The New Fish

Eva absolutely loves animals.  Whenever we go out to the car, she wants to chase the stray cats.  She likes looking out the window at the birds, and loves looking at animals in books or on the internet.  So a week ago, we went to one of the fish shops to purchase a small tank and a couple of fish.  The tank came with four fish of our choice, and we decided to purchase a couple others.  Here were our purchase:

• Black Moor gold fish (bug eyed black fish) 
• A creepy white fish (I still don't know what it is) 
• two tiger fish
• two "angel" fish
• A gold fish 
• a fighter fish. 

The lady didn't say anything about them not going together, or about them not getting along, so I didn't think anything of our fish choice until a) my sister-in-law informed me that we would have problems and b) a friend told me that the tank was WAY too small for 8 fish.  (though I seem to remember A LOT of fish in the tank in Finding Nemo). 

Sure enough, we had problems.  

First, one of the angel fish was dumb enough to get himself stuck twice in the foliage.  He eventually died.  Then the tiger fish, angel fish and creepy white fish started picking at the Black Moor.  He lost an eye before he kicked the bucket.  They then started picking on the fighter fish.  That guy didn't deserve the title "fighter".  He was kind of a pansy.  Now they seem to have reached a happy equilibrium.  I've also since learned some tank-care things that will hopefully keep the rest of them alive.  As long as the gold fish stays alive, that would be great.  

Eva loves them, though.  The tank is right at her height, so she'll watch them in the morning (more accurately, yell at them), and she "helps" me feed them in the afternoons.  Her help consists of trying to get her fingers into the fish food and eating it herself.  I need to teach her how to feed the fish soon.  But all in all, she seems to enjoy them, which was the purpose in the first place.  Thank you for your sacrifices, Black Moore, Angel Fish and Fighter Fish. 

Reflections on Valleys in Troubled Times

Because of this week's unrest, we weren't able to have church at our normal place today with everyone, so our church met in various places around Bahrain in people's homes.  Our flat was one of the gathering spots, and we had a couple people come.  It was a good time of worship, reading scripture and praying.  


The Valleys  We looked at a few verses from the Bible about the valleys - the difficult spots in our lives - and our response to those.  One of those verses came from Joshua 7:26 - "Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his fierce anger. Therefore that place has been called the Valley of Achor [trouble] ever since."  This verse ends the story of Achan, who stole gold that was intended to be given to God.  The valley itself was named the "Valley of Trouble" as a reminder of what happened to God's people that day. 


Hosea's Take Fast forward to Hosea's time, a prophet who prophesied during the Northern Kingdom of Israel's troubled times.  They had turned away from God.  They were worshiping idols.  God is calling them back, and all of chapter 2 of Hosea is God's warning of punishment for deserting God, but a promise from God that He will allure them:

¹⁴"Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
   and bring her into the wilderness,
   and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵And there I will give her her vineyards
   and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
   as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

We also looked at Psalm 23:1-4

¹The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
²He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
³He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
   for his name’s sake.
⁴Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
   I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff,
   they comfort me.

There are lots of applications that we could take from these passages, but we made a couple of observations and applications, particularly in light of our current situation in Bahrain.

Our Responsibility  There are two things we picked out from Psalm 23.  First, we don't hide from Valleys.  We shouldn't be paralyzed.  We shouldn't rush through them.  We are to walk through them.  And as we walk through them, our Shepherd walks with us. Second, we fear no evil.  Why?  Because our Father is with us.  Of course, Psalm 23 does not promise to be delivered from the Valley - only that God's rod and staff will be a comfort to us.

When Are We Done?  The Coombridges, who were with us today, did an across-Europe bike trip this summer.  As they went over hills and through valleys, they sometimes just thought they needed to make it over the hill to get out of a valley.  When they got to the top of the valley, they found that there was still more to go.  Often we can't see the end.  But God  promises that there is hope.

Dependence on Christ  The Valley of Achor became the door of hope that God brought his people through.  What hope do we have in this situation?  At the very least - and most important - we have the hope of Christ.  Whatever happens in this world, whatever happens in Bahrain, this valley pushes us to depend on Christ.  Scripture never promises that children of God will have an easy life.  In fact, God promises trouble.  But whatever trouble we face, our hope is Christ.

