I saw a complaint about carelessness

Context
A colleague at the library I work at sent me an e-mail asking if I would remind people how important it is to do proper data entry when registering patrons for library cards. I replied back both my apology that this would fall outside the scope of my job duties and my opinion that if just reminding people of the importance of a task was enough to ensure perfect execution of it, airplanes would never crash.

Commentary
I think there is a sweet spot where we do our best work on any given task. When we're first learning, we're very careful, but we make mistakes because we don't understand everything we're doing. Later on, when we understand both the procedures and the logic behind them really well, we think we can do the task with our eyes closed and the carelessness bugaboo emerges. Somewhere in between we probably produce outstanding work a couple of times.

I can see a couple of ways to fight this problem. One is cross-training, or at least, task variation. If we only do something once a month, rather than 20 times a day, there's the potential for it to seem a little bit unfamiliar each time we do it, maybe enough to make us work carefully. At the very least, we don't grow so resentful of the repetition that we switch off our brains. Balancing my checkbook is a pretty mindless task, but I don't do it often enough to be bored by it.

Automation is another solution. Machines are uniquely suited to repetitive tasks, even complex ones. What's great about computers these days is they can learn (mostly by trying different procedures and keeping only the ones that work), but they can't get bored. In my line of work, as in many others, there are people concerned about their jobs being turned over to computers. I always assure them that computers are only good for tasks that are too stupid for human beings, by which I mean too mindless to be satisfying for us. Maybe I'd get more leverage if I said "tasks that are too boring for human beings."

What did you see today?

I saw a corporate settlement

Context
This morning, an agreement was reached between DirecTV and Viacom in their 10-day-long dispute over how much the former would pay to carry the latter's channels. DirecTV's announcement posits the settlement as a triumph over "bullying" by a programming provider. Viacom's announcement is more subdued. I myself am a DirecTV subscriber who frequently watches Comedy Central, one of Viacom's channels.

Commentary
I found many interesting aspects to this dispute and its resolution, but I'm going to start with the one that caused me to want to blog in the first place: the belligerents immediately removed all references to the dispute itself from not only their main websites, but the little ancillary ones each of them had set up just to rag on each other about it (this one for DirecTV, and this one for Viacom).

I was sad this information was gone, because I thought the tone each company took in defending its viewpoint might be indicative of their corporate culture, and I wanted to share them with you. Fortunately, the people over at Ping! Zine have been covering the story and have some characteristic quotes from each side here.

It's funny, in the past the two parties seemed to be taking the opposite positions of the ones they're using today. DirecTV generally spoke in measured tones. "We are negotiating." "We'll get this handled." "We're on your side." Viacom claimed to be on the consumer's side as well, but their rhetoric went more along the lines of, "DirecTV is run by greedy, lying bastards who want to take away your Spongebob!" In fact, I have to believe that one of the reasons Viacom took down their previous comments so quickly was because only yesterday they were saying, "DirecTV refuses to negotiate!" And yet a settlement was reached today. Magic, yes?

Perhaps I'm predisposed to take DirecTV's side. I've been generally happy with them as an entertainment provider, and I don't really feel like I have a relationship with Viacom. I like The Daily Show, but I associate that with Comedy Central and Jon Stewart, not Viacom. And of the other 16 channels that were in dispute (See, I even take DirecTV's word for that figure.), TV Land and Nick at Night are the only ones I watch, and those very rarely.

That being said, I really just liked DirecTV's approach to the whole conflict. I don't like scare tactics under the best of circumstances, and Viacom's making the loss of a few TV channels sound like a personal assault was just egregiously bad. It's more than that, though. From my perspective, disputes over money rarely have an ethically right or wrong side. If money's been stolen, or if one party is much more vulnerable, sure, but we're talking about two corporations arguing over how much money they were going to, let's face it, take from me. Best to make it sound like business, because that's all it was. So DirecTV's decision to use the emotionally charge "bullying" word today was disappointing. Ah well, at least I get my Daily Show back.

What did you see today?

I saw an article about "The Talk"

Context
I came across this article today, although I can't remember how I was referred to it. The main point is that now that John Derbyshire has heard about the talk African-Americans routinely have with their children about racism, he has decided to publicize his own version.

