Come on North Carolina....

...make me proud of my adopted home.

I get to spend Christmas with friends and relatives from California and Ohio.

Don't make me be the only one hanging my head.

*************************************
ABC NEWS Says 100% reporting:

McCain (R) 2,088,670 49%
Obama (D) 2,102,175 50%


YES! I LOVE YOU, TARHEEL STATE!

Even though I am a Duke fan, from this day forward the phrase "Tarheel Blue" will have a special place in my heart.

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One Voice Can Change the Room...

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View From the Trenches in a Swing State

I spent 3-4 hours this morning volunteering at the local Obama precinct house in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina.

They said what they needed was canvassers. People to go door to door with their lists of voters in high priority districts to ensure they knew where to go (election day precincts are different from early voting precincts), that they had voted, or whether they needed any assistance getting to the polls.

It was raining steadily all morning, but the turnout in the precinct house was impressive. Some of the people I rode or worked with said that in comparison to previous elections, a high percentage of people indicated they had already voted (early or earlier in the day) or were heading out to do so.

I've heard over and over that voter turnout favors Obama. If that is the case, things look good in these trenches. I was worried about the weather, but, again, many had already voted and those who were on there way were not to be deterred. Just about any model for a McCain victory that I've seen depends upon polling seriously mismeasuring voter enthusiasm or turnout.

A side note, too.

This is the first time I've felt strongly enough about an election to donate time or money. Participating in the process does make such a difference. I would urge many of my friends or colleagues who are indifferent or undecided (God knoweth how) to be a bit more engaged rather than taking the "I'm undecided CONVINCE me" posture. That low level of interest tends to lead to apathy. Getting out, even if it is just a couple of hours (I spend 2-3 hours on two different days canvassing neighborhoods and disseminating information) takes you away from your Internet or neighborhood bubble and shows you how people live. It moves the consequences of an election (local or national) from the category of the abstract to the real.

To my friends who want to vote Obama but are concerned or influenced by Republican rhetoric regarding Roe v. Wade, I make a last minute appeal:

If all you cared about were legalized abortion on demand, you wouldn't be undecided, would you? The fact that you are struggling tells me on some level, in your heart of hearts, you really want to vote for Obama but are afraid--of your (sub)community, friends, maybe even family. It's okay. God gave you a mind to reason and a conscience to listen to. There is more than one commandment and we all fail every day to be perfect. There are people who are great Christians in both political parties--who disagree about how to reduce abortions (and unwanted pregnancies for that matter). I won't repeat all of the arguments here, because most of you have heard them before.

What I will say is--I give you permission to vote for Obama. If you lose your credibility or respect as a Christian because of your vote, then your friends and community don't care about the sum total of your relationship with God and development of your faith, they only care that you are either "with us or against us."

George MacDonald wrote in Wilfrid Cumbermede:

The upper hand of influence I had over him I attribute to the greater freedom of my training, and the enlarged ideas which had led my uncle to avoid enthralling me to his notions. He believed that truth could afford to wait until I was capable of seeing it for myself, and that the best embodiments of truth are but bonds and fetters to him who cannot accept them as such. When I could not agree with him he would say with one of his fine smiles, "We'll drop it then, Willie. I don't believe you have cuaght my meaning. If I am right, you will see it some day, and there's no hurry."

Many will tell you there is a hurry, and urgency. That you agreeing with them is a matter of life and death. That may even be true, but I'm not sure that it is God's way. Even in the matters of life and death truth must be truth to the listener or it cannot carry the force of accepted fact. Don't let others decide for you or spiritually bully you into going against your beliefs.

MacDonald also wrote in The Hope of the Gospel:

If then we go wrong, it will be in the direction of the right, and with such aberration as will be easier to correct than what must come of refusing to imagine, and leaving the dullest traditional prepossessions to rule our hearts and minds, with no claim but the poverty of their expectations from the paternal riches.

Trust yourself, but more importantly, trust God. Believe that if you will but move in the direction of the right as you see and feel it (even if that is not the direction that seemingly makes sense to your friends or comrades) that you will train your heart to be obedient to the convictions God places there and any errors you make will be "easier to correct" than will be the results of refusing to imagine, refusing to think that you could be right and those who are so very sure could be wrong. Easier to correct, indeed, than the results of substituting someone else's conviction for your judgment, and taking the path of least resistance rather than the one that you think to be true.

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New Article

The November issue of The Matthew's House Project just went live, and they included my essay, "I Am a College Professor (and I am not Ashamed)."

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Understanding Poetry...err, I mean Torture

My English 101 class is working on critical thinking skills by analyzing a series of pro and con arguments about controversial topics. One of the issues the students selected to discuss was whether or not torture is ever morally justified.