One of the songs we sang was Matt Redman's "You Never Let Go".  A very powerful song.  Enjoy.

My Own Personal National Anthem.

Alison's words, not mine.  But true none the less.

The Perkins' Household When Eva Goes Down Early

Eva went to bed fairly early tonight.  We took her swimming for the first time (though it turned out to be a little too chilly yet), and I think we tuckered her out.  So what do we do when we have more of an evening to ourselves than we usually do?  I read my Karl Marx biography and the latest issue of Foreign Affairs while Alison had some fun doing math problems from the calculus textbook we have.

Yeah... Eva's probably going to be a nerd. 

(But.... its interesting! counters Alison.  I agree - but we're both still nerds.)

UFO's and Emergent Theology: Giving People Answers

UFO's and ET

UFO's fascinate me.  I'm not really sure why.  I grew up watching Star Trek and have an appreciation for good science fiction.  I don't think that's the reason, though.  I'm not sure I can pinpoint it.  For some odd reason, I find the real stories of UFO's fascinating.  Maybe its UFO stories, and maybe its broader - stories about the paranormal.  That's why stories like this one from cnn.com, on UFO sightings around the world, intrigue me.

Rewind about 7 years.  As I was leaving a Christian book store with a friend, one of the workers ran out behind us to give us copies of a book that the store just couldn't sell.  It was called "Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men: A Rational Christian Look at UFO's and Extraterrestrials".  Of course, it fascinated me.  Christians writing about UFO's!? I mean, I've always joked about Ezekiel 1:4, but this seemed just too good to be true!  As soon as I got home, I started reading the book and was surprised at what I found.  I was expecting half-baked theology using passages like the one from Ezekiel, Daniel or Revelation.  However, what I found made was very reasonable and made a lot of sense.

The book was written by three authors:  one a political scientist, a clergyman-astronomer and lastly a philosopher-theologian.  Here's a summary of what they had to say:

• There are hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings every year.  Most of them can be explained away by natural phenomena.  But some can't.  Thousands in fact. 
• The government can't cover up things like this.  Its just too big and would involve too many people.  It would leak eventually. 
• The phenomena often defy principles of physics.  Therefore they are probably not physical phenomena
• UFO's are not real.  Rather, the 'unexplainable' events (sightings, abductions) very well might be spiritual/demonic activity. 

What's the purpose of having a book about Christian beliefs about UFO's?  Because when someone truly believes they have seen a UFO or have been abducted by aliens, there are two responses that they get from people:

1. You are crazy. Those ideas are foolishness.  Don't bring that drivel here.
2. Your experiences are valid - come join our group and find meaning and purpose!

And so people are left with these two choices.  Outright rejection of an experience that is very real for them, or going down a path that answers their questions, even if it leads to cult.  People, the authors said, needed another option.  One that didn't make light of their experiences, and put those experiences into context of a larger reality.  Specifically, that there are spiritual forces at work in this world (both good and bad), but there is a God who is bigger than that.  So their experiences then are not the result of extra-terrestrials; rather, they are the result of demonic activity.

The Connection with Emergent Theology (yes - I'm getting to the point)
I've not been much connected with Emergent theology - just the random book or article or blog post.  However, Brian McLaren, the un-offiicial 'spokesman' of the Emergent Church has recently written a new book called "A New Kind of Christianity."  I've not read the book itself, though I've read a little bit of what McLaren believes as well as a critique of the book by Kevin DeYoung (Part 1 & Part 2), the pastor at Alison's home church in Michigan.  Overall, I would agree with DeYoung on his analysis and theological position over McLaren's.  (what exactly those things are I'll let YOU find out.  This isn't about McLaren's theology directly).

So the question I want to answer is this:  if McLaren is so wrong (as I believe he is), why are so many people flocking to his ideas about Christianity?