Commentary
I had never heard about The Talk prior to today; so much for my command of pop culture memes. It occurs to me, though, that our lives would be immeasurably better if everyone's version of The Talk went like this: "Racial tensions exist in our society. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

What did you see today?

I heard a child yelling

Context
My house is adjacent to a city park, and as such I get to hear a lot of what goes on out there. Today I heard a child yelling in the park, and as often happens, I couldn't tell if he/she was in distress and if so, whether that distress required my attention. I let it slide and continued on my way to the dry cleaners.

Commentary
For various reasons, not the least because I used to be a Girl Scout and I have my Emergency Preparedness pin, I'm usually quite willing to jump into emergency situations. Car wreck? I'm calling 911, directing traffic, and holding the victim's hand (not at the same time). Turtle crossing the road? I'm jumping out of my car and carrying him across. Hey, you define "emergency" your way; I'll define it mine.

On the other hand, over time I've become much more cautious about getting involved in volatile interpersonal interactions, which are usually what's going on if I hear one person yelling in the park. If someone falls off the slide, I'll usually hear several people yelling, so I know to run out there. But one voice gives me pause.

As I said, this has happened over time. I used to interpose myself in personal conflicts with great glee, confident that I knew exactly what to do. This has changed for several reasons:

1) I'm a religious pacifist now. At one time I was perfectly willing to counter a violent act with one of my own, or at least threaten to. That tool is no longer in my repertoire.

2) I'm very unwilling to give unsolicited advice these days. Partially this is because I hate when people offer it to me, but it's also because I often don't believe it's effective. When someone is having a screaming match with their spouse, I'm don't think they're in a place where they can hear me say they're behaving badly.

3) I'm no longer as convinced of my own righteousness. When someone's drowning, you throw them a rope, of course. But when a mother is smacking her child, and I've experienced this, she has just as much right to tell me I have no idea what her life and her child are like as I do to tell her that corporal punishment is wrong. Neither of us is wrong.

So I stay out of a lot more situations, but I don't like that solution, either. It seems cowardly and apathetic. Lately I've been trying standing near people who are in conflict and watching silently, in hopes of giving a "I'm here, I see, I'm part of what you need to consider" vibe. So I'm opening my eyes but not, unless asked, my mouth. Is that enough?

What did you hear today?

I saw a blog post about teaching methods

Context
One of the messages on the Information Literacy Instruction mailing list today referenced this blog post. I encourage you to read it yourself, but here's the quick summary: it's about using a learning cycle consisting of assimilation, accommodation, and organization as a model for library instruction.

Commentary
This is my interpretation of the learning cycle described by Frierson: assimilation is when we receive information, accommodation is how we match up new information to what we already know, and organization is how we decide to use the information. Let me give an example of how this works: I look at my thermometer and assimilate that the temperature outside is 49 degrees Fahrenheit. I accommodate this knowledge by remembering that in the past when it has been 49 degrees, I've been pretty chilly. I organize the information by deciding to wear a coat.

Teaching is often treated as just a process of putting information out there so students can assimilate it. In return, students sometimes bypass accommodation entirely and only organize the information so they can regurgitate it on an exam. Teachers are frustrated because students don't appear to learn; students are frustrated because teachers don't appear to offer anything of lasting value (Where am I ever going to diagram sentences in the real world?).

Early in his teaching career, my husband attended a workshop called Teaching and Learning. He learned all kinds of useful stuff there; I learned for the first time that education is not just about teaching, but about learning as well. In other words, you can be the best teacher in the whole world, but if your students aren't learning, it's a pointless exercise for everyone. This can be terrifying to teachers, because although we have complete control over how we present information, we have no control over how students accommodate it or organize it. The best we can hope for is to accompany them in that process and maybe learn something ourselves.

There's also a time factor. Presenting information generally doesn't take long, whether we talk, or give the students something to read, or even demonstrate a task. However, waiting for each individual student to find existing knowledge in his/her brain to tack the new information to and decide how she/he wants to use it is not only time-consuming, it's unpredictably time-consuming.

A typical response is to say we don't have time to teach that way. I don't buy it. Here is my philosophy about time: we have time to do everything we really want to do. I have a similar philosophy about money, but I won't go into that. Anyway, when it comes to time constraints, I think what we're really saying is we don't have time to do something and . . . "I don't have time to do the dishes tonight" really means "I don't have time to do the dishes tonight and go to bed early so I can get up early tomorrow and not be sleepy." We're setting some priorities, which is reasonable, but it's not the same as having no time to do the dishes.

