Thoughts on Gender, Adulthood, Identity, and Ritual

Kate of the blog “Kate's Musings of Late: Tales of a Sojourner” recently provided some reflections on the books Wild at Heart and Captivating on gender identity, which were (are?) rather popular in certain circles. Kate writes:

These books narrowly define men and women into categories which suggest the secret to distinct, deep longings for both sexes. [...] Men aren't the only folks who have a deep desire to be respected. We confine girls to these specific roles of waiting to be pursued and learning how to possess some kind of seduction techniques which help men be more masculine. I, as a woman, have no responsibility to help a man be more masculine. I do have a responsibility to love and respect my brother as well as my sister. I do not have a responsibility to wait around to be pursued by someone; I do have a responsibility to pursue justice, mercy, and kindness.

The trouble I find with the kind of claims about gender that seem to be in these books (caveat: I haven't read either book, myself) is that it seems rather difficult to provide any grounding for them based on scripture (or at least, I haven't come across one, yet). Sure, there may be some vaguely gendered statements in early Genesis or a couple of the epistles, but not nearly enough to found such a strong normative theory of gender identity as some Christians would like to believe. (I guess there's also that passage about the capable wife in Proverbs 31, but do we really want to say that being hardworking, shrewd, and just are only qualities for women? And interestingly, some of the verses seem almost to suggest a woman breadwinner, which does seem at odds with the traditional stereotype....)

Lately I've been reading through Robert Jordan's fantasy series The Wheel of Time. Jordan paints incredibly vivid pictures of the cultures in this alternate reality, and it's interesting to compare the fictitious world with our own. One thing I noticed was that men and women in The Wheel of Time tend to have very strong gender identities, and they each find the other incomprehensible. However, despite their apparent differences, to foreign ears (namely, mine), the two genders end up sounding more subtly alike than different: Women think men are stubborn wool-heads, and men believe it impossible to get past a woman who has taken her stand. Both want to be in charge and find that the other requires “special handling.” And no one wants to look a fool. Despite the strong gender division, social power is strikingly egalitarian in all of the nations depicted, if exercised in different ways. The similarity is driven home in book 4 when Perrin overhears Mistress al'Vere give his lady-friend Faiel some advice about how to deal with men (“Letting them have their way when it isn't important makes it easier to check them when it is”) only to have Master Cauthon give him nearly the same on how to deal with women not hours later!

I find myself a little envious of the arrangement (perhaps in the same way that I was a little jealous of the Aiel's strong national identity, having no strong conscious national identity of my own)—at least they all (think they) know where they stand. In my corner of U.S. culture, we seem to have lost all of the main mechanisms for forming gender identities (or I didn't have access to them, at least), while still holding on to the stereotypes and expectations—and the arrangement is rather less than satisfying, to put it mildly. I find the same problem with our lack of ritual to form adult identities, as well—there is no mechanism to tell youth that they have been inducted into the circle of adulthood. With increased parental support through college and delayed onset of responsibility, adolescence is taking longer than it ever has before; and with no clear end point, it's hard for young people to know when they're supposed to start doing “what adults do” (whatever that is).

Perhaps we would do well to reintroduce some developmental ritual for youth to mark the transitions from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood. When children reach adolescence, we could bring them into the community of men or women and tell them “You are now starting your journey toward joining us as [men/women]. Here are some examples of [men/women] who are living their lives well. Notice how they love God with all of their lives and how they love their neighbors as themselves. They seek peace, resist the oppression of others, promote justice, act mercifully, and walk humbly. This is what it means to be a [man/woman].” I think this would, ideally, be paired with the formation of a close mentoring relationship. When the youth has gone through the years of adolescent training (surely not later than age 18, since that is the age of legal adulthood in the U.S.), the community of men or women would welcome the young adults as full members among them, reminding them of their training, and conferring on them the responsibility to bring up others in the same love of God and neighbor.

Each generation has its own strengths and weaknesses, and each generation responds to the generation before, who raised them. If youth now have little guidance in how to become adults, perhaps when they come to their senses and have little youth of their own, they'll try a different strategy.

Moving the Mendeley Root Directory

I use Mendeley to organize PDFs and citation information for my collection of academic articles. Mendeley is great since it will attempt to extract citation information automatically from the PDF, supplementing with information from Google Scholar, other Mendeley users, and possibly other sources. I always check over the imported information and clean it up as necessary.

In any case, I recently got a new computer and am transitioning from Mac OS X to Ubuntu. Generally, Mendeley can just download all the citation information for my library to the new computer from its server, but I wanted to maintain the links to all the article PDFs. I suppose I could have asked Mendeley to upload all the PDFs to the server and then sync them on the new computer. But, I have no idea where it would have put the PDFs, and while I've shifted to putting most articles in a big, unsorted papers directory, I have "legacy" articles (from before Mendeley) that are in project folders all over the place—and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

The simplest way to maintain all the PDF locations would be to copy the Mendeley database (with all the local PDF locations) from the old computer to the new computer. The only problem was that Mac OS X and Ubuntu name their home directories differently—it's /Users in Mac OS X and /home in Ubuntu. (I'd have a similar problem if I needed to change usernames for some reason.) If I just copied the database over, all of my PDF links would be broken.