Many people have questions or ideas about Christianity that seem to get pushed to the side, or perceive that they are being harshly dealt with.  I think that there are some valid questions about life, Jesus, God, sexuality and other things.  When these questions are asked, many may feel they are presented with two options:

1. You are crazy. Those ideas are foolishness.  Don't bring that drivel here.
   
2. Your experiences are valid - come join our group and find meaning and purpose! 

My point is not to say that McLaren is crazy like UFO and alien cults.  He isn't and those who ascribe to his ideas are not.  In fact, his ideas are based on specific, well thought out philosophical and theological premises.  My point is this:  how do those of us who adamently disagree with McLaren respond when people come with questions, concerns, hurts and the like? Is our response #1?  If so, we just might be part of the force that drives people to #2.

Here are four very valid questions that need a thoughtful, loving response from the Church.

• How does Christianity fit with justice for the nations? 
• I connect with God in a way that's different than the "head-centered" churches I've been to.  I'm artsy - how do I connect with God in a way that's meaningful to me? 
• I have questions about my sexuality, and am not sure what to do. 
• I'm having a hard time reconciling my experiences of pain, a seemingly 'angry' God in the Bible and my idea of who Jesus is. 

And there are more questions we could add to the list.  These questions MUST be answered.  In fact, they WILL be answered!  And they will either be answered correctly or incorrectly.  But answering them correctly isn't always the entire picture.  Answering isn't just a matter of theological statements of truth (though that's extremely important), its also realizing that behind the questions above, there is often hurt and sorrow that must be dealt with delicately.  And if that's not dealt with, we may inadvertently be pushing people to Answer #2.

Economics Rap Video: Bling bling!!

Ok - so even if you're not really interested in Economics, check out the video below.  Its pretty funny. 

I'm an economics nerd, and I follow the blogs of two fairly 'famous' economists - Greg Mankiw (of Harvard) and Mark Perry (of UMichigan - Flint).  Here is a rap video that was posted on Perry's blog.  Hilarious, informative, biting and witty all at the same time.

The video pits two economists against each other - each who have had a distinct influence on how Republicans (who favor a Hayek point of view) and Democrats (who favor Keynes) perceive the best way to deal with a recession such at the one that the US and World has just gone through.*

Keynes:  tends to favor government spending in order to fix the economy.  His solution:  people are not buying enough to support producers.  If producers aren't supported, they fire people, raising unemployment, who then buy less, causing layoffs, which leads to unemployment, and so on and so forth.  His solution says that government should spend money until spending increases again.

Hayek: tends to favor little government regulation of the economy.  Instead, the problem is the the economy starts growing too fast and gets ahead of itself.  Eventually it hasn't grown enough at the core to support itself and collapses.  This problem can be rectified if the government merely raises or lowers interest rates to encourage growth when the economy slows or raise interest rates to discourage growth when it may start overheating.



Some witty/interesting things from the video itself

• When Hayek (bald guy) walks into his hotel room at the beginning and looks in the drawer, the book is not a Gideon Bible (as many hotels have), but a book by Keynes.  The insinuation?  Many economists see Keynes work as "the bible" of economic theories - the theory on which everything else is based.  
• As Keynes is rapping, he is drinking a lot.  He later becomes drunk and hung over.  It seems that too much of a good thing (bailout money?) might be destructive in the end.  The overall setting of the video was creatively done and the creators seem to favor Hayek.  
• The bar tenders who are giving Keynes his alcohol that eventually causes him to collapse and throw up are named "Tim" and "Ben".   These are thinly veiled references to Timothy Geitner (Treasury Secretary) and Ben Bernanke (Federal Reserve Chairman) and the fact that they were the ones who may have overloaded the economy with too much bailout money.  

So there you have it.  Economics is cool.  And so am I.

*Yes, I speak in the past tense.  Though it may not be felt in all sectors of all economies, in general, indicators from various sources seem to show that the economy has pulled out of a recession and is heading into recovery.  See support for that here.  Scroll down to posts on the end of the recession.