So why don't we have time to teach in such a way that students will want to learn and be successful doing so? Because what we prioritize more highly is "covering material." Of all the insidious ideas to infiltrate education, this has got to be the worst. OK, I'm not super fond of group work either, but I digress. I don't know how we ever got to a place where we believe it is more important for a teacher to get through a certain number of lessons or concepts or textbook pages than it is for students to actually learn something.

Actually, I'm lying. I know exactly how we got here; it's through mistrust and laziness. We don't trust teachers to teach, so we want to evaluate them. But measuring how much a student has learned, as opposed to how much he/she can remember at test time, is difficult. So we settle for a quantitative measure, like a percentage of right answers, instead of a qualitative one, like how good a student is at formulating worthwhile answers to substantive questions of her/his own devising. But man, that material gets covered!

What did you see today?

I saw an article about banking policy

Context
I ran across this article in the Shreveport Times this morning about the Federal Reserve and Congress trying to determine the best method for regulating debit card fees, as mandated by last year's financial overhaul bill. The difficulty appears to be in getting merchants and banks to share the pain equitably.

Commentary
As far as I can tell from the article, the banks are saying they shouldn't be limited on how much they charge merchants for debit card swipes because they play an important role in the economic recovery effort and merchants are saying they need a break on these fees because they play an important role in the economic recovery effort. Taking this bait, federal officials seem to be trying to decide which of the two factions' role is more important. I think this approach is wrongheaded because both the merchants and the banks make compelling cases in this regard.

Here's another thing both parties are doing: they're trying desperately to hide these fees from the consumer. The merchants are saying when they pay high debit card swipe fees, they have to either charge customers more for goods, which may lose them customers, or cut their profit margins, which means cutting jobs. Bankers say if they have to cover the costs of fraud protection, etc. themselves, they'll have to eliminate free checking accounts which, you guessed it, may lose them customers. Neither seems to want to say directly to the consumer, "The convenience of using a debit card at the grocery store has a cost; please pay it."

Ellen Ruppel Shell, in her excellent book Cheap: the high cost of discount culture, says this is a common problem in our current culture: we have become so obsessed with "getting a good deal" that no one wants to pay the fair price for anything. Shell mostly talks about how we ignore substandard goods and/or substandard working conditions in order to fuel this overriding need, but I think the paradigm applies to other situations as well.

So I would like to propose that we take the honest approach: the Federal Reserve should determine how much a debit card swipe at a merchant costs and the banks should charge the consumers that amount per swipe. Then we could actually make (Gasp!) informed decisions about whether the convenience is worth that price instead of everybody trying to fool each other about what's going on.

What did you see today?

I saw an unfamiliar medical condition

Context
I was reading an e-mail from Help a Reporter Out (HARO) today and it referred to a condition known as gluteal amnesia. As mentioned previously, the rules of HARO don't allow me to quote the actual message here. Since I had never heard of gluteal amnesia, I did a quick internet search for it. I saw it mentioned and defined on several sites, but when I sought more information on either WebMD and PubMed, the term was not found.

Commentary
I can't tell you what gluteal amnesia is, because once I found it wasn't mentioned on the two internet sources I consider most authoritative for medical information I was no longer interested in the condition itself. Instead, I came to wonder why a great many people outside the medical establishment wanted to talk so much about it.

I've come up with three possible reasons:

1) Gluteal amnesia doesn't really exist at all and is just a scam started to convince people they have an exotic ailment.

2) Gluteal amnesia is a very real medical problem, but health professionals call it something else.

3) What is labeled gluteal amnesia is a set of symptoms that could point to a variety of other widely recognized medical conditions.

Whichever of these three reasons explains the discrepancy in the discussion of gluteal amnesia (Could we really just be talking about your butt falling asleep?), it must drive physicians up the wall. It may also illustrate, in part, why doctors sometimes hate it when patients get medical information from the web. Think about it: a general practitioner has to keep up with all manner of real medical problems, and then people come in complaining of a problem that doesn't exist. Or does exist, but is called by another name or indicates another type of problem.

