Guided story writing

Seems like when Darwin and I were in grade school, there was a craze to teach poetry by having youngsters jump write in and write a poem, regardless of the fact that the youngsters had been taught nothing about what a poem is or how to write one. ("It rhymes!") To my mind, the first step in learning to write is to listen to poems and stories in order to develop a taste for the mental flavor of prose and poetry. The next step is guided writing.

A child develops a skill first by watching someone perform a task, then by doing the task with help (while imitating what they've observed). Once the child has practiced the task with help and correction, he's ready to try it on his own. We're at the helping stage here. I have the girls narrate a story and provide plot elements, and then I write it down as a narrative, explaining how I'm crafting the ideas and dialogue into structured sentences, and developing the flow. For example, here is this morning's project, with our work in parentheses.

Rose Beauty

("What's the name of your character? Where does she live? What did her parents do?")

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Rose Beauty, because she was a beautiful as a rose. She lived in a house painted with blue and red and orange squigglezags. Her father died when she was eleven ("When did her father die," I asked. "When she was born?" "When she was eleven, " said Eleanor firmly.), and her mother was a scrubwoman.

One day she met an old witch woman. (We debated on how to describe this character -- a sorceress? An old hag? "Witch woman" was the preferred descriptor.)

"Good day, old granny," Rose greeted the woman. (At first Rose just said hello, but I suggested some alternate greetings, and Julia wanted the witch called "Granny" rather than "old mother". And instead of just writing "said Rose", I added the greeting.)

"Please give me a drink of water, my dear. If you don't, I will cast a spell on you."

"Here you are, granny," said Rose, fetching a cup of water.

"Now my must wash my dishes, or else I will cast a spell on you." (Julia liked the spell formulation.)

"Yes, granny," said Rose, and scrubbed the dishes clean.

"Now you must sweep the floor," said the witch, "or else I will eat you." (Eleanor got tired of the spells.)

"I'll make it shine, granny," said Rose, and she swept the floor clean. (I suggested this as a way of pepping up the usual "Yes, granny".)

"You're a good girl, Rose, and you deserve a reward," Granny told the girl. "If you go to the stable, you'll find a surprise."

In the stable, Rose found a red horse with wings.

"You're so beautiful!" exclaimed Rose. "I'll call you Scarlet." The horse nuzzled her hand. (Julia wanted to name the horse Black Beauty at first, but I pointed out that it was an odd name for a red horse, and suggested Scarlet.)

They flew off to seek their fortune. On a beach ("Where did they go?") they discovered a chest that was fastened with huge brass locks. (Description of the chest built up through discussion.) Next to the chest there was a hill of sand with a shovel stuck in it. Rose began to dig. Two feet down she found a rind of heavy golden keys. (The girls were all for the keys being buried, so I asked them how Rose would know the keys were buried. Eleanor liked the shovel, and Julia wanted two feet down.) The keys fit perfectly in the locks. Inside the chest were heaps of coins, precious jewels, and beautiful dresses. On top of everything sat a note on yellowing paper that read:

My dear, I give these riches to you because you have a kind heart. Be sure to use these riches to help the poor.

(Julia came up with the idea that the old witch had left the chest for Rose.)

Rose married a prince and they were always kind to the poor. They lived happily ever after.

THE END

Some of the story was direct transcription, but much of the final form was me crafting suggestions aloud as I wrote them down. The girls get a sense of the different ways a basic formula can be developed and structured. When they get older I'll let them write stories on their own and then edit them for grammar and flow. Hopefully by then they'll have had enough exposure to the way a writer can use the tools of the craft that any flaws in their writing will stem from exuberance, not ignorance.

Conspicuous Compassion

I'm always taken with a good turn of phrase, and so I very much enjoyed Blackadder's post on Conspicuous Compassion.

Culture Clash

It was as the priest was incensing the altar (after the presentation of the gifts and before moving into the main text of the Eucharistic rite) and the choir was giving its all to a rendition of Flow River Flow that it occured to me: One of these things does not belong with the other.

What Makes a Job "Best" or "Worst"

The Wall Street Journal published the results of an annual ranking of Best And Worst Jobs.