Fortunately, Mendeley uses an SQLite backend that is rather transparent, making it quite easy to fix all the PDF locations with a simple Perl script:

 #! perl  
   
 my $db = '[email-address]@www.mendeley.com.sqlite';  
 my $oldPrefix = '/Users';  
 my $newPrefix = '/home';  
   
 use DBI;  
   
 my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:SQLite:dbname=$db", '', '',  
             { RaiseError => 1, HandleError=>\&handle_error },)  
      or die $DBI::errstr;  
   
 my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM files");  
 $sth->execute();  
   
 $sth->bind_columns(\my($hash, $url));  
 while ($sth->fetchrow_arrayref())  
 {  
  $url{$hash} = $url if ($url =~ s#^file://$oldPrefix#file://$newPrefix#);  
 }  
 $sth->finish();  
   
 for $hash (keys %url)  
 {  
  $url = $url{$hash};  
  $url =~ s/'/''/g;  
  $dbh->do("UPDATE files SET localUrl='$url' WHERE hash='$hash'");  
 }  
   
 $dbh->disconnect();  
   
 sub handle_error  
 {  
  my $error = shift;  
  print "Database error: $error\n";  
  return 1;  
 }  
   

Since I also have watched folders, I needed to update the watched file locations as well:

 #! perl  
   
 my $db = 'monitor.sqlite';  
 my $oldPrefix = '/Users';  
 my $newPrefix = '/home';  
   
 use DBI;  
   
 my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:SQLite:dbname=$db", '', '',  
             { RaiseError => 1, HandleError=>\&handle_error },)  
      or die $DBI::errstr;  
   
 my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT name FROM monitoredfolders");  
 $sth->execute();  
 $sth->bind_columns(\my($dir));  
 while ($sth->fetchrow_arrayref())  
 {  
  push @dirs, $dir;  
 }  
 $sth->finish();  
   
 for $old (@dirs)  
 {  
  $old =~ s/'/''/g;  
  $new = $old;  
  $dbh->do("UPDATE monitoredfolders SET name='$new' WHERE name='$old'")  
   if ($new =~ s/^$oldPrefix/$newPrefix/);  
 }  
   
 my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT name, directory FROM monitoredfiles");  
 $sth->execute();  
   
 $sth->bind_columns(\my($name, $dir));  
 while ($sth->fetchrow_arrayref())  
 {  
  $dir =~ s/^$oldPrefix/$newPrefix/;  
  $new = $name;  
  $file{$name} = [$new, $dir] if ($new =~ s/^$oldPrefix/$newPrefix/);  
 }  
 $sth->finish();  
   
 for $key (keys %file)  
 {  
  ($name, $dir) = @{$file{$key}};  
  $name =~ s/'/''/g;  
  $dir =~ s/'/''/g;  
  $key =~ s/'/''/g;  
  $dbh->do("UPDATE monitoredfiles SET name='$name', directory='$dir' WHERE name='$key'");  
 }  
   
 $dbh->disconnect();  
   
 sub handle_error  
 {  
  my $error = shift;  
  print "Database error: $error\n";  
  return 1;  
 }  
   

Problem solved!

The Power of Wikipedia

Wikipedia holds a lot of power—power for good, and power for evil. Don't get me wrong: I love Wikipedia. Whenever I need a quick orientation to a topic unfamiliar to me or to recall a general fact that I've heard but can't quite remember, I go to Wikipedia. But, Wikipedia has it's limitations, including a fair amount of unverified or simply incorrect material. This doesn't mean anything close to saying Wikipedia is terrible and should be banned from your consciousness, but it does mean Wikipedia readers need to be careful with the claims they read.

Unfortunately, many readers simply aren't critical or careful when they turn to an "authoritative" source.

I was reminded of this in a forceful way as some research led me to an intriguing connection between an image posted on Wikipedia and a current internet meme. It all started when I was skimming the headlines on Google News. As I glanced past an announcement that yet another grocery store has agreed to pull ground beef products that include lean finely textured beef, an image caught my eye. It was an image I had seen before, and it's likely you've seen it as well, if you've read much about "pink slime" or mechanically separated meat, or spend much time on Facebook. I won't copy it here—you can see it in any of the links below. It's a picture from a factory in which a smooth pink substance is serpentining down from a machine into a cardboard box. According to the meme, the image depicts mechanically separated meat (in this case, chicken), the product of an industrial food process to recover difficult-to-separate meat fragments from bone and fat.

Clicking on the image, I was directed to a WKBW 7 Eyewitness News story announcing that Kroger would be dropping products containing lean finely textured beef.  The story was accompanied by an uncredited photo cropped from the meme.  I was surprised an intrigued that an internet meme image would end up as a news photo from an established journalism agency, particularly as the source and content of the image has been questioned. So, I decided to delve into the history of the image, as recorded on the internet, to see what I could find.

Using Google Search by Image, I traced the image back to a number of blog entries in January 2009 (Between Showers, 1/2/09; XXXICANA, 1/4/09; One Day I'll Have Everything, 1/20/09).  The image was submitted to Buzzfeed, which apparently doesn't date postings, but several blog posts that source Buzzfeed suggest it was up by at least late January (Dlisted, 1/20/09; The Sectional, 1/23/09), and it kept spreading from there.

In August 2009, the image was picked up by the nutrition blog Fooducate; and then by Early Onset of Night (9/28/10), who added a snarky commentary ("Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It's what all fast-food chicken is made from...."), which was pulled into the meme. (The source from Fooducate provided in one of the follow-up posts on "Early Onset.") This text was rebutted by Snopes shortly thereafter (suggesting quick adoption of the text), though they don't comment directly on the image.

So, where did the image come from? Well, several of the initial blog posts (TYWKIDBI, 1/16/09; Life as an Artificial Lifeform, 1/18/09; J-Walk Blog, 1/21/09; Gangster says relax, 1/21/09) credit the image to the Wikipedia article on mechanically separated meat. The article history indicates that the image was added on November 18, 2008 by "Infinitrium" (no user profile available).  The image was removed from the article on January 17, but not before unleashing a meme with currency 3 years later.  (The image was deleted from Wikipedia after a few months due to lack of source information.)

In case you missed it, here's a recap of the story:

1. Random user posts photo of unknown source on Wikipedia article.
2. Photo is removed from Wikipedia article 8 weeks later, just after the photo has gone viral in the blogosphere.
3. Image remains in circulation for 3 years, until it is picked up as the news photo by an ABC affiliate in Buffalo, NY.

