about an article by Victor David Hanson from November that sounds like it was written by some embittered geriatric who knows that everything used to be better. You know, back in the day. This is when kids called everyone "sir" or "ma'am", Mom stayed at home to raise the kids not to mention having dinner on the table when Dad got home from work, everyone went to (a Christian) church on Sundays, and color had not been invented. Hanson's essay has the ominous title, "Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts." Let's browse through some of these thoughts and see what nuggets of knowledge Mr. Hanson is imparting on us.

1. Four years of high-school Latin would dramatically arrest the decline in American education. In particular, such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the 'role model' diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles's Antigone in Greek or Thucydides' dialogue at Melos). After some 20 years of teaching mostly minority youth Greek, Latin, and ancient history and literature in translation (1984-2004), I came to the unfortunate conclusion that ethnic studies, women studies--indeed, anything "studies"-- were perhaps the fruits of some evil plot dreamed up by illiberal white separatists to ensure that poor minority students in the public schools and universities were offered only a third-rate education.

On one hand, as someone deliriously passionate about knowledge, I applaud the notion of more classical studies for our youth. On the other hand, I think, what is wrong with teaching kids about people like Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez? Do we really want to tell kids that their non-white ancestors are not as important as old, white people? I've seen some poorly designed, too-P.C. diversity studies, but that doesn't mean we should scrap all of them. Human history is a wonderfully diverse landscape and only focusing on white people makes it look rather sad and pathetic.

2. Hollywood is going the way of Detroit. The actors are programmed and pretty rather than interesting looking and unique. They, of course, are overpaid (they do to films what Lehman Brothers' execs did to stocks), mediocre, and politicized. The producers and directors are rarely talented, mostly unoriginal--and likewise politicized. A pack-mentality rules. Do one movie on a comic superhero--and suddenly we get ten, all worse than the first. One noble lion cartoon movie earns us eagle, penguin and most of Noah's Arc sequels. Now see poorer remakes of movies that were never good to begin with. I doubt we will ever see again a Western like Shane, the Searchers, High Noon, or the Wild Bunch. If one wishes to see a fine film, they are now usually foreign, such as Das Boot or Breaker Morant. Watching any recent war movie (e.g., Iraq as the Rape of Nanking) is as if someone put uniforms on student protestors and told them to consult their professors for the impromptu script.

Ah, yes, the old "Hollywood is bankrupt of ideas" canard. This could probably warrant an entire post of its own, suffice to say for now that people have been complaining about the lack of ideas from Hollywood since about, oh, the day after movies started getting made. Yes, a lot of dreck is made. That's no different from any other point in time and includes any art form - movies, music, literature, painting, etc. Many excellent films have come out in the past few years - Wall-E, The Dark Knight, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Children of Men - off the top of my head.

And if Hanson is looking for recent great westerns, I would point him to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and 3:10 to Yuma. The second may be a remake, but it did just what a good remake should do - improve up on the original.

6. Something has happened to the generic American male accent. Maybe it is urbanization; perhaps it is now an affectation to sound precise and caring with a patina of intellectual authority; perhaps it is the fashion culture of the metrosexual; maybe it is the influence of the gay community in arts and popular culture. Maybe the ubiquitous new intonation comes from the scarcity of salty old jobs in construction, farming, or fishing. But increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female. How indeed could one make Westerns these days, when there simply is not anyone left who sounds like John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a Struther Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson? I watched the movie Twelve O'clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet. I confess over the last year, I have been interviewed a half-dozen times on the phone, and had no idea at first whether a male or female was asking the questions. All this sounds absurd, but I think upon reflection readers my age (55) will attest they have had the same experience. In the old days, I remember only that I first heard a variant of this accent with the old Paul Lynde character actor in one of the Flubber movies; now young men sound closer to his camp than to a Jack Palance or Alan Ladd.

"All of this sounds absurd." Yes, yes it does. I can't imagine why men don't sound like actors of years past, 'cause we all know that most successful actors back then just as they are now are successful because they are just like everyday people. They aren't pinnacles of beauty or anything.

Funny that he didn't mention Jimmy Stewart, though. I don't know anyone who does not like Jimmy Stewart, but I also don't know anyone who would accuse him of having a masculine voice.

9. As I wrote earlier, the shrill Left is increasingly far more vicious these days than the conservative fringe, and about like the crude Right of the 1950s. Why? I am not exactly sure, other than the generic notion that utopians often believe that their anointed ends justify brutal means. Maybe it is that the Right already had its Reformation when Buckley and others purged the extremists--the Birchers, the neo-Confederates, racialists, the fluoride-in-the-water conspiracists, anti-Semites, and assorted nuts.--from the conservative ranks in a way the Left has never done with the 1960s radicals that now reappear in the form of Michael Moore, Bill Ayers, Cindy Sheehan, Moveon.org, the Daily Kos, etc. Not many Democrats excommunicated Moveon.org for its General Betray-Us ad. Most lined up to see the premier of Moore's mythodrama. Barack Obama could subsidize a Rev. Wright or email a post-9/11 Bill Ayers in a way no conservative would even dare speak to a David Duke or Timothy McVeigh--and what Wright said was not all that different from what Duke spouts. What separated Ayers from McVeigh was chance; had the stars aligned, the Weathermen would have killed hundreds as they planned.

Yeah, because Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity are the pinnacles of conservative civility, right? Right?

10. The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards (but not why so); to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.

Right. The only thing wrong with K-12 education is that kids these days are critical of the Vietnam War, believe that global warming has a man-made component, and think that George Bush really fucked up our country. If we fix that, we'll get our education system back on track.