There are some interesting picks in there. The #1 best job is Mathematician and #12 is Philosopher, coming in right behind #11: Economist. Academic jobs overall did well (#4 Biologist, #7 Historian, #20 Astronomer) though other high skills office jobs ranked as well: #2 Actuary, #3 Statistician, #5 Software Engineer, #9 Industrial Designer, #10 Accountant.

One thing that struck me was that nearly every job in the top twenty involved sitting at a desk and thining a lot (with the biggest exception being #14 Parole Officer.) Of the bottom 20 we have: #181 Firefighter, #182 Child Care Worker, #187 Auto Mechanic, #196 EMT, #199 Dairy Farmer, and #200 Lumberjack.

Looking at the methodology from Career Cast, working outdoors, physical labor, and struss/urgency were all considered to be negative factors in rating careers. I can see why many people might have these preferences -- especially if they are college educated analysts sitting at desks over at Career Cast -- but that makes it a bit more of a "careers like mine" ranking more than a "best" ranking.

I wonder what would happen if you specifically rated based on the satisfaction of workers with their own jobs, how highly they rate their expectations continuing in that career, how much they would recommend their career to others, and how satisfied they are with their current income and future income potential.

Fr. Neuhaus on Death

Good writing provides, in this mortal world, a sort of temporary life after death -- allowing us to continue to communicate, though one-sidedly, with those who have since gone on to meet their maker. And so it seems quite appropriate that on the day of Fr. Neuhaus's death, First Things reprints an article of his about how our lives lead up to dying.

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, but we typically become tongue-tied and nervous when the discussion turns to a good death. As children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and health, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word “good” should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good.

Do read it, and take a moment to say a prayer for a man who has helped so many to appreciate the unity of faith and reason.

Researcher Ravages Virginity Pledges

This was originally going to be a post about how stupid or ideological reporters took a study and drew unreasonable conclusions about it. Then I read the original study and realized it was actually a case of a researcher trying to draw conclusions that do not even remotely follow from the results of her study.

It seems that Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University did a study entitled, "Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers," which was published in the January 1st edition of Pediatrics..

The methodology was to compare teenagers who took virginity pledges with teenagers who were similar in all other respects (religiosity, family life, attitudes towards sex, etc.) but did not take the pledges.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS. The subjects for this study were National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health respondents, a nationally representative sample of middle and high school students who, when surveyed in 1995, had never had sex or taken a virginity pledge and who were >15 years of age (n = 3440). Adolescents who reported taking a virginity pledge on the 1996 survey (n = 289) were matched with nonpledgers (n = 645) by using exact and nearest-neighbor matching within propensity score calipers on factors including prepledge religiosity and attitudes toward sex and birth control. Pledgers and matched nonpledgers were compared 5 years after the pledge on self-reported sexual behaviors and positive test results for Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and Trichomonas vaginalis, and safe sex outside of marriage by use of birth control and condoms in the past year and at last sex.

RESULTS. Five years after the pledge, 82% of pledgers denied having ever pledged. Pledgers and matched nonpledgers did not differ in premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and anal and oral sex variables. Pledgers had 0.1 fewer past-year partners but did not differ in lifetime sexual partners and age of first sex. Fewer pledgers than matched nonpledgers used birth control and condoms in the past year and birth control at last sex.

CONCLUSIONS. The sexual behavior of virginity pledgers does not differ from that of closely matched nonpledgers, and pledgers are less likely to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease before marriage. Virginity pledges may not affect sexual behavior but may decrease the likelihood of taking precautions during sex. Clinicians should provide birth control information to all adolescents, especially virginity pledgers.

Watch the slight of hand here: Previous studies had showed that people who take virginity pledges delay sex longer and have fewer partners, statistically, than those who don't. However those who take virginity pledges are generally much more religious, come from stabler and more religious families, and have more negative attitudes towards premarital sex and birth control than the general population. So this study takes those who have taken virginity pledges and compares their outcomes to people with the same levels of religiosity, family support, and sexual attitudes -- and (surprise, surprise) finds that people who take virginity pledges and those who share their beliefs and lifestyles but haven't taken pledges have very similar outcomes. The piece of paper itself does not prevent premarital sex! Who would have thought?