All of this because a few people saw an unappetizing image attached to a Wikipedia article and didn't stop to question whether the image had any credibility. Its credibility came from simply being on Wikipedia (and later from meme status). Now, Wikipedia does have standards for article quality, mechanisms for quality control, and editorial oversight. And, these mechanisms resulted in the removal of the dubious image relatively shortly after it was posted—but apparently not soon enough. Perhaps if changes were reviewed before going live, this virus would never have been released. (Then again, perhaps that simply isn't feasible given the resources Wikipedia has available.)

But, does any of this really matter? After all, if the photo is indeed what is claimed of it (mechanically separated chicken), then what's the harm?

Well, the actual content of the photo is far from certain.  Shortly after the post on "Early Onset," the Huffington Post picked up the story on mechanically separated meat, featuring the meme image. In an addendum, they claim, 

Although the original source of the photo is unknown, there is little reason to doubt that it is not mechanically separated poultry or pork.... The chicken slurry [Jamie Oliver] made [in an episode of the TV show Food Revolution] bears an uncanny resemblance to the passed-around photo.

(Uncanny resemblance? Is that really the standard we'd like to use for verifying credible evidence?) It's true that, to the untrained eye, the pink substance in the photo does resemble the mechanically separated poultry in a product photo from Inghams, an industrial food ingredients manufacturer. But, Rumors on the Internets points out that an (admittedly unverified) Reddit commenter, who purportedly worked briefly in the meat packing industry, claims that the substance is not mechanically separated poultry. "Rumors" goes on to say,

Why are intelligent people just taking some Tumblr's word for it that this picture is what they say it is, without a single citation or any kind of backup? ... Seriously, what is supposed to be going on here [in the photo]? ... Nobody knows! ... My unverifiable source is just as good as your unverifiable source!

After all, according to Beyond the Moho, the substance in question also resembles pink pulled taffy (seems like a bit of a stretch to me), and an I Can Has Cheezburger poster says the image resembles strawberry soft serve ice cream.

Speaking of which, there is an intriguing copy of the photo at the very beginning of its internet history. A user named Olisaur posted the photo on myLot with the title "ice cream factory" and the caption "Pink ice cream in soft-form coming out of a machine for bulk packaging."  (I couldn't find any other references to the image on myLot, though there is a post in which Olisaur says she worked briefly at an "ice cream place"—was it a factory? a shop?) Unfortunately, myLot doesn't give an exact date for the posting of the image—only saying that it was posted 3 years ago, which (with rounding) could place it just before or just after the image was added to the Wikipedia article. Could this be the original source of the image—an ice cream factory, not a meat packing plant?

Battle in Haiti

Last night, I was listening to the Joseph story and came to the part where Joseph is thrown into prison after Potiphar's wife falsely accuses him of attacking her.  I was struck by the next verse: "But while Joseph was there in prison, the Lord was with him" (Gen 39:20-21).  By earthly standards, it certainly didn't seem like God was favoring Joseph---falsely accused, innocent yet imprisoned.  We might think that if God saw Joseph in his plight and cared for him, He would break him out of prison and vindicate him before his accusers.  However, Joseph remained in prison for some time longer than two years, and yet "the Lord was with him."

A few days ago, Ben (a newlywed who moved to Haiti with his wife last fall to work at a school, and who has been swept up unexpectedly into relief efforts) was asked if he thought the devil knew he was defeated in Haiti.  Ben thought, "This woman clearly has not seen enough dead bodies, food riots, looting and general devastation to know that right now evil is alive and well in Haiti."  The devil certainly does seem to be having a heyday.

I heard it said a number of years ago that Haiti was one of the darkest nations in the world, spiritually speaking.  As I was going to bed, I spent a moment praying for Haiti, and asked God that many of the relief workers flooding into the country would be Christians who would shine the light of Christ into Haiti's darkness---when suddenly I recalled the end of Joseph's story: After Jacob's death, Joseph's brothers fear he'll take vengeance for their mistreatment of him; but, Joseph tells them, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Gen 50:20).

From a human perspective, it feels like the devil is winning in Haiti---hunger and suffering are rampant, death and destruction are at every turn, and it's possible (likely?) everything will get worse before it gets any better.  But, I wonder if from an eternal perspective things look a little different:  Could the earthquake signal the beginning of a last great battle for Haiti, as Christ (through His body, the Church) comes galloping in to unseat forever the powers of darkness that have held Haiti in their grasp?  The devil surely meant the quake for evil, but perhaps God means it for good.  And in the midst of the turmoil, we can take courage (John 16:33), for the victor is the same one who said, "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matt 28:20).

Planning First: A Novelty?

From Al Jazeera:

The conference in the Canadian city of Montreal was not intended to bring specific aid promises but to assess immediate needs and begin charting Haiti's long-term recovery from the January 12 earthquake.

"We're trying to do this in the correct order. Sometimes people have pledging conferences and pledge money and they don't have any idea what they are going to do with it," Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said at a closing news conference. ...

"We actually think it's a novel idea to do the needs assessment first, and then the planning, and then the pledging," Clinton said.

It certainly is a sad truth that all too often people in development act before they plan, and decide what to do before figuring out what needs to be done or thinking about the long-term implications of one strategy over another. But, really, is doing needs assessment before planning before acting really a "novel" idea?!

I hope, for the people of Haiti's sake and that of all those in regions in need of development, that the key players in Haiti's reconstruction can pull off the process of conducting needs assessment and careful planning before rushing into action in a spectacular fashion, serving as a model for all development work, particularly if they can integrate evaluation of the redevelopment's implementation and effectiveness into the plan.

Incidentally, I wonder if having a sound redevelopment plan from the outset could help alleviate donor fatigue. It might not have much effect on individual donors, but big foundations/NGOs/governments might find it easier to "stay the course" if they knew where exactly they were headed and how far they had come.

