Motherhood, Week 1

• Despite my limited options, I still don't know what that stain is on my shirt.
• Nothing has taught me how selfish I really am like having a baby. And nothing (not even pride) is more difficult to purge than that selfishness.
• I am no longer afraid of the word 'penis.' I say it all the time: 'Look at your little penis!' If I was so inclined - that is, if I suddenly regressed to being 14-years-old - I could beat anyone at the penis game. I'll do it now. PENIS!
• Baby powder, baby lotion, baby shampoo - they all smell fantastic now.

Man terms

Dan has his own way of referring to pregnancy terms:

Boppy pillow = boob pillow
Braxton Hicks contractions = Bose Higson contractions (not to be confused with Higgs Boson...)
Meconium = Midichlorian

Among others...

10,000 hours

Blueberry yumminess

When I think about something I want to be really good at, I find myself trying to determine how many hours a day I should spend on that task in order to reach 10,000 hours. Apparently, that's the threshold one must cross to become a true expert at a particular skill. Yet I don't think I could ever sacrifice enough to become an expert at one thing... although, after 30 years I'll probably hit that many hours in baking. At least my grandkids will benefit from all the practice.

Education and War

A little discussion that I took part in this week has got me thinking about whether higher education means people are less likely to engage in violent conflict. I am sure studies have been done on this, but I decided to do my own bit of data analysis.

I compared the number of violent conflicts (by geographical region) since 1990 to the average years of schooling reached by adults (by geographical region) and found a distinct correlation (-.7935). The negative sign means that the more years of education, the fewer number of violent conflicts that occur in a particular region. 100 countries were represented in the education statistics - notably many in Africa were missing. However, the state of education in the missing countries does not vary greatly from most of the rest of the continent.

What does this mean? Educated people are probably much less likely to engage in violent conflict. People need teachers, not weapons.

Sources:
Education info from UNESCO via NationMaster.com (http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/edu_ave_yea_of_sch_of_adu-education-average-years-schooling-adults&b_map=1&b_printable=1)
Conflict info from PRIO (http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict/)

Curse the lying desert skies

Cool breezes and a gray blanket give respite; whispers wander through the airs, a scent of dust and moisture.

Unfulfilled promises leave me wanting.

In summary

"Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference - so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt and wicked.... I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity."

-Frederick Douglass

Good News

My aunt does counseling, and she recently told me that often she'll ask the people who come to see her a question. "What is the gospel?"

When she told me that, I started to think what my response to such a question would be. I suppose I don't often meditate on that. I spend more time on less important things. So tonight on my way home (during a 45 minute drive) I started to try to tell the gospel to myself.

First, I said, "Jesus died for us." But that implies prior knowledge of Jesus. So then I said, "Once there was a man." And then I thought, well, that doesn't really mean anything if you don't know why. Next was "Once there was a nation." Nope, it's bigger than that. "Once there was a world - no, a creation." And then I laughed.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." Yeah, that's a good place to start. Man, God has an awesome story to tell us.