Now the study author has a point that whereas the number of virginity pledges signed is often taken as a measure of success for abstinence-based programs, it could well be that these programs are simply making more measurable a segment of the population who are already showing a higher than average propensity to delay sex till marriage. Of those in the study who had taken virginity pledges or who had similar characteristics to those who had, roughly 55% had had pre-marital sex by around age 25. By comparison, a 2002 survey found that 75% of all Americans have had premarital sex by age 20. (There's some fuzziness here in that from the working I think the data in the Pediatrics study may only be the pre-marital sex rate for those who are unmarried -- but I would assume that the pre-marital sex rate for those who are married would not necessarily be higher than for those unmarried so I'm assuming that the statistic holds.)

The real question one should ask, if trying to judge the worth of abstinence based sex ed programs in schools, is whether these programs create a larger demographic of young people who have the characteristics of the pledge takers -- or at least reduce defection rates among those who already have those characteristics -- not whether the piece of paper itself is instrumental in keeping people from having sex. This study does nothing to show whether abstinence based programs increase or decrease the number of students with the cultural characteristics that would assist in saving sex for marriage. Indeed, as constituted, the study doesn't really produce any interesting or useful results at all.

My guess, if someone were to ask, is that public school abstinence programs do not actually achieve much of anything (indeed, the evidence is that no kind of sex ed works) because the principles of cultural and religious impartiality at play in our modern public school system preclude giving students much support in developing a worldview in which saving sex for marriage would seem a worthwhile endeavour. However, one would have to conduct a different study to prove that.

Nationalism and the Problems of the Middle East

One of the books I've been reading off and on over the last year has been Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. Shlaim is a one of the Israeli New Historians, which is essentially a "post-Zionist" revisionist school of Israeli history, who criticize the "old historians" of Israel of being too personally involved in the 1948 war and its aftermath, and thus writing history which is essentially apologetics for Israel.

There are places where I get the feeling Shlaim is leaning too hard in the other direction (for instance he spends a good deal of time on the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel in 1948, but glosses over the expulsion of Jews from surrounding Arab countries.) However, given that you know where his leanings are, it's a fascinating read because it's closely based on documented sources, and it focuses on the very real problem of Israel's relationship with the Arab world. Among the things it made me realize, however, was how alien the modern sense of nationalism is to citizens of the US.

This may seem a strange conclusion at first, as it's become a commonplace of a certain kind of rhetoric to accuse the US of being highly nationalistic. This determination is generally made through the simple equation which many modern commentators (especially, it often seems, of a progressive variety) that "patriotic" = "nationalist". So if you think well of your country for any reason at all, you're a nationalist. However nationalism has a definition other than "being fond of your country", and knowing that definition is important because nationalism has played such an important role in the last 150 years of world history.

Nationalism might be defined as that way of thinking according to which regional, cultural, racial or religious groups have a right to political self determination and/or statehood based upon that shared sense of identity. Nationalism seemed a particularly attractive way of thinking to freedom advocates and reformers in the late 19th and early 20ths centuries, confronted as they were with a number of gradually weakening empires with extensive colonial holdings. Italy and Germany had unified in the middle of the 19th century, movements which were given force by a nationalistic sense that there was "One Italy" and "One Germany" in some powerful cultural sense. The Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires, old rivals which each held dominion over many disparate cultures and regions most of which had at various points in the past been independant countries, were faced with numerous regional independence movements, many of them fuelled by a nationalistic sense that each regional people (Greeks, Bosnians, Serbs, Coatians, etc) should rule itself. In the more robust colonial empires of France and Britain, local populations were also increasingly demanding independence based on a sense of national identity and desire for self determination.

As people placed an ever greater emphasis on those cultural elements which were seen as providing a unifying nationality, it is hardly surprising that Jewish intellectuals, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, began to feel that the Jewish people would be perpetually out of place. Significant Jewish minorities were present throughout Europe, yet nowhere did they form a majority, and they had no homeland to congregate in. As the countries in which they lived placed ever greater emphasis on national identity, they naturally felt ever more the outsiders.