The Investor's Manifesto: Prudence Before Riches

The Investor's Manifesto: preparing for prosperity, Armageddon, and everything in between, by William Bernstein. Rating: 4/5.

A good description of basic investment strategy, written in a familiar, mildly humorous style. Bernstein's approach draws heavily on an investment version of Pascal's wager: Financial ruin in retirement if markets turn south is worse than living modestly (now and in retirement) even if markets are booming. Bernstein advocates for simple, unglamorous investing:

"The name of the game is not to get rich, but rather to avoid dying poor. In fact, if you follow the advice in this book, I can guarantee you that you will not get fabulously wealthy. Rather, I've striven to simultaneously maximize your chances of a comfortable retirement and minimize your chances of living out your final years in poverty. I know of no more laudable or more worthy investment goal." (183)

As a starting point, Bernstein cites the "age rule" for asset allocation: The percentage of bonds in your portfolio should be roughly the same as your age. This percentage should be increased or decreased up to 20 percentage points depending on your risk tolerance. Then, Bernstein recommends between 60-80% domestic stocks and 20-40% foreign stocks, and suggests that money should be placed in low-expense index or passively managed mutual funds. "Does this portfolio seem overly simplistic, even amateurish?" Bernstein asks---"Get over it. Over the next few decades, the overwhelming majority of all professional investors will not be able to beat it" (89). Investors interested in a more complex allocation could divide the stocks into small and large, value and market companies; but, Bernstein indicates that growth companies should be avoided, as they have a small dividend stream relative to stock price, and the dividend growth rate is a better predictor of future performance than growth of stock price.

Chapter 1, "A Brief History of Financial Time," gives an overview of the history of financial markets and lays down a number of important principles of how markets work that undergird Bernstein's investment philosophy. Chapter 2, "The Nature of the Beast," describes the core of the philosophy. Chapter 3, "The Nature of the Portfolio," applies Bernstein's philosophy to creation of a portfolio. Chapter 4, "The Enemy in the Mirror," presents a number of neuro-psychological effects and common mistakes that investors make that derail them from their investing goals. Chapter 5, "Muggers and Worse," warns against brokerage houses and the like. Chapter 6, "Building Your Portfolio," introduces dollar cost averaging and value averaging, and provides four example scenarios of prototypical investors. Finally, chapter 7, "The Nature of the Game," provides a summary of the principal lessons from the book, suitable for sticking to the refrigerator for frequent review.

The book is approachable for beginning investors, though some experience with investment vocabulary is helpful. Important points are placed in call-out boxes, and mathematical details are relegated to sidebars that can be skipped or skimmed without losing the overall message. Each chapter has a bullet-point summary of the most important topics for review.

Augustine on Science and the Bible

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, ... and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a nonbeliever to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

-- Augustine (354-430), On the Literal Meaning of Genesis, I.19 (translated by John Hammond Taylor)

How true. If only this wisdom given to Augustine were not covered in centuries of dust, but were read and considered by more Christians today. How sad it is when some Christians get so caught up in testifying to their faith that they forget that how they act may be at cross-purposes with sharing that faith with others.

How many bottle caps?

I ran across the following problem and couldn't resist. The original inspiration was a Mountain Dew promotion.

Consider the following game: Suppose you have N bottle caps, each with the name of a different sports team on the underside. You win if you draw (with replacement) three of the same team. Note that a win is impossible for less than three draws and is guaranteed by the 2N+1 draw. For n draws, the probability of having some particular set of caps , , follows a Multinomial distribution:

The probability of not winning by the n'th draw is the sum of all the probabilities with , , and . Now, permutations of the vector are equally likely, and the number of possible non-winning vectors that have teams with two drawn caps is

Then, the probability of not winning by the n'th draw, given that there are k teams with two caps, is

Thus, the probability of winning on the (n+1)'th draw is

If there are 30 teams, the chance of winning on the third draw is 0.1%. It takes about 18 draws to have a 50% chance of winning, 27 draws to have a 90% chance of winning, and 38 draws to have a 99.9% chance of winning.

Graduated Annuity Calculator

I use Google Analytics to keep track of visits to the Cogitorium as a matter of curiosity. When I posted the results of my graduated annuity calculations, I figured most people would respond as my brother did: "Why would you write about something boring like that?" Much to my very great surprise, my entry on the graduated annuity has turned out to be my most popular! Since the beginning of this year, the entry has received nearly one hit per day (which is a lot by my humble standards).

Given the interest in graduated annuities, I thought I would whip up a quick applet to perform calculations with the graduated annuity, since many people might not want to slog through the math on their own. Below are a few usage notes, the applet, and several calculation examples. For those who are interested, the source code is available, and is released into the public domain.

1. The Interest Rate and the Acceleration Rate are entered in percent and cannot be the same.
2. When calculating the Final value, enter a positive Base Value for savings or a negative Base Value (with an Initial Value) for accelerated withdrawals.
3. When calculating either rate, no Initial Value is permitted.
4. Selecting Years calculates the amount of time a given Initial Value will last with accelerated withdrawals. It doesn't work with Final Values other than 0, or with positive Base Deposits.
5. Enter 0 for the Acceleration Rate to calculate a normal annuity.
   

Examples:

1. To calculate the savings of $1000/year (unaccelerated) for 10 years at 5% interest, enter 0 for the Initial Value, 1000 for the Base Deposit, 5 for the Interest Rate, 0 for the Acceleration Rate, and 10 for Years. Pressing calculate gives $12,577.89.
2. Suppose we choose to accelerate the savings in the previous example by 4% each year. Enter 4 for the Acceleration Rate. Pressing calculate shows the savings grow to $14,865.03.
   