It doesn't help in the slightest that there are probably some people who believe in a fourth potential reason for the relative silence about gluteal amnesia: it's a very real, very serious medical condition that the medical establishment doesn't want us to know about for some nefarious reason. So now we have skilled professionals (and, in my experience, generally nice people) being told, "I don't trust what you say because the internet, (where nobody knows you're a dog), says different."

For the record, my doctor often encourages me to look up information on my medical problems on the internet, but that's after she tells me what they are. And it's possible she does that because I'm a librarian and I let her be a doctor.

What did you see today?

I heard a disparaging remark

Context
One of my flights back from the COSUGI conference lasted a little under three hours. During it, a baby on board screamed bloody murder at varying intervals. Once, he or she probably kept it up for a good ten minutes. At the end of the flight, a man in my row said, "Horrible flight!"

Commentary
I hate to fly. This may come as a surprise to members of my family because I used to love it, and I still do fly on a regular basis, but I hate it. Usually this hatred takes the form of mild anxiety, often for weeks before an anticipated trip, but it sometimes turns into full-blown panic while on the plane. All told, I prefer the train. So for me, "horrible flight" would either mean I cowered in terror all the way or the plane crashed at some point. I guess most people would agree that the latter would count as a horrible flight.

But I don't want to talk about how brave my seatmate was about flying or how tolerant I am of fussy children. I want to talk about what I think upsets both of us, which is the lack of control. Once I get on that plane, I can't control how it moves or whether it lands safely or not, and that makes me crazy. Under non-flying circumstances, one can usually deal with a screaming baby that's not your own by either walking away or trying to convince the parents to do so. On a plane, not so much.

So for both of us, perhaps the feeling of helplessness is upsetting. What's interesting is the difference in what makes us feel helpless. I've already spent too much time speculating about my seatmate's feelings, so I won't try and figure out why flying doesn't appear to bother him. I will say that generally, crying babies who aren't being abused by their parents don't bother me. In the situation on the plane, I wasn't helpless. I could have tuned the baby out or listened to iTunes on my laptop. What I actually did was feel sorry for the baby and the parents. It's just about impossible to explain to an infant what ear-popping is and how to handle it.

Which leads me to faith in general. I am a firm believer that God controls everything; that it's His world and we're just living in it. This does not, however, make me behave fatalistically. I believe every moment is an opportunity to decide whether we're going to try to participate in God's will, oppose it, or ignore it. I find I always do better when I try to participate. As I mentioned in an earlier post on patience, I find I do better when I spend less time on, "Why is God doing this?" and more on "Why does He want me around while He is?"

It's a good theory; I certainly don't always put it into practice. I often say, as Mother Teresa did, "I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much." On the other hand, as I was reminded when I read on this blog, I think sometimes God likes to remind us that it's not all about how well we handle things for ourselves. So I try to remember that too when I fly.

What did you hear today?

I saw a story about violence

Context
I'm still working through John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. A passage I read today talked about the Akron Rubber Strike, and how part of the reason for its peaceful resolution was the fact that the striking workers made a show of being armed and organized.

Commentary
I used to plow through books, but that is no longer the case, possibly because of the number of things that divide my attention. And it's not only reading that suffers. During my attempt to write this entry I have removed a kitten from my sleeve seven times, overheard a conversation between my neighbor and her child (my windows are open) and played with the dog and let her out. And back in. My progress through the Grapes of Wrath is not helped in the slightest by the number of times I put the book down and go "huh!"

Steinbeck seems to be making a clear point in his discussion of the Akron incident: vigilantes in Akron were perfectly willing to violently put an end to the strike up until the time they realized the workers might fight back. Then they backed down.

I can see the reasonableness of this approach. No point in fighting if you can't guarantee yourself a victory, after all. In the U.S. we try to make sure we're never in this situation by "acting against emerging threats before they are fully formed," which is known as "preemptive self-defense." Even the Just War Doctrine (#2309 at this link), which is supposed to give a good ethical grounding to death and destruction, requires "serious prospects of success," a.k.a. "Don't be a David going up against a Goliath."

So there you have it. If you engage in violence, you run the risk of either getting hurt yourself or looking like the worst kind of coward by beating up on an obviously weaker opponent. Can you see why I'm a pacifist?

