College, Smollege (How to Save $$$$)

I'm trying to find a bright spot here. Over and over and over I ask former students how they employ the wonderful knowledge they accumulated in college, and invariably the answer is "not at all."

These are students for whom $50,000 or more of public and private money was spent, and they are telling me that it was a waste. Can this really be true? Well, perhaps not entirely. There are the intangibles: meeting people, learning some time management, figuring out how to pretend to be grown up. But there are other ways to get those things.

The reason most people give for going to college is that it is the only way to qualify for a decent job. So, it comes down to a piece of paper - the diploma. OK - thought experiment. If you pay $50,000 for a well-equipped Chevy Tahoe, at least you get something very tangible that you can use immediately and continue using for the next five to ten years. When you spend the same money for a college diploma, you have no real guarantee of anything except that you are enabled to seek a job from the small subset of companies that actually hire college graduates right out of college. Perhaps you have co-op'ed, which, in some fields, such as engineering, gives you a much better chance of landing a good job. Many employers tell me (a) they don't hire students who didn't co-op, and (b) they care much more about the co-op supervisor's report than about the student's grades. Hmmm. Bells ringing. How about skipping the "don't care" part and get right to the useful part. There is a term for this - "apprenticeship." It used to be quite popular in all walks of life, and still is the norm in noble and well-paid professions such as plumbing, electrical work, and similar trades. In most professional disciplines, this is practiced as well - medicine, nursing, pharmacy for example. In those arenas, the classes tend to be focused on things one really needs to know to be successful and/or to avoid killing people. This is not a "university education" in the classical sense. It is really a glorified vocational education.

Sadly, the most enthusiastic students in most colleges are the youngest ones. I would love to see seniors who are full of excitement and enthusiasm, ready to harness their hard-earned knowledge; brimming with ideas - sorry to leave the university, but glad to be moving on. Instead, I see mainly burned-out shells of the excited freshman that came in four-ish years ago. They have learned how to take shortcuts, cheat, cut classes, copy homework. They have figured out, in short, how to play the system to get the diploma and the grades with the least amount of work.

I have generally seen little relationship between grade point average and qualities of people I would be inclined to hire if I were running a company or a not-for-profit. Some of the high-GPA students are certainly excellent, but so are quite a few of the low-GPA students. A lot of the high-GPA students I wouldn't want anywhere near my lab, and I don't believe they could produce a practical system if it jumped up and built itself and stood in front of them and said "here I am."

The pickle we are in is a direct result of the GI Bill that Congress enacted (with good intent) to handle the huge inrush of servicemen coming home after WWII ended. The problem was that there were not enough jobs for these returning GI's. Congress' solution was to give them free or greatly reduced cost college tuition so that they could go to college while the economy adjusted. The problem is that the economy did adjust, but not in the intended way. Universities saw the GI Bill as manna from heaven. Their enrollments surged, and the tab was being picked up by the U.S. Government. Accountability and standards naturally declined, and enrollments surged even further. Quickly, the college diploma replaced the high-school diploma as the "must-have" ticket to employment.

That's pretty much where we are now, except that costs have increased so much that families are burdened with heavy debt, as are graduating students, just to earn that precious piece of paper.

As I said, I'm looking for a bright spot. I think I've seen a glimmer of it just around the corner. Online education is starting to get respectable, and more employers are begining to take note. Traditional universities are developing strategies for online delivery that still involves face-to-face meetings with teachers, lab exercises, paper tests, and much of the look and feel of a traditional classroom experience. I have a feeling that market pressure will continue to encourage this. Yes, there is something "special" about going off to college, but if we are honest, it has very little to do with learning. My recommendation (maybe 10 years from now) - get a degree online, and meanwhile, go to a third-world country and help people, join an adventure club, volunteer, read, learn a musical instrument, and fall in love.

Memorial for Butterscotch

I know rabbits are low on the food chain, but they can make wonderful pets. Ours died yesterday, and I miss him. He had a beautiful coat of fur – mostly white, with brown and black patches. We named him Butterscotch. He was very clean and used a litter box even though he lived outdoors in a hutch, so I knew something was wrong when I saw he was matted with excrement. I realized he had diarrhea. If I had known how critical his illness was, I would have rushed him to the animal hospital, but in my ignorance I cleaned him up and assumed he would get better. That was Saturday. Monday morning he was lying in his cage in his usual posture, eyes wide open, seeming to watch me come up to the cage, but he was lifeless.