3. Suppose we have $10,000 and would like to reach $100,000 in 5 years. How much would need to be saved each year, if we expect an 8% return on the savings? Select the Base Deposit radio button, enter 10000 for the Initial Value, 100000 for the Final Value, 8 for the Interest Rate, 0 for the Acceleration Rate, and 5 for Years. Pressing calculate gives $14,541.08.
4. Suppose we want to reach $100,000 in 10 years. If we start with a $6,000/yr deposit, how fast would the deposits have to accelerate to reach our goal, if we expect an 8% return on the savings? Select the Acceleration Rate radio button, enter 0 for Initial Value, 100000 for Final Value, 6000 for Base Deposit, and 10 for Years. Pressing calculate shows that the deposit amount must increase by 3.6% each year to reach the goal.
5. Suppose we have $500,000 saved for retirement, earning 5% per year. We plan on withdrawing $30,000/yr and would like to increase this amount by 2% each year to account for cost of living increases (price inflation). How much will be left after 10 years? Select the Final Value radio button, and enter 500000 for Initial Value, -30000 for Base Desposit, 5 for Interest Rate, 2 for Acceleration Rate, and 10 for Years. Pressing calculate shows that $404,547.11 will remain.
6. How long will the savings in this scenario last? Select the Years radio button. Pressing calculate shows that the savings will last almost 24 years.
   

Poverty Measure Proposals

Last month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the findings in the city's Center for Economic Opportunity's proposal for a new poverty measure to replace or supplement the measure used by the Federal government.  The Federal poverty measure was originally based on the cost of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's economy food plan that detailed the minimum nutritional requirements for a family in need.  The poverty threshold was calculate as three times the annual cost of the food plan, based on the average composition of family spending when the measure was developed in the 1960s.  Since its development, the measure has been updated only based on increases in the Consumer Price Index.  Advocates for the poor claim that the forty-year old measure is now out of date, and thus does not accurately represent the level of poverty in America.  To support this, the advocates claim that food spending now makes up only one-eighth (not one-third) of family expenditures, due to increases in other necessary spending such as shelter and health care.  Moreover, although the Federal poverty measure is used uniformly throught the nation, cost of living varies dramatically by location---for the cost of renting a studio apartment in New York City, one could buy a small house in a less-urban location.

In response to this, the NYC CEO has proposed adopting a more detailed measure developed by the National Academy of Sciences in 1995.  The new measure sets a threshold just under median family expenditure on food, clothing, shelter, and utilities in a particular geographic location.  Additionally, instead of counting only pre-tax income, the new measure includes both post-tax income and the value of near-cash benefits such as food stamps and housing subsidies, minus work-related expenses (such as child-care and transportation costs) and out-of-pocket medical expenses, which reduce a family's resources available for meeting its basic needs.

While this new measure makes significant strides in providing a more accurate picture of poverty in the United States, it suffers from at least two particular weaknesses.  First, the poverty threshold's calculation of expenditures for basic needs is based on the median expenditure among all families, and not on a family's actual needs for survival.  Over time, as the real income of median families increases, a significant number of these families are bound to choose to purchase more-expensive food items or more-expensive clothing.  As a result, median expenditures will increase beyond the cost of minimally adequate goods to meet basic needs.  Although establishing a budget of minimally adequate goods does depend on the judgement of experts, as the NAS panel points out, the solution to expert bias is to include more and varied voices in the deliberation of what constitutes minimally adequate.  Instead, the multiplier approach the panel recommends is based not on what consumers' needs, but simply on how consumers choose to spend their money, whether those choices are motivated by wants or needs.

Second, the new measure's proposal to include welfare receipts among a family's resources gives a misleading picture of the family's ability to support itself.  While it is certainly true, as the panel notes, that welfare services have "have made important contributions to reducing material hardship in the United States," the fact that families must rely on these services to make ends meet is itself an indicator of poverty, thus it makes little sense to reduce poverty figures based on the input of social services.  These services, while highly valuable and eminently necessary to relieve immediate suffering, merely treat the symptoms of poverty---they cannot and do not reduce it.

Bloomberg is not the only public official to recommend use of the new NAS-proposed poverty measure: Representative Jim McDermott has also drafted a bill based on the NAS panel's findings, though the bill has yet to be introduced in Congress.  While the new poverty measure is a step in the right direction, I believe more work is necessary before we arrive at a high-quality picture of poverty in the U.S.

On Mystery

Mystery is a state of not knowing the answer to some question after a certain amount of effort in thinking about it.  Unlike not understanding fractions, mysteries involve curiosity, a sense of wonder, and a desire to know despite the hindrances.

In any sufficiently complex system, there will always be an element of mystery given our limited capacity to understand the world around us.  Science holds plenty of mystery: What was the universe like just after the Big Bang?  What did the beginnings of life on earth look like?  How much of one's personality is nature versus nurture? Confronted by these mysteries and others, the components of awe and a desire to know fuel scientists' zeal in pursuing scientific inquiry.  Just as in any good detective novel, the fact that something is a mystery today does not imply that careful investigation will not remove the cloak to reveal the hidden knowledge.

In spiritual matters, some people seem to relish in mystery: They are perfectly content not to know and even enjoy the hiddenness of the knowledge, possibly because it fulfills a longing in their hearts to know that something bigger than themselves exists.  I, however, view spiritual mysteries as those in science: They beg to be solved.  Now, this is not to suggest that all spiritual mysteries are solvable---God is certainly a complex system.  Indeed, sometimes, I may decide after careful reflection that no matter how much more I might think about an issue, the available data are simply insufficient to decide one way or another, and I become contentedly agnostic on that point.  However in general, I see the challenge of spiritual mystery as an invitation to delve deeper in my understanding of God so that with each mystery unveiled, I can marvel at his wondrous majesty.