What did you see today?

I saw an e-mail from a Friend

Context
A member of the Quaker meeting I attend sent an e-mail today introducing a woman who is planning to join us for the first time on Saturday. We are a small meeting, so new people are very noticeable.

Commentary
"Go therefore an make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." These words are almost the last things Jesus says in the gospel according to Matthew (New Revised Standard Version) and are referred to as The Great Commission.

No passage in the Bible has more power to both inspire and terrify Christians. We know that Jesus has done great things for us and theoretically we want to share that good news with everyone, but the practice is often lacking. I've been sampling Jim Henderson's excellent book Evangelism Without Additives, and it has a lot to say about both our discomfiture and our ineffectualness.

Henderson talks a lot about methodology. I'd like to talk a little about goals. It seems to me that one of the sub-goals of our evangelism practices is convincing someone to come to our worship services. Why is that? I'm pretty sure we don't actually believe God only works within a given set of walls or timeframe, so why are we so concerned with bringing people into our building at a certain time instead of taking the love of God to them? Is it laziness? Do we feel too vulnerable out there in the world and want to return to our comfortable surroundings? Or is it a simple way of keeping score, where a big crowd at church equals successful completion of God's mission?

Whatever our reasoning, I don't think it's sound in light of what Jesus actually commanded us to do. The reason I don't think so comes from Jesus' actual last words in Matthew: "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Not a single word about us having to come to Him, and He's the Master. Imagine what we servants are called to do.

What did you see today?

I saw a passage in a Stephen King book

Context
Stephen King is my second favorite author, after C.S. Lewis. Because I've read many of his books several times, sometimes I just go back and read passages again, revisiting certain concepts rather than taking in the whole work. I did this today with Pet Sematary, and found a passage describing the horror (well, it is Stephen King, right?) of leaving a young child alone in the house with a dying relative.

Commentary
This is my 100th blog entry! Hope it's worth it.

The Stand is my favorite Stephen King novel; in fact I've already blogged about here and here. But Pet Sematary is hands-down the scariest Stephen King work I've read, right up there with The Silence of the Lambs in terms of "don't read it before you go to bed" creepiness.

The passage about the little girl left alone while someone passes away is horrifying not in a scary way, but more in the "What were these people thinking?" sense the protagonist muses to himself for our benefit. One of the qualities of childhood should be the nurturing presence of adults when dealing with the harsh realities of life.

In the New Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, people are referred to as the "children of God" 14 times (yes, I have a concordance), mostly in this passage in Romans. By contrast, there are only ten reference to the "people of God" and those are all in the Old Testament, where the "children of God" never make an appearance.

What's going on here? Did we suddenly become less mature with the coming of Christ? Did we come to realize that we needed more protection and nurturing than originally thought? Or is it just a translation quirk between Hebrew and Greek? I don't know; I just know I'm more likely to think of myself as a child of God than a woman of God.

If we're children now, do we ever grow up? Maybe. In fact, that may be what happens in heaven. I've been thinking about heaven lately, inspired by a fellow Friend in my meeting. She has little patience with mainstream Christianity, and I believe some of that is because of what she considers the ridiculous imagery associated with it. So she'll ask questions such as, "Do you really believe God is an old man with a white robe?" or "What is heaven like, really?", possibly referring to the "sitting on a cloud all day playing the harp" idea.

My current view of heaven (could change any minute, my ideas on matters like these tend to be capricious to put it charitably) thinks of it as where we get to become the adult children of God. And so our views of heaven now are often similar to the ways children think about growing up. There are plenty of "I'll get to stay up as late as I want and eat candy bars all day!" visions. The harp-playing idea may come from what children often see of adult behavior in church, mindlessly mouthing praises to God and not really doing anything useful. There are also people who are horrified by the prospect of heaven: "If I can't have my whiskey and tobacco, I'm not going!" These are like children who cannot conceive of being sexually mature: "I'm going to like boys? EWWWW!"

The point is, as children we really have no idea what being a grown up is like. We get glimpses, we have hope and fears, but the reality is that not only do our circumstances change as we mature, we do as well. We'll probably even see different things.

What did you see today?

I saw a TV show about politics

Context
I bought the entire run of The West Wing on DVD recently. Tonight I watched an episode called "Five Votes Down," which was about the West Wing staffers' attempts to get a gun control law passed by Congress.