In 1896 Theodor Herzl, a secular Jewish intellectual living in Vienna, published a book titled The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat) in which he argued for the creation of a Jewish homeland and made two suggestions as to where it could be done: either in Palestine, because of its historic associations with the Jewish people, or in a vacant area of Argentina. Herzl went on to organize the First Zionist Congress which met in Basil, Switzerland in 1897 and produced the resolution: "The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by law."

With this aim set, Herzl embarked on a flurry of diplomatic activity, meeting with the Ottoman Sultan, the German Emperor and representatives of the Russian and British governments in an attempt to achieve state sponsorship for creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which was then a loosely controlled province of the Ottoman Empire. The looming difficulty with the Zionist project, however, was expressed by a group of rabbis from Vienna who went on an exploratory trip to Palestine and cabled back, "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man."

Seeing as by 1900 most attractively habitable (to European culture) parts of the world were already occupied by one people or another, this was the great difficulty for a people in search of a homeland. (The British in 1903 made the Zionist Congress an offer referred to as The Uganda Programme, suggesting that they take a 5,000sq/mi region of modern-day Kenya as a Jewish homeland, but among other difficulties, that region too was populated by other people who had no desire for an influx of outsiders.)

Thus, while encouraging both piecemeal Jewish immigration into Palestine and diplomatic attempts to secure sponsorship of a Jewish homeland in Palestine from one of the great powers, the early Zionists mostly attempted to assure themselves that the sparse Arab population in the area would be glad to see them. Herzl published a speculative novel entitled The Old New Land in 1903 charting out the way in which the founding of a Jewish state might go, and in it presented a local Arab character who said of the new state, "The Jews have made us prosperous, why should we be angry with them? They live with us as brothers, why should we not love them?" In the novel, political rights of Jews and non-Jews were the same, and local Arabs gladly adopted the hybrid Jewish-European culture of the new country.

Of course, as increasing numbers of Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine and started making concrete moves towards achieving their own state, things did not work out like this -- to a great extent because the local Arab population was undergoing its own birth of national identity, vastly accellerated by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the Great War, and aided by the thought of European Orientalists such as T. E. Lawrence. There was a Syrian-Palestinian Congress in 1921 which issued a demand for national self-determination by Arabs in the region.

Here we find the source of the intractibility in the conflicts of the Middle East: Arab nationalists want the region of Palestine to be ruled by a country that is specifically Arabic in culture and population. Jewish nationalists want a homeland for Jews in Palestine which is of a politically viable size. And arguably, the 1947 UN-proposed boarders of Israel and the Arab-Palestinian state did not provide either with a viable territory. The map as originally proposed bears a certain resemblance to two squid locked in mortal struggle.

The 1949 armistice map does, arguably, provide Israel with a viable territory, but does not really do so for the Palestinians -- at least, not as Palestinians qua Palestinians. Here we run into nationalism yet again. According to the 1949 armistace, what are now the "occupied territories" in the West Bank were made part of Jordan (itself a new country resulting from the partitioning of former Ottoman lands by the British in 1946).

Jordan was among the countries that attacked Isreal in the 1967 War, and after the war Isreal kept the West Bank, which was strategically positioned and contained both water resources and important historical sites in the history of ancient Isreal. Thus, a large population of Arab-Palestinians (some of them in turn people who had been expelled from Isreali territory back in 1948) found themselves under Israeli control for forty years -- providing plenty of time for fostering a sense of nationality and grievance.

As I said, I think modern Americans are often peculiarly ill-suited to understand these long-simmering (and at times outright flaming) conflicts fed by nationalism, because we are ourselves quite explicitly a large country made up of many diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Certainly, there is a unifying American culture, and attachment to that is one of the characteristics that it at times labeled as American nationalism. But we clearly lack any sense in our national experience that it is necessary for one to live in a country which is defined both by one's cultural and regional identity.