Academic Earth

I have been publicly accused of blogging only about my daughter, my wife and famous economists.  Its time I struck back.  With a fury.  I will not stand by and allow my good name to be bludgeoned.  While my blogs do pertain to them more than any other single subject, I would like to refute that ALL I blog about is my wife and child.  See here, here, and here.   So today I thought I'd share something that I've found and am currently enjoying.

I've found a website called Academic Earth.  Its a fantastic website that has video lectures on a variety of subjects from some of America's most prestigious universities:  Yale, Harvard, Standford, etc.  Sometimes it is a single lecture, and other times it is a whole semester of lectures from the professors themselves.  And its not pirated.  Rather, this project is approved and encouraged by the universities themselves.

I've not viewed a whole lot for lack of time, but I have read some of the transcripts for the Introduction to Psychology course, and have just watched the first two lectures of the Game Theory course (economics related).  Its always fascinating, and the professors have a bit of wit about them.  So for your perusal, I thought I'd include the lecture I just watched from the Game Theory course.

Watch it on Academic Earth

MLK, Jr on Children

"I have a dream that ONE DAY, all of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: 'SLEEP at last! SLEEP at last! Thank God Almighty, we have SLEEP at last!' "


Ok - so maybe not an exact quote, but I bet that's what he was thinking during the first weeks after HIS children were born!

Parenting Advice from a Scientist

A scientist friend of mine recently sent his congratulations on the birth of our first child, Evangeline Marie, along with some advice he wished to pass on to me.  It was such good advice that I wanted to share it with those of you out there who have children now, will have children in the future, or will interact with children at some point in your lives.

First of all, congratulations!

You have achieved reproduction and have thus secured your genetic legacy, which means that you are a biological success! Good work sir!

A few quick notes about your new offspring:

• If juvenile humans are anything like juvenile fish, and I'm going to assume they are via principles of induction, your baby should shed its remaining yolk sac and be fully self-sufficient by about one week. At this point, your child will no longer need you to supply food and may presumably be released into the wild to forage every few hours. Baby predators primarily include falcons and eagles, but opportunistic omnivores, such as dogs, may be a threat as well. Make sure your baby is properly armed.
• Via observation, I have determined that the primary function of a baby is to convert food directly into poop. It may be wise to invest in some type of methane harvester and convert one vehicle to run directly off of it. This is dependent on the Bahraini gas prices however, so some more math is required to determine the economic feasibility of this option.
• It is never to early to start teaching your child about the horror and danger that is the velociraptor. As soon as you can, you should sit your baby down and watch Jurassic Park, and then have a long discussion about dinosaurs, the dangers of cloning, and fighting creatures that can learn to open doors.

Best of luck Josh! If you need any more science-based advice, please feel free to contact me.

Under Construction: A Little Blog Facelift

After over three years with this blog, I've decided to give it a bit of a face lift. I'm not quite sure if I am completely settled on it, so I may change it in the future. I'm sure you can handle that. However, I had a bit of a time trying to find a site that would give me a template for my blog.

You see, I know other people who have fantastic looking blogs - but they come from websites like "Cutest Blog on the Block". I mean, how could I keep my manly dignity and get a blog template from a website like THAT. I couldn't. Fortunately I found this one. If you have a blog, feel free to check out All Blog Tools to see other templates they have.

Who knows. Maybe I'll find some other interesting things to put on here.

The 1000th* Visitor!!

Congratulations to someone in Washington DC! You are the 1000th visitor to my blog! You looked at three separate pages on my blog and stayed for a full 1 minute and 25 seconds. I don't know your name, but thank you for visiting my blog. I feel honored.

Creepy. How do I know this about you!?

You may have noticed on the left of the screen there are a few different boxes that show where people come from. One of them is called Sitemeter, and this particular web site tracks where each person comes from.

That's right. I know. Why do I do this? No particular reason - I just think its kind of interesting. It provides quite a bit of information:

• IP address
• city
• country
• time you came
• how many pages you visited
• what link you clicked on to get to my site
• how long you stayed for
• what link you clicked on to leave my blog
• a dot on a world map showing where you came from
  

Hm... listing it like that makes it sound a little creepy. It almost makes me want to stop tracking it. But I won't. Most of my visitors come from Bahrain, and then the United States. If you click on the Clustrmaps, you'll see that, in fact, I've had visitors from every single continent except Africa. In fact, someone from India returned to the blog for a while.