The affirmative is argued by Mirko Bargaric and Julie Clarke in a strange article entitled "Not Enough Torture in the World?" They argue, following Alan Dershowitz's lead, that harm minimization can be attained by making torture legal so that oversight can be made. In a section called "The Formula" they set out the circumstances in which torture would be acceptable. And let me just say before I quote, that I am not making this up and it is not a piece from The Onion:

The strength of the case in favor of torture can be mapped as follows:

W+L+P
--------
T x O

Where:

W=whether the agent is the wrongdoer
L=the number of lives that will be lost is the information is not provided
P=the probablility that the agent has the relevant information
T=the time available before the disaster will occur ("immedicacy of the harm")
O=the likelihood that other inquiries will forestall the risk.

Whew. Where to start?

I find it funny that "W" is represented as an either/or quanity but "P" is a probability and hence on a sliding scale. One wonders whether or not the numerical value of "W" is such that it can be "0" and the numerical total crossing the threshold could still be reached? If it isn't, then is it so high as to make L and P irrelevant?

These are, of course, ridiculous questions for a ridiculous formula. My real question is this. Where is Robin Williams when you need him?

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Disc Golf Life Lessons

I played disc golf today at Buckhorn. My lifetime average on that course is about a 54, though I've been getting steadily better in the last few years. Since I hadn't played the course in a while and it was a bit cold, I set a goal of 54 (par) for my round.

Things went bad pretty quickly.

I lost my yellow, special edition Leopard during warmups, a key disc in my bag. I spent a good 45 minutes to an hour looking for it since that disc is not manufactured any more. My the time I gave up, some muscles had tightened up, I had stepped wrong on a sore ankle and pushing off with my knee was was a bit painful. I also didn't have one of my key drivers. After holing out for a birdie on the first hole, I proceded to bogy the next five holes to put me at +4. Holes 7 and 8 are birdieable, but I went a bit deep on 7 and missed my come back for biride when I hit the lip of the basket. On hole 8, the shortest hole, I hit a tree, leaving me a little short and again hit the basket on my birdie bid for a tip in par.

So I stepped to the ninth tee, almost half done, without a key disc, sore, and having bogeyed two of the easier holes on the course (2 and 5).

I have been trying to work on not giving up on rounds when things don't go well, but this wasn't even really a matter of a few weird breaks. The wheels were off. Nevertheless, I tried to imagine myself in a competitive round where each stroke mattered. I made a long drive on 9 but went a little deep and left, but I finally made a long putt for birdie. A good drive on hole 10 was ruined by hitting a tree, but another booming drive that actually went dep on 11 had me set up for a long putt. I made it, and all of a sudden I had that inexplicable thing called momentum.

Not for long, though. Hole twelve is a 297 foot right turning hole, and I set myself up for a decent par bid. I delivered my putt square in the chains and reached down to pick up my marker when the hole literally spat the disc out. Very rarely in disc golf you can hit a putt too well. It can be so centered that it pushes the chain into the pole and bounces off the pole and back. Or, it can, as in this case, become tangled in the chain and fall out when the chain rattles. (Picture a swish in basketball that doesn't hit rim but has so much back spin that the net curls around the ball and then backspins it back up and out of the rim. I couldn't have placed the putt any better, and 99 times out of 100 it would have stayed in. That my 1 in 100 bad break came at the worst possible time seemed to give credence to that part of me that said, "Today's just not your day."

I had six remaining holes and was back to +3 and three of the remaining holes were ones I usually used my Leopard for. On hole 13 I threw a Sidewinder low with a cut slice rather than trying the long anhyzer with a dive back at the end and managed to skp low up to the hole for a birdie putt. On hole 14 I threw a DX Sidewinder and while it didn't turn right as much as my Leopard, it left me to the left of the hole and deep for another birdie putt. A part on 15 left me with one remaining birdie hole, and I threw a perfect left to right slice for a birdie tip in to, miraculously, find myself back at par.

Here's the thing, though. Holes 17 and 18 are no gimmes. 17 is a long shot over water that I have to lay up on and try to approach over water close enough to get a par putt. I've gotten a five on it (for going in the water) more times than I've gotten a three, but today I managed to gut out a 20 foot putt to come to the 18th. Here again I made a good throw, but I got just too much turn and hit a tree, which kicked me away from the hole and into some rough.

Golf is like life in so many ways. A friend of mine once said bogeys are like trying to lose weight...one bad hole can take a lot of work just to get you back to where you started. Or, it's like the stock market, which doesn't care what you had to do on the last few holes to finally pay off some bills only to tax your resources once again. Well, I made about a 120 foot approach, snaking through some sparse, skinny trees and laying up for a twelve footer to save my par and a round of 54--hitting my goal on the nose.

Cindy is fond of reminding me that you don't know what kind of round you are having while you are having it. That's a hard life lesson to learn as well as golf lesson. I've had better scores, but I'm not sure I've had much more satisfying rounds. I had to fight not just the course but myself and the human tendency to just throw in the towel when things get tough and say, "Life was against me today."

Turns out it wasn't.

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I'll Have the Chicken

David Sedaris sums up my feelings on this year's presidential election.

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