To me, with my American background, it seems obvious that the Palestinians should either seek to re-unify with Jordan and simply be happy as Jordanians, or else seek full integration into Israel and enjoy being Israeli-Arab citizens. And if those in that part of the world could somehow be cleansed of nationalism, those would seem to be the two options that would most lend themselves to peace. (A two state solution could potentially work as well -- but given the small size and strategic importance of the West Bank, not to mention its recent history, it seems hard to imagine a stable, prosperous and friendly government coming into being there.) But short of that there is an intractible situation with no obvious solution. The Israelis (not surprisingly given what the Jewish people has suffered in the last century) want to have a state they can call home in Palestine, and the Palestinian Arabs want to have a state which is a Palestinian Arab state in precisely the same place. There is not a way to reconcile those two desires.

Contraceptive or Abortive?

Clearly as Catholics, we're not supposed to be doing either one, nor do I have any desire to, but in regards to questions of conscience and regulation the facts of the matter are clearly important. It's been discussed often in pro-life circles over the years that oral contraception is designed such that it sometimes allows fertilization but prevents implanation -- thus in effect causing a spontaneous abortion several hours after conception. This is generally applied even more so to "morning after" pills, which is a reason why some pharmicists have conscience objections to dispensing such medications. Given that that Protestant half of the pro-life movement is often fairly comfortable with birth control in concept, this "the pill causes abortion a certain percentage of the time" argument has often been used to help unify the pro-life movement against birth control.

Regardless of whether it's true, I think that clearly the contraceptive mentality and the approach to sex it entails is certainly a major cause of support for abortion.

All that said, I'd very curious as to the reaction of Catholics more educated in the precise medical details of human reproduction than I am to this Slate post, which argues that the evidence for abortificant properties to The Pill and Plan B is slim to none.

I've no particular interest in endorsing Saletan's opinions generally, he's the one who made the to my mind rather nutty argument a while back that Planned Parenthood was overall an anti-abortion organization because contraception prevents unwanted pregnancies. But if it's correct as a matter of medical science that it's very, very rare for oral contraceptive and even "morning after" pills to cause spontaneous abortions, we'll do nothing but make ourselves look unconcerned with the truth (and the scientific truth of embryology is very much on our side when it comes to what the pro-life movement says about abortion as opposed to what the "just a clump of cells" people say) if we keep pushing it.

Feedback from those with medical or scientific knowledge of the issue would be appreciated.

Getting Involved in a Land War in Germania

Generally speaking, the Romans pulled back on making further progress into northern Germany after the massacre at Teutoburg Forest late in the reign of Augustus. However, archeologists appear to have found a battle site just south of Hanover (in Lower Saxony) where a Roman legion squared off against Germanic tribesman in the mid 3rd Century A.D. Science Magazine has one of the more complete versions of the story.

Year in review

Via Melanie, the Blog in Review Meme:

Post the first sentence of your first blog post of each month. You can also add a favorite picture from each month.

No pix because I didn't feel like it, but here are the sentences.

January

When the Darwin children tore the wrapping off their Christmas presents last week, they bore tags like "From Mom and Dad" and "From Grandma" but not "From Santa".

February

UPDATE: TS writes to inform us that an update has been posted to the link below, in which CleanFlicks denies that the offender ever worked for or was associated with them.

March

I got a call from my younger sister tonight. "Darwin, do you know if a consecration with bread that is probably leavened is valid?"

April

A National Review piece by Arthur C. Brooks today notes an interesting study result:
In 1996, the General Social Survey asked a large sample of Americans whether they agreed that, “The government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality.”

May

My daughters' preferred method of selecting library books is to sweep an armful off a shelf into a basket and stagger over to a table to peruse them.

June

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

July

Over at Teeny Manolo, Glinda has put up a list of the pros and cons of having only one child.

August

A couple weeks ago, MrsDarwin and I drove by the tea shop in the "old down town" of our area (a single street with difficult parking which is not within walking distance of anywhere and not easy to get to, but features a dozen picturesque old buildings on each side of the street and the public library down at the end) and saw that it was closing its physical premises and becoming an online-only business.

September

Our ability to speak, not just communicate but truly use language, is one of those things that sets us apart from the rest of creation.

October

I had to run out and do some errands during lunch, and then picked up a hamburger to eat at my desk.

November

As if to make sure I can't spend too much of my time reading and writing political blogging, the job has me in training the first half of this week.