I recognize the locations that most of the locations. For instance, dots that come from Arkansas I know are my friends Amos and Meredith. Dots that come from the Ukraine is my friend Alicia. Or at least I'm assuming they are them.

Now, having this 1000th visitor does not mean that 1000 distinct people came to my blog. Rather it means that my blog was visited 1000 separate times. Assuming that the same people visit every time there are 1-3 new blog posts, it probably means that there have been 30 or so regular readers (and add 5-10 non-counted on facebook). I'll make a wild guess that

Another anomoly of the system: My blog has been visited 600 distinct times in Bahrain, but I would guess that about 20% of those times have been my wife - and only because I set my blog as her home page. So every time she opens up her computer, it goes to the blog, and the information gets counted in the system.

So there you have it. Statistics. I kind of like the numbers and information, so its neat to see it on the website, even if I don't actually use it for anything. 1000th visitor, if you feel brave enough, feel free to identify yourself. You will get no prize, though.

*This is not truly the 1000th distinct visitor. That person will remain forever unknown. Rather, this is the 1000th distinct visitor since I have started tracking visitors, around the end of December 2008. At this pace, if I had started keeping statistics when I first started blogging, I'd be closer to 3000 distinct visits by now.

Quote of the Day

"Nationalism... can be defined as a group of people united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbors."

-Explaining Foreign Policy (Lloyed Jensen)

So true. So true.

Food for Thought: The Nephilim and Neanderthal

So I've just finished this book - "Remarkable Creatures" - and it it (among many other things) the author makes a compelling case for the existence of Neanderthals (actually - he just assumes they existed and his purpose was to determine if homo sapiens evolved from them - he concludes that we did not). But in the process, the detailing of DNA information and such make it believable for them to have existed. Which made me think:

Could the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 have been some sort of Neanderthal race, or something similar? The mention of Neanderthal seems to be a time line marker, and there is little description of them. Here are the descriptions:

• they existed when the sons of God and daughters of men had children
• they were mighty men of old
• they were men of renowned.

The author of the book says that Neanderthals were resilient creatures, and many of their bones show signs of repeated breaks (similar to Rodeo riders), indicating that they hunted large animals. This may have gained them respect as mighty and men of renowned.

As for the first description - existing at the time when sons of God and daughters of men had children - it seems that these "sons of God" were different people than the Nephilim. Neanderthals are characterized as slow and dimwitted, but I'm not sure that this is a fair assessment (ie, the skulls look more like apes therefore they are less intelligent).

(Some commentators online suggested that the Nephilim were the off-spring of the Sons of God and Daughters of men, but I'm not really convinced).

Of course, all of this assumes and old earth, and therefore begins contradicting scripture. Fossil records seem to indicate that Humans and Neanderthals existed around 50,000-100,00 years ago. However, if we take the genealogies in scripture as literal, and assume they are, lets say, 50 years apart, that doesn't line up with a 50,000-100,000 year time line.

I asked a friend this question and she said, "Maybe... but I don't really care." Should we care? Maybe not.

But your comments are welcome anyway.

A Completion of the Social Revolution?

Before I start this post - I must give a shout out unless you missed it. Alison is pregnant. Read more about it on the previous post. Also, check out the app to the right. --> This shows the development of Round 2, as we call him. Quite cute, isn't he! Anyway, on to the subject of this post.

I just read a biography about Vladimir Putin, the current prime minister of Russia and former president. Even though he is only prime minister, which is a lower post in the executive, it is his protege, Dmirtry Medvedev, who has taken the role of president. However, many people believe that Putin still ultimately calls the shots. In the biography, I learned how Putin was born to a lower middle class family, went through soviet indoctrination and decided to work for the KGB as a result, and eventually worked himself into russian politics. It was, it seems, an accident of history that he was catapulted into the presidency at the end of Boris Yeltsin's 8 year self implosion.