We got him shortly after Easter of 2009. Sara’s school friend got one, and she wanted one too. Tom Wadsworth gave us a hutch. To this day I’m not sure how he knew we needed one, but it was a great blessing.

I worried and fretted about everything to make Butterscotch comfortable. I fenced off a little area of the lawn for him to play in – his “playpen”, and when he was small we kept a keen watch out for hawks. He would come in the house often and he loved to walk around and smell everything. He didn’t mind the dog and cat a bit. Sometimes he would lie in my lap for 30 minutes or more and just snuggle. His coat was the softest thing I’ve ever felt, and he liked to push his nose down into the crook of my elbow.

Tammy’s Dad, Mike, taught us that rabbits love to have you run your fingers down their spine. When I did that to Butterscotch he would spread out his legs and flatten himself against the ground in obvious pleasure. Sometimes he would get so caught up in it he would flip right over on his side. We could also get him to turn around in circles by putting a finger next to his nose and drawing a circle on the ground with it.

Several times, at Sara’s insistence, we put a small collar on him and tried to walk him around the yard. He always seemed to hate it- he would desperately try to pull toward the bushes at the edge of the yard. One day it suddenly dawned on me that being out in the open was probably against all of a rabbit’s instincts. No wonder he was upset. We didn’t do that anymore.

He had a few toys, but none that he played with too much. However, if you held out a stick toward him, he would grab the free end and tug on it. He was really strong and he could usually get it away from you. If you held a stick vertically, he would gnaw on it. He could make short work out of anything wood with his sharp front teeth.
Through the winter, which happened to be quite cold here this year, I insisted on putting him in our garden shed to protect him from the wind. The shed has two large windows, and I put in lights. He wintered well there, but many mornings I had to thaw his water bottle. I wanted to put in a heater, but Mike assured me that rabbits are well protected against the cold by their fur, and as long as they are out of the wind they can tolerate temperatures well below zero.

In the spring, he had grown enough that I wanted to get him a bigger hutch. I mentioned this to several people. Cliff Knight at church heard about it and gave us one that he had. Butterscotch moved up to the big time! I built him a weather box; an almost fully enclosed wooden box that fit inside the hutch where he could go to keep out of the rain and wind.

Around March, when he turned a year old, he began to dig a burrow in his playpen area of the yard. This caught me off guard. At first I assumed he was trying to dig out under the low fence I had erected. But instead, he was digging from the edge in toward the center. He was very precise in his routine, and very remarkable in his accomplishment. He used his forepaws to dig, then his teeth to remove rocks and roots. After a few minutes of digging he would turn around and push the loose material with his forelegs into a mound near the entrance to the burrow. Within a few days, working about 10 minutes each day, he dug a foot deep and far enough underground so I could no longer see him when he went in. Sometimes to get him out I would gently prod with a stick and he would scramble backwards out of the burrow in an obvious huff. He had a number of different sounds, none of them loud, but very distinct. He had no trouble expressing himself. Sometimes I would tease him by putting a stick across the entrance to his burrow. That would make him mad – he would grab it in his mouth and flip it away with a toss of his head. Then he would chirp angrily.

Mostly, I just enjoyed his rather silent company. When anyone came outside to play or work, he would observe from his hutch with calm interest. You never had the sense that he wanted to come out and join; he just liked that there was activity around. When I mowed the grass, I would make sure to give him a handful of the clippings, much to his great delight.

When I think of all the time and energy we invested into this one lowly creature some might say it wasn’t worth it, but I disagree. We had a wonderful bunny for a year and a half. We loved him the best we could, and he loved us back; of that I’m sure. We will miss you Butterscotch!