December

Taking a quiet Saturday morning to catch up on reading the newspaper, I was perusing a WSJ article on the lost virtue of prudence in our modern American society when I came across this jarring note: "The puzzling thing is that, under normal circumstances, our Americanus prudens should be flourishing."

I'm glad to see that one of these features what seems to be our most popular jump-off: "I was reading this article in the WSJ..."

Happy Epiphany

20
C + M + B
09

For those of us who are gentile Christians, the feast of the Epiphany holds a special meaning, as it recalls that Christ was done homage as a king by Magi from the East at the time of his birth. Though Matthew's gospel provides few details, the Magi are traditionally recalled as three, with the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar.

The traditional date for Epiphany is January 6th, but since our bishops have seen fit to put the feast on the nearest Sunday, I hope that no one will take it amiss if I wish everyone a happy Epiphany today.


I first encountered this classic orchestration of We Three Kings by Eugene Ormandy when I was a child, watching my dad give the annual Christmas Star Show up at the Griffith Observatory. Since the recording is hard to find, and there too it the music provided background to a montage of artistic representations of the Three Kings, I took the liberty of putting together a YouTube video for the occasion.

History Bleg

Does anyone have any suggestions for a book on early American history that would put things in perspective for a 15-year old guy having a hard time keeping the details straight?

Catholics and Gun Rights

Should you be so interested, I have an extended Catholic take on the 2nd Amendment up over at American Catholic.

Buckle Your Seatbelts

This is going to be a fun ride.

The blogger formally known as The Raving Atheist is now The Raving Theist, and shows that conversion in no way impairs one's sense of humor.

Just so.

Reading some of the "I wonder how this guy went from being so rational to being a godidiot" comments (getting linked to by PZ Myers doesn't exactly raise the tone of one's commentariat -- though to be fair the "godidiot" term was one used frequently by Raving Atheist before becoming a Christian) I've been rather struck by degree to which those who spend lots of hours frequenting online atheist watering holes refuse to admit that one can be rational and still be a theist. For people who supposedly take all their pointers from science, this seems a rather odd view, since one of the obvious corollaries of the scientific method is that there are almost always multiple rational explanations for a given set of evidence. However, two different explanations as to what underlying process produces the evidence will generally produce different predictions about the world. And the scientific process involves trying to see which (if any) of these sets of predictions bears out in reality.

The question of God's existence gets prickly, in part because atheists and theists often not only do not agree on what the predictions of theism and atheism would be, but they also don't agree on what evidence currently exists. Speaking for myself, I think that a form of atheistic materialism is a rational conclusion given a certain body of evidence that one might have personally experienced or read about -- however I think that the predictions which atheistic materialism would make about reality do not fit with my experience of reality. (For instance: I do think that free will exists. And I do think that qualities such as Justice and Goodness have objective existence.) Thus, I reject atheistic materialism. However, I think one can hold it perfectly rationally -- so long as one is willing to also assent to its implications.

The difficulty with the louder of the Raving Theist's commenters is that they do not seem to see it as remotely possible that one could be rational and come to the conclusion that theism is true. The which suggests to me, at least, a certain narrowness of viewpoint -- and perhaps a lack of understanding of how evidence, theory and prediction work when applied to something philosophical or theological rather than the question of which ball will fall faster off the Tower of Pisa.

The Economics of Scrooge

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is among my favorite stories. This year, I've been reading it aloud to the family for the first time. (I started off reading it to the girls, but MrsDarwin has proved a more apt audience. Dickens' prose remains a bit beyond 5 and 6-year-old tastes.)

I'm far from being alone in my affection for A Christmas Carol, and so there are any number of movie adaptations available as well. This particular year, it happens that I saw two versions, the George C. Scott adaptation which is an absolutely superb film, and also The Muppet Christmas Carol with Michael Caine.

A number of comparisons might spring to mind when watching two such different treatments a few days apart, but in this case what struck me immediately was the way in which each movie attempted to convey the heartlessness of Scrooge's business methods.

Dickens himself is rather sketchy about what exactly Scrooge's business is, other than that it consumes all his attention. Scrooge sits in a counting house through the day, and in the outer office Bob Cratchit is seen copying letters -- a clerical task generic enough it could pertain to any business. It's also mentioned that Scrooge makes short term loans or securities on the Exchange. Or at least, that is how I take the line:
This was a great relief, because ``three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,'' and so forth, would have become a mere United States' security if there were no days to count by.