Commentary
I love The West Wing, so now that I have this set you may be hearing me comment on it a lot!

I'm concerned about gun control. I'm also concerned about health care, the various wars taking place around the globe, and the environment. But after watching the beginning of this episode, which contains the great line "There are two things in the world you never want to let people see how you make 'em - laws and sausages," I've decided to become a one-issue voter. At least for now.

The issue is decency. And I don't mean the "politicians have to adhere to a strict moral code that I can't uphold myself" variety. I mean treating people decently. Being respectful of people you disagree with. Agreeing with people because you believe what they're saying, not because of some potential personal gain in the future. Seeing a person who's been brought low and helping them, even if you warned them in advance that this was where their actions would lead. Not indulging the urge to tear down those who have some advantage over you because you're jealous of their good fortune. Decency.

It may just be that I think our tangible problems are intractable, so I've decided to concentrate on something more ephemeral, but I hope not. I think what's going on here is that I no longer believe we can solve any problems by treating our opponents badly. I'm a pacifist because I believe violence doesn't solve anything, and over time I've learned that violence can take a lot of subtle forms, like contempt and close-mindedness and fearmongering.

So when it comes time to vote I'm looking for problem-solvers, not naysayers and "I told you so"ers. I don't mind if you hold a strong opinion; I hold plenty of them myself. I'm just no longer willing to believe that my opinion or yours is the only one decent people can hold.

What did you see today?

I saw a description of low self-esteem

Context
I was reading Annie's Mailbox again today. The middle letter was from a woman who described some very disrespectful behavior on her boyfriend's part, who then compounded the offense by telling the writer that all men were like him and she should seek professional help for her insecurities. My husband and I agreed that she should in fact seek professional help, right after dumping his sorry butt.

Commentary
What makes us stay with people who treat us badly? I suppose there's more than one answer, but I always seem to encounter this one when I ask people about it: "This is the best I can do, so I'd better not blow it."

I'm not against humility per se, but when it allows people to continue behaving badly I think it's counter-productive. So I'm going to suggest we channel our low self-esteem in a different direction. Wouldn't the world be a better place if we said, "I don't deserve much, but I'm going to go for the best and then work hard to deserve what I get?"

What did you see today?

I saw a bumper sticker

Context
As I was driving to my volunteer job today I saw a bumper sticker on a pickup truck that said, "An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject." A quick Google search reveals that "armed=citizen, unarmed=subject" is a common internet trope. I had never heard it before today.

Commentary
I am a religious pacifist. I am not, however, totally anti-gun. Biathlon is my favorite Winter Olympic sport and I actually gave a pro-Second Amendment speech at the American Legion's National Oratorical Contest (of course, I was younger then). However, I am completely flabbergasted by the idea that weapons are our most important, or if I'm to take the bumper sticker literally, only tool of citizenship.

Perhaps I'm overthinking this, but I'd rather be accused of overthinking something than underthinking it. I mean, if your gun is what makes you a citizen, why don't we have an armed coup d'etat every time a pro-gun control candidate is elected? Obviously the ballot box, the peaceful protest, the letter-writing campaign from hell and even the liberally-biased mainstream media (as an actual liberal, that last one gives me a giggle, but I digress) are insignificant props, so why use them?

If I were to be really mean (and I'm in that kind of mood, because this is the dumbest political slogan I've seen all week), I'd say the "must be armed to be a citizen" folks are rank cowards. Think about it. What they're saying is that if they don't have a gun available, they can be made to do anything. Or perhaps, since we know the government is unlikely to be unarmed, they're saying that if someone else holds a gun to their head, they'll do whatever they're told. I know the first one's not true of me and I'm hoping the second isn't either.

In the end, I guess that's the foundation of my pacifism: the belief that there are all kinds of things that are mightier than the sword, and the mightiest of all is the will of God. To which we're all subject.

What did you see today?

I saw a discussion about analogies

Context
I was catching up on some e-mail lists today, including the Information Literacy Instruction list. About a month ago a distinguished professor of library science sent the query referenced here to the list, asking about the use of analogies in library instruction. This touched off a long discussion of whether to use analogies at all and if so, which ones are appropriate. The discussion has largely petered out now, but a particular piece of advice, taken from this response really struck me:

Connect to real life experience – think about those common experiences students are likely to share such as shopping, eating, and sleeping. An examination of the common sports and military metaphors used in the teaching of physics and engineering and the disproportionate number of women in those disciplines can help illustrate the need to focus on common experiences.