A Mad Dash to Manhattan

We recently made a trip to meet with family in Pennsylvania, and were honored to be invited to stay with my niece Rebekkah and her family (son Shannon, husband Ben, Griffin the BIG sweet dog who thinks he should be a lapdog but can't quite fit anymore, and a furtive cat whom I promise I will get to know better next time) nearby in New Jersey. On Sunday morning an errant neuron in my brain spawned a nutty idea: maybe we could go into New York City for the day; just maybe. It was still about 6:00 a.m., but as I stumbled to the coffee pot I mentioned this to Ben, for whom all things are "no problem." About 10 minutes later, with input from Ben and Rebekkah, I had a detailed description of an itinerary that was not just do-able, but actually sounded fun. Now I just needed an accomplice. I cajoled my sister Meredith, who, up to that moment, was envisioning a relaxing day reading and napping. With only that much preparation, I finally lit the fuse. Tammy - how would you and Sara like to go to New York today? (She had never been, but always dreamed of it.) I can't even try to describe the flurry of activity that ensued, but a short while later we were buzzing along I-76 toward Newark Penn Station with the Tom-Tom cranking out instructions by the second. Once there we parked at the first parking lot we encountered and walked across the street into the train station. I've always loved trains & train stations - I think it's in my blood. My Father's father was a Pennsylvania Railroad man. For $10 per person (Sara was free) we got round trip tickets to New York Penn Station. (My sister Laurie is right - consider the plight of the hapless foreigner who has to distinguish between New York Penn Station and Newark Penn Station as they are announced on the nearly unintelligible PA system!). The train was amazingly comfortable, especially if you are used to sitting on airplanes. On this one, you entered the car and then could choose to go upstairs or downstairs. We went upstairs, seated ourselves very easily, and soon the train started, almost noiselessly. As we rode across the New Jersey marshlands the view was hyper-industrial. Lots of electrical distribution, chemical storage, warehouses. Very sci-fi and grungy, but with a beauty all its own. Then the train slowed as it came to a slight rise, and suddenly all of Manhattan was visible across the Hudson River. Wow! The train proceeded, but more slowly. Then we began descending, and suddenly we were in the tunnel that would take us under the Hudson and beneath the streets of Manhattan, until we stopped at Penn Station, NY, directly under Madison Square Garden. Total train time- about 15 minutes. When we got off the train, we followed the signs to street level and were greeted by the most fantastic urban view anywhere. I snapped a photo of Tammy with Macy's in the background (how appropriate :)), and then after doing the newbie tourist 360, we hailed a cab for our first stop - MOMA. MOMA is the self-said acronym for the Museum of Modern Art. The cab ride was fast and glorious. I paid the fare (about $11 for the 4 of us) with a credit card since there was a swiper in the back seat, but I gave the driver his tip in cash, which he greatly appreciated. Once inside MOMA, Meredith had the presence of mind to ask the cashier, um, you don't actually have Egyptian artifacts, do you? The answer of course was "no - that's not exactly modern art." That's when I realized Rebekkah had named our first stop as The Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the similarity? They both have M's and A's. I make silly goofs like that all the time. Another quick cab ride, and we were at the "Met", which really does have Pharaohs and Mummies and such. Also, Monet's, Rembrandts, and various Italians. The Met is REALLY big. You can get REALLY tired going from one end to the other and from floor to floor. But it is unimaginably wonderful, and glorious, and, well, pick your favorite superlative - it fits. Hungry now, we all got hotdogs from a street vendor in front of the museum (5th Ave.), and headed for our 2nd stop - the Plaza Hotel (made famous by "Eloise at the Plaza). We walked south along 5th Avenue from the front of the Metropolitan Museum to the Plaza Hotel, a distance of 23 blocks (1.4 miles according to the GPS on my phone). Central Park was on our right the entire way, and several times we detoured into the park; once we watched the sailboats on the pond. It was hot, and we stopped several times, but the sidewalk was a never-ending moving conveyor of color and sound. Since it was Sunday, most people were tourists like us, or vendors trying to sell things to tourists like us. When we finally made it to the Plaza, we were treated like royalty (and paid like it too - two coffees, a soft drink, creme brulee, and ice cream = $55 plus tip!). While we were in the Plaza, a vigorous rainstorm blew up, and thankfully cooled off the city markedly. When we went back outside, it felt 20 degrees cooler and it was still raining lightly. No one minded - we bought two umbrellas from an enterprising vendor ($5 each), and continued south on 5th Ave. We were headed for glitz and glam shopping, but suddenly there was Tiffany's. The real deal. I think they use laser beams and mirrors or something, but I've never seen so much sparkling. The first floor is amazing, but actually tame compared with the 2nd floor, which the directory identifies as "Spectacular Jewelry." Indeed. It's not even worth describing - just use your imagination and you'll probably get a good sense of it. After I dragged Tammy out, we kept walking, but when we got to St. Patrick's Cathedral (W. 51st St. and 5th Ave.)the rain got heavier, so we took cover under some renovation. Sense took over from valor, and we hailed a cab to Bloomingdales. Leaving Tammy and Meredith there, I took Sara out front, hailed a cab, and whisked her off to almost-9 dreamland, aka American Girl Place. I enjoyed it almost as much as she did (not sure what that says about me), and she bought Rebecca with a few accessories. Cab ride back to Bloomies, cab ride for all of us back to Penn Station, quick dash into Borders, dive downstairs, catch the train back to NJ, and on the road back home. We stopped at the Clinton Diner which has a sign declaring "Lots of Good Food Inside!" Indeed there was, and we ate a lot of it.