Doubtless merchant financing and options trading seemed far too complex for a children's movie, so in the Muppet Christmas Carol, Scrooge has been turned into a writer of mortgages -- or a landlord of rental properties, the scriptwriter can't quite seem to make up his mind. In the opening scene Scrooge gleefully tells Cratchit (Kermit the frog) and a small army of small clerks (the rats) to write up the next day's foreclosures to be delivered on Christmas. Gleefully rubbing his hands together, he declares that this is the best season of the year for mortgage lenders.

Later, however, when Marley's ghost (in the Muppet version transformed into the Marley Brothers, played by the hectoring old men from the Muppet Show) appears, they reminisce about the good old days when they evicted people from houses they couldn't afford the rent on. "Remember the year we evicted the whole orphanage? There they were, shivering in the street with their frosted teddy bears!"

Clearly, the point here is to portray Scrooge as being in the very worst possible sort of business, but what the screen writer seems to have been unclear on is that if you hold a mortgage as a lender the very worst thing that can happen to you is having to foreclose on it. If the homeowner had enough equity in the house to cover the balance owed, the homeowner would obviously sell the house, pay off the loan, and keep the balance. So foreclosures are only going to happen when the house is worth less than the balance on the loan. The lien holder sells the house to make back as much as possible of the lost money, but it'll invariably be a loss for him. If Scrooge is writing our reams and reams of foreclosures, he's probably about to go out of business. (After all, if foreclosures made lenders rich, our financial industry wouldn't be in such trouble now.)

Similarly, although a landlord stands to start making money again if he evicts renters who can't pay and replaces them with ones who can, he obviously loses rent in the mean time, and has to go through extra work getting rid of the old renters and finding new ones. A landlord would make much more money by finding good renters who can afford his rents in the first place.

So while the Muppet Christmas Carol seeks to make Scrooge out as the ultimate in greedy businessmen, they mostly only succeed in making him look deeply incompetent. How he could get rich by such means is totally unclear.

The George C. Scott adaption has a rather more historically and economically literate approach to Scrooge's business dealings. In an early scene, Scrooge goes down to the exchange where he meets with three men seeking to buy a warehouse full of grain which Scrooge owns. They ask him if he has reconsidered his price since the day before. Scrooge replies that he has: the price has gone up 5%. That's outrageous, they reply. No, says the imperturbable Scrooge, it's business. But if grain prices rise, the poor will suffer. That's their look out, says Scrooge. You'll end up with a warehouse stuffed with grain, they warn him. Surely, he replies, that's his own lookout. He then warns them that the price will increase another 5% if they wait until the next day -- on which threat he succeeds in closing the deal.

From what I've read about the mid 19th century British economy what Scrooge is probably doing here is using his considerable capital to buy up futures on the harvest for the year. Because it was a period of instability for many British farmers, it was often possible for a money lender to buy up the harvest in advance at vastly reduced prices. This relieved the farmer of the risk of a bad harvest, but lost him most of the benefit that would otherwise have come from a good year -- with the profits from a bountiful harvest instead going to lenders and traders like Scrooge. With sufficient dominance in such a market (and enough capital to be able to wait for scarcity to set in) Scrooge could also attempt to corner a market and wait for times of scarcity in order to sell his grain.

If one feels the need to imagine a business model that fits with Scrooge as presented in the story, this seems like a fairly reasonable way to go.

Is that absolutely necessary?

Phrases often achieve a sort of iconic status within family culture. In ours, one of the standard exchanges is:

"Is that absolutely necessary?"
"Yes, 'e's afraid it is."

These days, this is usually said within the context of young master Jack doing something -- like spitting cheese all over someone's new outfit or overflowing a diaper in a particularly disgusting fashion.

The context is an exchange from Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, the first of his trilogy which also included Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. And as you can see, it covers the inexplicable rather well:

Time Bandits was a movie that I watched dozens of times when I was eight or nine -- which may explain rather much about me...

Merry Christmas

One of the things I have always found compelling about Christianity is its clear beginning at a specific place and time -- which we commemorate today on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord.