On the Interest in Love

We can take an interest in things for a number of reasons.  We might be interested out of a general desire to learn about the unknown (curiosity); for example, I might pick up a book about the Maori because I know little about New Zealand aboriginal people and have a general desire to learn.  We might attend to something due to an obligation we've accepted (duty); for example, I might read about presidential candidates, even if I hate political wrangling, because I feel a civic responsibility to elect sound leaders.  We might take interest for some anticipated ancillary benefit (mercenary); for example, I may go to a social event at a conference, not because I like to socialize, but in order to make contacts useful to my career.  Or, our interest may be fueled by the pleasure we receive from following or interacting with the object; for example, I may watch every baseball game of my favorite team, due to the strong positive affect I feel from a constructed (if not imagined) sense of group identity (talk about interesting phenomena).

In my current relational theory, love involves taking on the interests of the beloved as one's own (to avoid equivocation, let this be understood to mean being interested in the beloved's well-being).  But which kind of interest?

The interest in love doesn't seem to be curiosity, since love usually implies a kind of familiarity. (In the case of "love at first sight"---the experience of strong affinity at first meeting---I would say that a certain kind of passion overwhelms what one would call mere curiosity.) Nor would many say that an interest from duty alone qualifies, since love implies a certain voluntariness that surpasses obligation. (Arranged marriage and patriotism are interesting cases: If I participate in some civic duty, the act counts as patriotism only if the duty is accompanied by a "love" of country.  In arranged marriage, if I may take on my spouse's interests merely out of marital obligation, one might say I have a kind of love, but this limited kind of love is not nearly as strong as if I am impassioned for my spouse.)  Mercenary interest certainly doesn't count, since I can't take an interest in the well-being of another if I care only for my own personal benefit.  Thus, love must involve interest that is motivated by the pleasure received from following or interacting with that interest (namely, the well-being of the beloved).

Selfless love, then, does not imply that there is absolutely no personal benefit.  Rather, the personal benefit is nothing other than enjoying the fulfillment of one's desire to see the well-being of the beloved.  In this way, the personal benefit received is predicated on the other, and not centered on oneself, which would turn the interest into something mercenary. There might also be another, stronger kind of selfless love---one in which the lover places the well-being of the beloved above all other personal interests.

This leads to the question: Is love diluted by ancillary interests?  If I take an interest in your well-being, is my love worth less if I also enjoy the fact that you give me a lift whenever I need it?  My inclination is to say no: The fact that I enjoy your generosity and hospitality does not necessarily diminish the fact that I enjoy seeing your well-being.  Indeed, it seems that these positive characteristics or ancillary personal benefits may enhance the enjoyment of the beloved and the associated desire to see the beloved's well-being.  In fact, I wonder if the mechanism of the growth of love in a relationship sometimes (many times?) makes use of these ancillary personal benefits, which then develop into an interest in the beloved's well-being.  The trouble comes when such a development never occurs, or when the ancillary benefits displace the more-important interest in the beloved's well-being.

Ethics vs. Righteousness

In my conversation this past Sunday, my interlocutor suggested than an ethical act and a righteous act (he seemed to be using the words synonymously) was not merely doing the right thing, but also having the right motivation, name what he called Christian motivation, which he said was based in love of God and love of neighbor. It struck me as a bit too restrictive to say that an act is not ethical unless it bears good motivation, even more so Christian motivation. There seem to be two separate components to consider in judging the goodness of reflective actions (I'll leave aside actions that are impulsive): the external event and the internal motivation. Either of these components (independently) can be in line or out of line with God's requirements. An external action in line with God's law, even if executed with an improper spirit, is certainly better than a wrong external action, though a right action with a right spirit is indeed better than both. It seems, then, proper to make a distinction between events where both the external act and the internal motivation are in line with God's law and events where the external act is in line with God's law, though the spirit falls short.

At first glance, it seems like "ethical" and "righteous" could suit this distinction well: A righteous act is doing the right thing for the right reason, and an ethical act is merely doing the right thing, even if it's with the wrong spirit. Under this distinction, all righteous acts would be ethical, but some ethical acts might not be righteous.

Stepping aside for a moment, ethics is also sometimes contrasted with morality. I have heard some people claim that an act could be ethical but not moral (or vice versa), but such a distinction doesn't seem appropriate to me. I'm not quite sure what definitions they are using to generate such a distinction. They may be using ethical to mean in line with codified norms for right behavior and moral to mean in line with a more stringent, uncodified set of norms for interpersonal behavior. Under this distinction, one might not talk about adultery in terms of ethics, though certainly in terms of morality. Although I can appreciate the distinction between judging acts against codified and uncodified standards of behavior, I am, in general, more interested in right behavior, whether or not standards for such behavior are codified, especially since human codes of proper behavior may be fallible. Instead, at the moment, I favor the distinction that morality discusses right human behavior in the abstract, and that ethics discusses right human behavior in concrete situations. Under these definitions, an ethical act is always a moral act.

But, here I run into a problem. Peter Strawson's account of moral responsibility, which I favor when speaking in secular contexts, bases the existence of moral responsibility in the expectation we hold on others---inherent in our normal, adult interpersonal relationships---to maintain a posture of goodwill (or at least to refrain from expressions of ill-will) toward us. Strawson points to resentment and gratitude as indicators of this expectation: If you step on my foot accidentally, I do not feel the same kind of resentment as if you do it purposefully, even though my physical pain is the same; and, if you do something that helps me as an unintended consequence, I do not feel the same kind of gratitude as if you did it with me in mind, though I am benefited in either case. Given this framework for understanding moral responsibility, we hold people to account, in part, for the motivations of their actions. I believe this would imply that a moral (and thus an ethical) act depends not only on the external event, but also on the internal motivation, meaning that formally there would be no ethical but non-righteous acts.

So, somewhere I have a definitional problem. Perhaps my ethical/righteous distinction isn't appropriate. Perhaps my ethics/morality distinction isn't appropriate. Or perhaps I'm inappropriately pushing Strawson's account too far to found a moral system, instead of merely supporting the existence of moral responsibility.