Commentary
I don't know what to make of the implication here that sports and military metaphors do not reflect the "common experiences" of women. On the one hand, it's certainly reasonable to say that they are more likely to be common experiences for most men than for most women. On the other hand, I and both of my X chromosomes are much likely to understand a sports metaphor than say, a shopping one (I hate shopping with a purple passion!).

There's another underlying assumption here: that not using "common experiences" is bad. I can think of two reasons why that might be the case: students might not understand what you're trying to get across with your analogy, which is not the ideal result of a teaching method, or they might be offended by it, which is not good for any relationship between human beings.

I'm wondering if both of these problems are exacerbated by students' insecurities. I'm a pretty confident student, possibly because I'm also a teacher, so if someone uses an example or a metaphor that I don't understand, I say so and I expect the teacher to come up with a different one. In other words, I see my failure to learn as a problem to be solved, not a personal shortcoming that needs to be covered up.

I think offense works similarly. Certainly I'm offended if someone insults me to my face and I'll often take the bait when someone is deliberately trying to get a rise out of a certain group of people. Most of the time, though, I assume people don't mean to be offensive; they're just ignorant or at worst, insensitive. In both cases, self-confidence helps me address the issue with the offender productively instead of stewing in my own wounded juices. Shoot, in an exchange like that I might even discover that my own assumptions were incorrect!

Touchiness, whininess, and even victimhood sometimes say, "the world sucks and I can't do anything about it." So I guess what I'm advocating is less tiptoeing around a student's potential ignorant or touchy spots and more empowering them to tell us about those spots so we can engage in the learning experience together.

What did you see today?

I heard a "just" prayer

Context
A couple of other Friends and I volunteered today at the Randy Sams Shelter for the Homeless in Texarkana, Texas. While we were there, another woman who was volunteering from the Partnership Church of Texarkana asked us to gather and pray with someone. That woman said a prayer out loud that included the word "just" a lot, e.g "I just want to thank you, Father," "I just pray you'll heal our friend," etc.

Commentary
I don't know where the "just" style of prayer comes from, but I first started hearing it about twenty years ago. I wonder if it came from the 1970's "Jesus freaks." The cadence of it sort of sounds like an invitation to mellow out and rap with God. Prayer as casual conversation instead of a big deal.

I find "just" prayers a little jarring. I don't think God has any trouble listening to them, but the very casual sound that may make them attractive to some repels me. I think prayer is a big deal. When someone uses the word "just" a lot, it sounds like they haven't really considered what they're saying to God, they're "just" throwing stuff out there. God loves us and listens to us always, but shouldn't we love Him enough to put a little thought into what we're going to say?

In fact, given that God does love us, another problem emerges. When I say "I just" in everyday conversation, it's usually a fear response. I want to say something, but I think I'm going to get in trouble for it, like "don't get mad at me, but I just don't think four-inch heels are appropriate for horseback riding." It's a phrase with a built-in cringe.

If this is the case, "I just" is a wildly innapropriate way to talk to God. Jesus uses a metaphor of God as Father, but hopefully we all understand that God is better than any earthly father in that He always wants to hear what we have to say When I pray I say, "please," or "if it's Your will" to God in order to be respectful, but I don't grovel. I'm a child of God; I get to ask for stuff with confidence that He will always listen and provide what I need.

What did you see today?

I heard someone talk about identity theft

Context
I was at a shoe store today. The cashier talked for a long time both to the customers before me and to me when my turn came about identity theft schemes she had heard about or experienced and ways to protect oneself against them. The couple ahead of me seemed interested in the topic, but I wasn't. I also wasn't all that enthralled with the education about the dangers of Irish Travelers I received from my in-laws last week.

Commentary
If I'm competely honest, I'll have to say my reaction to these conversations went beyond disinterest to irritation. Taking a first pass at the reason why, I would say that they seemed to focus a lot on building up fear, which I know is the enemy of love.