And it came to pass that in those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This enrolling was first made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem: because he was of the house and family of David. To be enrolled with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child. And it came to pass that when they were there, her days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first born son and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger: because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds watching and keeping the night watches over their flock. And behold an angel of the Lord stood by them and the brightness of God shone round about them: and they feared with a great fear. And the angel said to them: Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people: For, this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying:

Glory to God in the highest: and on earth peace to men of good will.

And it came to pass, after the angels departed from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another: Let us go over to Bethlehem and let us see this word that is come to pass, which the Lord hath showed to us. And they came with haste: and they found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. And seeing, they understood of the word that had been spoken to them concerning this child. And all that heard wondered: and at those things that were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. (Luke 2:1-20)

A merry and blessed Christmas to all our readers.

A Taste of Christmas

The feast of the nativity of Our Lord has traditionally been a time for feasting and the gathering of family and friends. And since taste and smell are powerful hooks for memory, many of us have intense connections to various Christmas foods and drinks. The other holiday here in the US which is heavily food-centric is Thanksgiving, yet with a few familial variations, the Thanksgiving food palette is pretty well defined. Christmas food traditions, however, are pretty various.

The following are the foods that I most closely associate with Christmas. Please feel free to add your own favorite Christmas food memories in the comments or in a post on your own blog.

The central dish for our family Christmas dinner varied from year to year, sometimes a Christmas ham (baked with cloves stuck all over it and a sherry and brown sugar glaze) and sometimes a turkey. So the dinner I remember most was actually one seldom if ever eaten on Christmas day itself: My grandmother's tamales. Nearly every year, shortly before Christmas, my Ramirez grandmother would have all her daughters over for a day of tamale making -- and my mom would bring home her share of three or four dozen tamales. Pork, beef, and chicken tamales. Yum. Living as I do now far away (and tamale making being a big enough production that my mother seldom attempts it on her own) I try every so often to recapture my memories with locally bought tamales -- but as with any grandmother-made dish, the stuff I buy is never as good.

From the other side of the family, my strong memory is of the rum balls which my dad made most years, according to the recipe handed on from his father. One batch of rum balls included 16oz of dark rum, and seeing as the mixture was not cooked, eating one left a distinct alcoholic burn in the mouth. I recall that cocoa powder, vanilla wafers, pecans and rum were all involved, and the result was generously dusted with powdered sugar. One of these days I'll have to get hold of the recipe and try it out -- as we did with my grandfather's recipe for fraternity eggnog last year.

The third taste which is definingly Christmas-like to me is that of thick, fresh gingerbread cookies. Too often, in an effort to make something that will last months in the form of a gingerbread man or house, these are cooked until rock hard, or made with too much flower to make them denser and harder. But to my mind the perfect gingerbread cookie (my mother's recipe, of course) is thick and soft under the teeth, with strong tastes of molasses and ginger. I generally make these at least once each year, though we don't overdue it as poor MrsD can't stand the taste or smell of molasses.

Calling the New Yorker Cartoonists

The Wall Street Journal features an article on a winning new ad from Pedigree dog food: The cutest puppy in the world is pictured along with a plea to president elect Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to his children by adopting a dog from a shelter (rather than picking up one of those over-bred creatures bred for the dog market.)

Doubtless the younger generation of Obamas is campaigning hard to make sure that this is one campaign promise not put off until the economy recovers.

I don't think much of our president elect, but I must give him credit for picking a condition for dog ownership which ensures that he will not have to be the one dealing with house training and the pooper-scooper. (Surely even in a modern progressive family such as his, the universal rule that the man of the house deals with all non-human excrement producers holds. You don't exactly picture convincing Michelle to scoop the cat box, do you?)

Which leads, of course, to the obvious New Yorker cartoon. Disapproving looking mother in business attire stands with hands on hips glowering at her two well-coiffed children, between whom cowers a puppy. "Please, mommy!" begs one of the tykes. "I promise my staff will take care of him."

Undying fame

Hey! My fab sister made the ranks of TS's Blogeuses of the Catlick Blogsphere calendar! See, sis, it pays to have connections.