My testimony

Christians are evangelical in principle and in practice. Each one of us has a testimony to share and has witnessed God's overwhelming grace and mercy very personally. If someone does you an unexpected kindness such as returning a lost wallet, you will likely tell a number of people, and be expressive of your thankfulness. Your gratefulness will certainly depend on what it cost that person to help you. Our instinct is to repay the cost of the favor or to tender a reward. How infinitely grateful are we, therefore, who been saved from hell into heaven by the death of Jesus upon the cross. We fall into error when try to repay our salvation by doing good things to please God. The only good thing He requires or counts is believing in the death of Jesus as the full and permanent atonement for our sin.

Like so many in this world, I was raised into a world-view that didn't include God, except as a cultural icon; a somewhat important but archaic concept that had a significant impact only in a broad sense, but not at the individual level. I tinkered with the things of God a few times growing up- going to special church services once or twice, especially when we visited relatives on vacation. I briefly joined a youth group, but more as a social activity. Nevertheless into this vacuum came God pursuing me. At the age of 33 I had a transformational experience. I was wrestling one night with dark thoughts. I was scheduled to fly across the country the next day, and I could not get the image out of my mind of dying in a plane crash. My mind would not let up on imagining the terrible final moments, and on what would happen to me after dying. I drifted into a fitful sleep, but then I was suddenly wide awake with a person standing next to me. At first I sensed it was somehow my father who had come into my childhood room; but in a fleeting instant I recalled that I was grown up and he lived far away. The person in the room introduced Himself to me as Jesus and asked why I was rejecting Him constantly. I had no answer. He asked me if I would let Him into my heart and allow Him to become Lord of my life, in return for which I would need to have no fear of death. These were terms and expressions I was not familiar with. My response was "OK - I'll give it a try." I remember nothing further except waking up in the morning with a completely changed heart, and a Spirit within that had previously been vestigial but was now fully alive and in control of all my thoughts and actions. I hungered and thirsted for the Word of God from that day on. While some of the initial exuberance of that first day of my new life has tempered, by no means has there been any abatement of my enthusiasm for the deep things of God. Twenty years later I can truly say that each day I wake with a refreshed soul and spirit, and I look forward to walking with God in the paths that he has prepared.

Many books and articles have been written by the learned ones of our time about how religious experience is a remnant function of a particular part of the brain; sort of a religion appendix. Indeed, experiments have shown that religious ecstasy can be induced repeatably by probing this area. The implication is that experiences like mine are not real- they are just brought about by external triggers that stimulate the brain's religion centers. They argue that there was some as-yet undiscovered evolutionary advantage to this behavior.

I see it very differently. Surely He who created us would endow us with the necessary functionality to commune with him. Is it really any wonder that God would put a "God-phone" in our brains so that we could call on Him and experience closeness with Him at any time?