So Putin rose from being a relative unknown in his country to being the leader of one of the most powerful countries in teh world. Russia isn't an economic powerhouse at the moment, but certainly their arsenal of nuclear weapons makes them relevant. And Russia does what it wants. You got to admit, its no small accomplishment on Putin's part.

This got me thinking. There are three other countries who are or will soon rise to be THE world powers of the most consequence:

• United States: the worlds only hyperpower after the fall of the Soviet Union. After enjoying the hegemony, we are having to deal with a multipolar world.
  
• China: Regaining world power status after a century or two hiccup of not being a world power. And, basically they own US debt.
  
• India: they have 1 billion people and, really, they do most of the work for the US anyways. It won't be long before they are getting the majority of profit from their own work.
  

In each of these countries, the leader has rose from relative obscurity to be the leader of a very powerful nation. Barack Obama is the most recent member of this club. However, Hu Jintao - the president of China - came from a nondescript family. Manmohan Singh, the current prime minister and head of governemnt also came from a poor family and shares Hu's characteristic of not being raised by either of his parents. Singh isn't even a Hindu. He's sikh, which is a major deal in itself (imagine a jewish man becoming president of the US).

In fact, regarding parents, I believe the same is somewhat true for Obama. While his mother did not die until he was an adult and married, she moved around a lot and he lived with his grandmother for a portion of his life.

None of these men are from the "establishment", so to speak. They are not from the Bush Dynasty or from the Kennedy clan. Putin does not have connections to the powerful families of Russia, and Hu is not from the ancient families of China. Particularly in the case of Putin and Obama, the normal people clamor over them, and the "establishment" is eager to line up behind them to gain their own brownie points (or in Russia's case - cower in fear as he crushes them with greater fury than Alison v Ants in our kitchen).

Have we reached a revolution of class when it is those who were once poor, and are now rich, who run the four most powerful or soon to be powerful countries in the world? Have we usurped the borgouisie and have the proletariate taken over?

Somehow I thought it would have been different...

An Appreciation of Opposable Thumbs

I think I was thinking the other day, "Whats the big deal about opposable thumbs? I mean... it can't be THAT big of a help can it?"

I'm not really sure why I thought that. I think I had my thumb holding one thing and then I was using the other four fingers for something else (I realize the almost irony that my having this thought was really the result of using my opposable thumb). Anyway, I was using my other four fingers for something else and I felt like I was doing just fine.

Well, this morning, I went to peel some carrots for lunch, like I do many mornings. The peeler was still dirty, and I didn't feel like washing everything. So I was rinsing it under the sink, with one hand (my other hand had the carrots, peanut butter and bread), holding it and rubbing it with my thumb. Of course, I cut my thumb. Blood everywhere. Very gruesome.

After stopping (most) of the bleeding, putting a band-aid on it and having my wife kiss my wound, I had to now maneuver through my morning without a thumb. Oh the irony. Here are some things you should try to do with out even ONE opposable thumb:

• making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• buttoning up your shirt
• putting on a belt
• writing comments on 11th graders' essays

Yeah... good times. Now the wound ha mostly healed and I took off the band-aid. So I should be fine now. I've learned my lesson. Two thumbs up for opposable thumbs.

The Wonder of Technology

In the 11th grade history class, we are starting our final unit on "current history", or history of the last 20 years. Actually, its more of a unit about theories of how the world and international politics work. (Is it about the clash of civilizations? Or is the world flat? Or are ideologies the greatest catalyst?)

We were talking about technology the other day in class, and the following dawned on me. Below are the following prices for calls:

Call my family FROM Bahrain (using skype): 3 cents/min
Call friends IN Bahrain from my cell in Bahrain: 9 cents/min

Its actually more expensive to call my friends here in Bahrain with my cell phone here in Bahrain than it is to call my family (or friends) in the United States via Skype. Amazing.

In fact, I found out the other day that I can text anywhere in the world for the same price as texting someone in Bahrain. So I've started texting friends and family around the world with Easter greetings.