More to think about.

Christianization and Culture

In a conversation yesterday morning, a gentleman claimed that the Midwest wasn't very Christian, compared as the South. I found speaking of the Midwest as not very Christian a little odd, since in my experience (and I believe my ex-patriot Mid-Western friends in Boston would agree), the Midwest is, in general, more conservatively Christian than the Northeast. No, my interlocutor replied, in his view, the Midwest and the Northeast were on about the same level. To illustrate his contention about the great Christian inclination of the South, he pointed to Southern friendliness and hospitality, citing the particular example of greeting one another---even strangers---when walking down the street. If I found the first claim a little odd, I found this second claim absurd, and for two reasons.


First, a cultural practice such as greeting people when walking down the street is not an indicator of the level of Christian inclination of a region because there are warm, friendly cultures that are not particularly Christian. I would have to do some research to pinpoint an actual, specific example of such a culture, but baised on my impressions, I would imagine one could find such an example among the communal, food-pushing cultures in Africa or perhaps India. To rebut my claim, my interlocutor pointed out that for an act to be a righteous act, it must have Christian motivations, which he defined as motivations based in love of God and love of neighbor. I didn't press the issue, particularly because I didn't see the connection between whether or not acts are righteous and the possibility of inferring a region's level of Christian inclination from particular cultural traits; but after some careful reflection, I realized that his rebuttal only emphasized my own point: Because one cannot tell whether a person's motivations are Christian (out of love of God and love of neighbor, according to his definition) or whether a person's nice action is based on some other, non-Christian motivation, one cannot infer the level of Christian inclination of a region from somewhat arbitrary cultural traits such as greeting people on the street.

Second, and more to the heart of the issue, the kind of inference my interlocutor was suggesting about the level of Christian inclination of the South and the Midwest is inappropriate because extroverted openness, such as the kind exemplified by the cultural practice of greeting people on the street, is not a necessary trait of Christian commitment. To claim that it is, I feel, would be to fall in to pietistic legalism, where one's Christian commitment is measured solely or primarily by an arbitrary set of visible actions. Certainly, Christians are called to love their neighbors, but there is more than one way to express that love, and God has created different kinds of personalities that prefer to express that love in different ways. An introvert, for example, may love people very deeply, but in small group situations, instead of in large groups. (I suppose one could claim that introvertedness is a product of the Fall, but I imagine this would be rather difficult to support.) Some people enjoy expressing their love for neighbor through service, and others through giving; but, it would be inappropriate to say that the giver is less Christian because she doesn't volunteer at the soup kitchen, or the servant is less Christian because he isn't good at giving friendly and wise advice. Moreover, some of these acts are merely cultural conventions for the expression of love of neighbor, and are, therefore, not bound up in its essence. There are some cultures (I believe somewhere in Eastern Europe) where men greet one another with a kiss on the lips (in a non-romantic, non-sexual way). I have to say that the idea weirds me out, given the symbolic norms for kisses imparted to me by my American culture; but, the implications assigned a kiss in America (its reservation for romantic lovers or the parent-child relationship) are not inherent in the act itself. Are we going to say that cultures in which people greet one another with a kiss are more Christian than cultures in which people greet one another with a cold, sterile wave or handshake, since a kiss is more intimate and thereby expresses a greater love of neighbor? Hardly. Christian commitment (and the regional level of Christian inclination, which stems from trends in the degree of Christian commitment among the constituents of the region) is measured not by cultural conventions or an arbitrary set of expressions of piety, but by the disposition of the heart.

More On Global Problems

After lamenting yesterday about the paucity of wealth to go around on a global scale, I ran across a BBC report about a pilot Basic Income Grant project in Namibia. The program, organized by a civil society coalition, gives US$13 per month to every member of the community under pension age. Now, $13 certainly doesn't sound like much ($20 PPP, ICP 2005, though I wonder exactly what kind of market basket they used)---and it isn't, in absolute terms; but in relative terms, $13 can be quite a lot. After all, that comes to more than a quarter of monthly income for half of the country's population (HDR 2007/2008, Table 3); and even if it isn't "living large," a 25% bump in income surely can do a fair amount to propel one toward improving quality of life.

And anecdotally (according to the BBC article), many program participants are using the grant for little things that can do just that. For example, some have used the money to buy clothes for their children and pay school fees. The former helps children focus on their studies without worrying about their appearance, and the latter gives parents the confidence to engage school officials on the quality of their children's education. Others have used the funds to supplement their food budget, and the local clinic has seen a drastic reduction in cases of seriously malnourished children. The grants have also provided capitol to allow the establishment of a new grocery store, a hairdresser, a barber, and an ice-cream vendor. Of course, none of these things means poverty has been solved in this village by only $13/person, but each of them has the potential to contribute to a virtuous cycle in the gradual ascent toward a more equitable society.

On Global Problems

Sometimes I get overwhelmed thinking about global-scale problems. There are so many people in the world and utter poverty is so rampant that it can seem insurmountable, and every once in a while I wonder if it's worth even trying (usually I convince myself that it is).

Take food, for example. The world food-cost crisis has been in the news a lot recently, and there are millions of people throughout the world who suffer from hunger and malnutrition. This makes me wonder: Is there even enough food in the world for all these people? Fortunately, there is: According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, global average food consumption is 2800 kcal/person/day, which is greater than the USDA recommend caloric intake for all but the most active young adult males. So, there seems to be enough food out there---it's just a matter of getting it to the right people, which feels like a much more tractable problem than increasing global food output (though I'm not quite sure why, given the resistance too many people have to sharing).