Cash for Clunkers is a clunker

Is it just me, or is there something very, very wrong with the "cash for clunkers" mentality? Destroying working cars is a bizarre 180 on the depression-era approach of scrimping, saving, and making do with what you have. Giving people money that is not their own to encourage them to take out loans for cars they don't really need is even more wacko. Now that we have proof based on simple engineering calculations (which anyone could have surmised) that it is actually more harmful to the environment to produce a new car than to keep driving an old one, there is no good reason imaginable for this program. I'll keep driving my two clunkers (combined age of 27 years) as long as they will keep going. I have no car payments, so I tolerate the inevitable repair bills. As a bonus, my car tags are really cheap. Of course I understand the theory that this will kickstart the economy, but what happens in a few months? Even if the economy does pick up in general, the auto industry will be in a pickle because everyone already bought their new cars, and loan defaults will probably skyrocket - I don't imagine the dealers are being really picky about who they sell to right now. I hope the health care package includes ulcer treatment; I think I'll need it.

Health Insurance or Health Care?

Congress is all wrapped up trying to solve the wrong problem right now. "Health insurance for everyone!" is the cry as the debate rages on in Washington and across the nation. What we need is health CARE for everyone - a much different proposition. The problem is that we have become secularized to the point that the federal government is assuming roles that used to be performed by family and church. In the great Chicago fire, not one dime of federal money was spent to assist. None was ever expected. No one suggested impeaching the president because he didn't respond fast enough. No one imagined that as a role for the federal government. Now it's expected to fix every little scrape and bruise for everyone in the whole country. The wrong people are in charge of health care: money-grubbers and financial wizards who are focused on dollars instead of patients. We think it's normal to have giant health-care corporations. That's not normal, it's sickening. Hospitals should be non-profit, Christ-centered, people-oriented havens where love and health care are dispensed in equal measure. A trip to the doctor should involve questions like "what's going on in your life?" as a regular and normal part of the examination. The only people who really benefit from health insurance are the insurance companies. There was a time in our existence as a nation when no one had health insurance. Doctor fees were reasonable, treatment was much more careful and specific, drug companies were not in cut-throat competition to push out the latest copycat drug that they could charge outrageously for, and when a family faced medical expenses they could not afford, friends, family, and church gathered their resources to help. I believe that is much closer to the way God intends for us to live than anything being proposed in Washington.

Luke 10:27

"...'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

Energy Policy as Religion

I was doing some research to guide my thinking about the current Energy bill before Congress, H.R. 2454, known formally as "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009." I thought I was on to something useful in the form of a government-wide research program report from the United States Global Change Research Program. ("The USGCRP began as a presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606)...") Sadly mistaken was I, as Yoda might say. In Washington, it seems that all responsible scientific inquiry has been thrown, nay catapulted violently, out the window. The particular report I just referred to is a vigorous defense of the human-induced global warming hypothesis, combined with an undisguised partisan diatribe against the opposing view. Your tax dollars at work. There are plenty of alternative viewpoints. For example, see the U.S Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works minority page here.

My personal view is that our Creator, the Lord God, has created the world and its environment for the benefit of his special creation, namely us. We have a very serious responsibility to use resources wisely and in a way that demonstrates our love for our Creator and utmost respect for His creation. Sadly, many people in the world have become worshipers of creation rather than worshipers of the Creator. My free-thinking, tolerant liberal friends, for example, can't seem to tolerate the idea that the climate might actually change (doesn't it do that anyway?). They keep changing the terminology on us. When (and why) did we switch from "global warming" to "climate change" as the name of the evil thing. I think God gave us oil reserves to use wisely, and so we should. The current idea that we should replace them with solar and wind is techologically, economically, and environmentally unsound. I recently calculated the area of solar cells needed to power my medium-sized town, population around 40,000. We would need about 1 square mile of panels to replace the grid. That's one square mile of sun not falling on the ground. Talk about environmental and economic impact. Wind farms are at least as bad- very costly and also harmful to the environment through low-frequency noise, bird injury, and airstream deflection. We should conserve energy (waste not, want not my parents always taught), but we need not be afraid to use it if it provides a benefit. Unmasked, "green" is a religion, not a science. It is idol worship, the idol being planet earth.

Exodus 20: 3-4

3 "You shall have no other gods before me.

4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.