I guess this type of thinking is what passes for critical thinking for much of the Right. Until those on the Right can come up with something a whole lot better than this ridiculous claptrap, they will remain out of power in America. Well, unless the Dems really screw things up which is certainly not beyond them, but I have a hard time seeing that happen on Obama's watch. Is he going to make mistakes and do things I disagree with? Yeah. Is he going to screw up badly that people go running back to the Republicans? Hmmmm...probably not. Just a hunch. Especially not if people on the Right are thinking like Victor David Hanson.

Yes, We Are Too Afraid.

A writer for The Sunday Times asks if we are "too afraid of touch." And to that, I answer that yes we are unequivocally too afraid of touching, of human contact. The article focuses on the UK, but I think it is equally applicable here in America, just look at this advertising campaign that generated controversy by indirectly painting all men as predators. Our paranoia over child molesters and lawsuits has made us act irrationally. Yes, we need to take steps to prevent our children from being molested, but we can't go overboard to the point of making people afraid of being teachers or giving kids hugs. Fear is a powerful emotion and we can't let ourselves fall prey to its call as we have so many other things (see: war on terror).

Wikipedia Grows

It has raised $6 million dollars for fiscal 2008.

Weekly Music Video

It's time for some metal around here. So how about some power metal from right here in America.

Iced Earth - "Brainwashed"

Weekly Secret

PostSecret

I'm learning about eating disorders with my youngest daughter, though hers is the opposite of this. Her low self-esteem leads her to eat in excess. She likes to sneak food when I'm not (or she thinks I'm not) looking. And, of course, she's not eating too many celery sticks; it's the greasiest or sweetest foods she can find.

I've never had to deal with this, so it is a learning experience. If she had the high metabolism I do, I would not be as concerned, but she does not. Her body type is more like her mother's and so she is piling on the pounds. She is in counseling and I am trying to do what I can here at home, but I worry it's not enough.

Our Incredible World

Check out this beautiful time-lapse video of various skies. Even a hardened cynic like me has trouble being too cynical after viewing something like this. We live in a beautiful world and it's too easy to forget it, getting caught up in the sturm und drang of day-to-day life.




H/T: GeekDad

The Uneducated Masses

In a complete non-surprise, more Americans believe in Hell, the Devil, and angels than evolution.

-- 80% of adult Americans believe in God - unchanged since the last time we asked the question in 2005. Large majorities of the public believe in miracles (75%), heaven (73%), angels (71%), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (71%), the resurrection of Jesus (70%), the survival of the soul after death (68%), hell (62%), the Virgin birth (Jesus born of Mary (61%) and the devil (59%).

-- Slightly more people - but both are minorities - believe in Darwin's theory of evolution (47%) than in creationism (40%).

-- Sizeable minorities believe in ghosts (44%), UFOs (36%), witches (31%), astrology (31%), and reincarnation (24%).

My favorite bit was this part, though.

Slender majorities of all adults believe that all or most of the Old Testament (55%) and the New Testament (54%) are the "Word of God." However, only about a third of all adults (37% and 36%) believe that all of these texts are the word of God.

Interestingly, only 26% of all adults believe that the Torah is the word of God, even though it is the same as the first five books of the Old Testament. Presumably many people do not know this.

I think this speaks to the problems we have in education today. I don't think it's a problem for people to believe in angels and devils and such; that's a matter of faith. I do think it's a problem when a majority of Americans do not believe in scientific theories that are constantly accumulating more evidence to back them up. The problem is that most of these people do not understand what evolution is. "It means we came from monkeys," someone will say. Unfortunately that is not true; that is emphatically not what evolutionary theory says. This is not the post to get into the ins and outs of Darwin's theories, but Wikipedia has a good mostly non-technical article on the subject.

We Americans tend not to respect scientists and experts much anymore, though. We let people who know nothing on a topic tell us how to think. It's the truthiness problem. Facts get in the way of things, so it's easier to ignore them. It's more convenient to feel what the truth is than to confront reality. Now, that's not to say that we should blindly accept everything scientists tell us, but isn't it absurd to say, "I don't care that this person has devoted their entire life to studying this topic. This other person I know who has never studied the subject other than what he read on www.itsallabigconspiracy.com told me something different and I believe him"? When we have trouble with our cars, do we ask our neighbor who is clueless about cars or do we take it to a car mechanic who has devoted his time to learning how cars work? Of course we take it to a mechanic. I'm sure, though, that if someone found some religious/metaphysical aspect to cars, we'd all stop believing mechanics and asking our pastor or clueless neighbor what the problem was.

We need to get back to at least respectfully listening to experts instead of so easily dismissing them out of hand because some non-expert told us so.

Rice's View of the Bush Legacy

Condoleezza Rice thinks that people are going to "thank" Bush for what he has done.

That sound you hear? That's the crickets chirping.

Let's see, he presided over...

the worst foreign attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor,
the failure to catch the primary culprit for said attack,
the authorization to defy the Geneva Conventions and permit torture,
the botched invasion of Iraq on trumped up evidence of non-existent WMDs,
the comically inept response to Hurricane Katrina,
and the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression.

But, I'm sure that other than these minor things, people will be thanking Bush. I'm not sure for what, but no doubt they will.

Israel vs. the Palestinians, cont.

Related to my post from yesterday, Aaron David Miller offers some smart suggestions to the Obama administration for handling the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Dating Advice

My sister, Shawna, tells me that I really should ask her advice on matters concerning dating and relationships. I don't think she realizes that I already have a plan.



That's style right there. No, better than that - panache. That guy has panache.