Generalizing from food to wealth in general, the picture isn't quite so rosy (if millions of hungry people could be called rosy): If we were to take the roughly $1.6 trillion of the richest 100 people in the world and divide it equally, everyone would receive only $270---not even a nucleus, much less a "nest egg." According to the CIA World Factbook, the gross world product (GWP) per capita is only $10,000 (PPP). In other words, unlike food, poverty in terms of lack of financial wealth isn't merely a distribution problem. Now, unfortunately, I'm not an economist, so I'm not quite sure where to look for possible solutions to this little (or not so little, rather) quandary. But, I imagine that increasing human capacity (through education) will play some vital role.

In order not to get too depressed when I think about how big the world's problems are, I usually have to scale down my perspective to think about where I am currently and what I can do on my own in the present. If you're looking for a way to help in the redistribution of food resources, may I recommend Food for the Poor. They "provide food, housing, health care, education, water projects, micro-enterprise development assistance and emergency relief to the poorest of the poor," and their budget is composed of 96% program expenses, placing them among the most efficient of charities.

Retirement Investment Planning

CNN Money has some helpful advice on where to hold your investments. Ideally, all savings would be in a tax-advantaged account (401k, IRA, etc.); but when the amount you have to invest exceeds the limits for these accounts, give bonds priority to tax-advantaged accounts (starting with a 401k, if you have one), then add stocks. Bonds give off more dividend income, which is directly taxable, so these should be as tax-protected as possible.

This leaves the question: What, exactly, should one buy? They suggest a seven-fund portfolio of stocks, bonds, and money markets (with recommendations for funds in each of the seven categories). While this may be a good goal to work toward, such a diversified portfolio could be difficult to achieve straight off the bat (the cumulative minimum investment is something like $15,000). When I opened my IRA, I took a tip from Adam Bold and started with the Selected American Shares (SLASX). Since then, I've come across suggestions that he may not be the most trusted of advisors, but I think Selected was a good choice, nevertheless: Although it's not likely to impress anyone with record returns, the fund rather consistently beats the S&P 500 and has achieved an annual rate of return over the last 10 years of 8%. As such, the Selected funds seem to me to provide a nice stable base from which to develop a fuller portfolio in the future.

The CNN Money article also included three simple plans for asset allocation between the seven different types. My father once shared a rough rule of thumb for retirement-savings asset allocation: He said that the percentage of stocks in your portfolio should be about 100 minus your age. I was pleased to see that the CNN Money's plans were pretty close: In early career (20s), they allocated 80% stock; in late career (say 40s), they allocated 60% stock; and in retirement (60s), they allocated 40% stock. Of course, it's certainly nice to have the more-detailed suggestion of how much of what kind of stocks and bonds to purchase, which the article provides.

Why I Give

From a psychosocial-developmental perspective, one might say that I give my "time, talent, and treasure" because of the consistency of certain childhood experiences: Not only did my parents model active participation in a variety of church activities (singing in choir, leading Sunday School, helping with children's ministries, going on missions trips) as well as faithful financial giving, they also trained me in the same path by enrolling me in a wide variety of church activities and teaching me to put part of my allowance in the church offering. As a result, even today, these practices feel completely natural, and I think I would feel a little something missing if I gave them up.

From a theological perspective, one can say that I give because God has entrusted me with good things---life and abilities and means. Insofar as He has entrusted me with each of these, I have a responsibility to use them for His glory, which includes making a joyful noise unto the Lord, bringing offerings of all kinds into His courts, studying and teaching His goodness, rejoicing with the joyful, encouraging the afflicted, and aiding the needy in His name. Just as Paul describes the Church as a body with many interdependent parts, I am beginning to believe that God may have designed the world with disparities in income, as well as diversity in talent, so that we would be forced to give to and receive from each other for our mutual well-being, and that in doing so, we would be reminded that we are dependent not only on each other, but ultimately on God for all we have.

But, while each of these reasons is true and operative when I give, there is a deeper reason still, a "heart" reason: I give because giving gives me joy. Whether cooking a meal, participating in a church work day, or sorting food at the Food Bank, I enjoy serving, and if the truth be told, I sometimes get a little buzz placing my offering into the basket on Sunday morning---not out of some self-righteous desire to be seen for my "great works," but with the same kind of excitement a little child has when his mother gives him a coin to drop in the plate as it passes. After all, if "God loves a cheerful giver," then we should all take a certain pleasure in sharing our time, talent, and treasure with others in His name.

On the Greatness of Literature

Literature is great if through it I experience for myself the joy and sorrow of its characters, and thereby know of the love I have for them, or if it taps into some deep longing of my heart. Without this, a story is only fun or interesting, not great.

Ocular Surgery

I had to conduct surgery on my poor iBook G4 to correct an acute ocular degeneration. A couple of weeks ago, I started to notice that from time to time the screen would go completely blank (white), usually as I was moving the computer. Sometimes it would just flash white, others the white screen would stick for a moment until I jostled the computer a little. It sounded to me like a connector was loose. After doing some searching and reading, I found an Apple forum discussion thread that seemed to match my symptoms. The thread suggested that the data cable in the display had come loose, and gave a description of how to open the display and reseat the cable. I figured it was only a matter of time for the connector to come completely loose, losing the display altogether, and this is precisely what happened this evening.

When I decided that the white screen wasn't about to go away this time around, I took my computer to a lab at school and connected it to an external monitor so that I could close all my programs and make sure my backup was up to date, in case I zapped the logic board or something equally as horrible. Then, borrowing a set of tiny screwdrivers from an Engineering student down the hall, and with a certain amount of trepidation, I attempted to carry out the directions without damaging the very fragile LCD screen. After struggling with the whole affair for quite some time, I managed to locate and reseat the connection. Putting the whole thing back together and booting up, I was relieved to see that the screen was once again functioning, and that I didn't seem to have broken a fluorescent backlight tube or punctured any liquid crystal chambers.

But, even as I write this, I just saw another white flicker, so apparently my problem hasn't been entirely resolved. Perhaps I should have tried putting some fresh electrical tape over the connector instead of just reapplying the existing adhesive. Alas.