Digging a little deeper, I feel like these types of conversations reflect an inappropriate attitude toward crime. The reasoning seems to go like this, "people are going to do wrong, so the only thing you can do is develop progressively more complex ways to thwart them." I guess I can see the merits of prevention as opposed to recovery, but I don't understand why the onus is on me. Why do I have to change my behavior because of crime? Shouldn't the emphasis be on changing criminal behavior?

Worse yet, I feel this leads to a bizarre type of "blaming the victim" behavior. There's a man I work with who was robbed by a stranger he had given a ride to. When he and others tell the story, my co-worker's actions are often presented as stupid. No, my co-worker was kind. Thinking that you can repay a kindness with evil and God won't notice is stupid.

Don't get me wrong. I lock both my house and my car and feel more secure now that I live with a big dog. But I also know this: every moment we spend protecting ourselves from bad things another person might do is lost for any other purpose. Are we allowing our fear of identity theft steal time from something much more valuable?

What did you see today?

I heard someone make a promise he couldn't keep.

Context
I'm afraid to fly, even though I've done it for 35 years. Today the pilot on my Northwest Airlines flight said he promised the crew would get us safely to our destination. Quakers take the Biblical injunction against oaths pretty seriously, as exemplified by this excerpt from the Faith and Practice of the Pacific Yearly Meeting.

Commentary
In case you didn't notice, I've changed the name of this blog. The call I'm answering with it was to open my eyes and open my mouth. Since I'm already typing instead of opening my mouth, I'm thinking that the "eyes" part can be stretched a little as well. The blog will probably still predominantly consist of things I see and hear, but if I start tasting, smelling or touching things I need to call attention to, you'll be the first to know.

For a split second, I'm almost felt reassured when the pilot promised to get me safely to my destination. Then I realized he was lying. People sometimes object when I put it bluntly like that, but to me lying describes what you say, not what you intend. Since there are an almost infinite number of things that could have kept me from getting safely to my destination in spite of the pilot's best intentions, he was lying. The most truthful thing he could have said was that he was going to do his best. Even venturing to promise the best efforts of other people on the crew would have been pushing it.

Most of the time, I pay the most attention to the part of Matthew 5:33-37 that says to just say yes or no, rather than taking an oath (this is stated more strongly in James 5:12). Today I started thinking more about the surrounding language that says there's no point in swearing by anything, because we don't control anything. I'm wondering if one of the reasons we're not supposed to take oaths is that not only are we not in control of what we swear by, but usually don't have as much influence over what we swear to as we might think.

Consider: does anyone really tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? If God helped us I suppose we could, but I know it doesn't often happen in my life. I'm not even trying to be deceitful; I've just forgotten stuff. Sometimes, without even realizing it, I've made up stuff to fill in the gaps where I've forgotten stuff. Anyone with relatives knows that either you or them must be doing that, given how different the accounts of the same event are.

The funny thing is that when I'm sitting on a plane, I'm more likely to believe a pilot, who says he's going to get me to my destination safely, than God, who says all things work together for good for those who love Him (Romans 8:28 NRSV). It's ridiculous how low we set our sights. Or our hearing.

What did you hear today?

I saw that reality isn't as bad as my imagination.

Context
I disagreed with my boss about something today, and thought she was going to be mad about the disagreement. Turns out she just didn't have the same information I did, and that information caused her to change her mind. Duh!

Commentary
My title looks strange to me. I think of people most often saying, "xyz wasn't nearly as good as I anticipated it would be." I don't usually imagine good things; I imagine bad things.

I don't think this makes me a pessimist. I don't actually believe the worst possible thing will happen, I just prepare for it. Unfortunately, "prepare" sometimes means running through a veritable smorgasbord of stomach-knotting outcomes just so I'll be ready for each one.

I also don't think this makes me a dour person (people who know me well might disagree). In general, situations do not turn out as badly as I expect them to, and I'm constantly pleasantly surprised by that. I'm rarely disappointed by life, and in that respect I think I'm much better off than many people.

For most of my working life, I've held customer-service-oriented jobs. My favorite customer service slogan is, "underpromise; overdeliver." Well, that's what life does with me on a fairly consistent basis.

In a way, this is a meta-entry for my blog. I only discover the superiority of reality over my imagination when I open my eyes. Or, more accurately, when God forces me to open my eyes.

What did you see today?