Why is it so cheap to call the US? Basically it has to do with the technology bubble of the 90's. There was massive investment in internet infrastructure, and profits were rising, spurring more investment. Well, nothing good lasts, and the bubble burst, leaving gigantic amounts of fiber-optic cables with few buyers. Prices fell, and wallah - cheap internet rates today.

And now I can call the US and China for 3 cents a minute.

A Student's Comment on Philosophy

Today in history class I mentioned two philosophers - Karl Marx and Fredric Engels. The question from students, of course, was "what is a philosopher?"

"A philosopher is someone who thinks, specifically about what is really real (among other things)," I answered.

Most students didn't quite understand that explanation, so I gave them a "philosophical" question.

"How do you know that all of this - the classroom, me, your classmates - is real? How do you know its not just a figment of your imagination?"

Most of them answered, "Because we know! I can see it!"

"But how do you KNOW for sure!" I said.

Answers one student: "Because if this were really a figment of my imagination, there would be dragons and everyone would have swords."

You can't argue with that.

Headline of the Day

Bird Suspected to Be Extinct Photographed for First Time ... Then Eaten

A Smart Board - for $70. Sweetest thing EVER.

Have you ever used a SMARTboard? Or an interactive whiteboard? Basically, when you project a computer image on an LCD screen, you see what is on the computer. An interactive whiteboard makes the actual image on the board your screen. You can go up to the screen and touch it, move the mouse, draw, etc. I used one in my student teaching - they're really nice. But they're also really expensive.

A friend cued me into a similar concept for 5 percent of the price. A guy named John Chung (check out his videos, too) took a wii remote control, hooked it to a computer through bluetooth and used an infrared light as his mouse. For about $70 he's created an interactive whiteboard. I was able to get all the parts I needed - a special infrared "pen", a bluetooth usb adapter and the free software (actually, I still need the wii remote). By next week I should have this all worked out. It's pretty sweet.

In other news, things have been slow at school, at least for Alison and I. The students had exams this week, so we didn't do a whole lot. The kids, I'm sure, stressed over their exams. They do have a lot of them. I was pleased, though, with their results on my tests. I've got a good bunch this year. Things will pick up next week though as we swing into a new semester.

Alison and I have booked our tickets for the states for the summer, as well. We'll be back at the end of June and then coming back to Bahrain in the middle of August, so if you're either in Michigan or Texas, let us know and we'll get together.

Things I've Learned This Week

) A person who farts continuously for 6.5 years expends the same amount of energy as an atomic bomb (or so say some of my students). (But its true. See here - along with some other interesting facts.)

2) Don't park in the main parking lot at Seef Mall on Thursday night. It just may take you an over half an hour to get out. (You'd think I'd know this - but its never been THAT congested when I've been there)

3) Most big American companies - Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, Pepsi, Coca-cola - they're all donating their next two weeks revenue to Israel. Info compliments of "comments" posted on various websites. "I got a text, so it must be true!"

4) Obama is Jewish. Apparently there's a new video of him praying with some Jewish people and he revealed this in a private interview.

It's interesting that now people are starting to say this about Obama, possibly as a reaction to Obama's mild reaction to Israel's war in Gaza. More accurately, the stance he's taken that doesn't look to force Israel to end. I say to my students often that "Barack Obama has come to save the world! He will fix everything for everyone! And end poverty! And give everyone free education in the United States!" Don't get me wrong - I like Obama and think he'll do some good things. But people have grand expectations for him that he won't be able to fulfill.

He may be running into another problem, though. Having not defined himself strongly for any particular demographic, he may end up being defined by everyone - in ways he doesn't like.

By not taking a strong stance against Israel, he may be starting to lose the Arab "vote" (and thus new rumors that he's Jewish). By not taking a strong stance against Hamas, he may start losing the confidence of the conservative Christians. By asking Rick Warren to pray at the Inaugeration, he may infurate the liberal left. But in having the gay priest from the Episcopal church speak, he will anger the conservative right.

We'll see what happens, but in his desire to please everyone, he may end up pleasing no one. Obama's smart, though. If that actually happens, he'll learn quickly and take stronger stances - at least making some people happy and leaving the rest of the people unhappy.