A new bank

I posted this on my blog, and thought it would be interesting to discuss on this blog as well.

I have several blog posts churning around in my head. One on the current financial situation and God's economy. One about ministering to those that hold positions of power. One about the importance of mission of outreach in the face of recession and depression. But, the thoughts haven't crystalized quite yet. Maybe they aren't appropriate for a blog post, but rather a conversation or two.

Earlier this fall, Peter and I switched banks for our savings account. I read a book about consumerism this summer that got me thinking more about the relationship between micro and macro economics and our community. As an urban planner/community developer, my partner Peter found a great bank in Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland called ShoreBank. Their misssion is "to be a community development and environmental bank that enjoys a proud heritage of serving Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. ShoreBank is committed to building stronger communities, creating a healthier environment, and helping its customers achieve financial success. When you bank at ShoreBank, you will experience friendly, expert customer service while also having the satisfaction of knowing that your deposits will have a positive impact in the community."

I can't argue with that. Not only is their savings account high yielding (as competitive as an ING account), but it also gives back to the community. Something "conservatives" and "liberals" can agree on.

Check out the history and vision here.

I won't pontificate about the current situation of other banks. It's complex. The solution will be complex. But, I am encouraged that there are alternative options for stewarding money and resources.

Also, if anyone is looking for a helpful budgeting/finance tool: mint.com has become our new friend. I'm visual, and seeing a pie chart of our expenses each month by category is great. The software is free, safe, and great.

What are your thoughts on money and the economy? What does stewardship of resources look like? Is there a boundary between stewardship and hoarding?

Why We Disagree

Why is it that conservatives and liberals have a hard time agreeing on anything? Clearly there is something very different about the way we see the world. Thomas Sowell's book A Conflict of Visions - Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles attempts to describe these two very different worldviews. Sowell is a conservative economist and while most of his books promote conservatism, I think he's even handed in this book. Here's his take, I'm interested to see if you guys agree or disagree.

Sowell's argument is that the basic difference is that conservatives ("constrained vision") see human nature as unchanging and fundamentally selfish while liberals ("unconstrained vision") see human nature as something that can be changed and improved. These opposing visions then have very different ideas about how society and government should function.

Conservatives then see society as constantly evolving as people, using limited resources and limited reason, establish a society that correctly harnesses man's true nature. Limited government with checks and balances is seen as an ideal system, as politicians and the elite are not exempt from man's basic, selfish nature. Capitalism recognizes the role of incentives in behavior and rewards self interested people for creating goods and services that help others. Justice requires procedural fairness and not results-based fairness.

Liberals on the other hand, think that people can be brought closer to their potential by instituting wiser and more moral policies. They believe that people can be conditioned to do the right thing for the right reason, rather than out of self interest. While conservatives seek the best trade off using limited resources, liberals seek an equitable solution. The elite, with their superior wisdom and morals, should guide the masses toward a more perfect society. Even if there is procedural fairness, there can't be justice is there is too much inequality.

Most people are not all the way in either camp, but does this sound about right?

Bucket List

Have any of you seen this movie. It isnt novel and it isnt all that well done. It isnt a new idea, but it really got me thinking. The premise of the movie is that these two guys get terminal cancer and set out on a quest to accomplish some tasks and have some experiences before they die. Sometimes I get really frustrated with my life because I think it is too mundane. Over the past few years I really havent been seizing life in both little and big things. It is so hard with a baby and school and work. Jaime and I got to talking about our bucket lists and what we wanted to do both in the short term and long term. Simple things like trying a new restaurant, going on a short trip to bigger things like vacations or excursions. Anyway I think it is an interesting scenario because on the one hand it is a very narcissistic endeavor but life is only what we make out of it. It is more than just resolutions. What are the experiences in life that we have to seize to flesh out deficiencies. I was on a role this summer. A friend and I took a baseball trip and watched games at fenway, yankee stadium, and shea. Then Jaime I went to see Radiohead on their Rainbows tour (really great light show by the way) we even went to this mexican restaurant that we have been meaning to try for like 2 years (it was terrible, but now i know). Anyway I need to get back to work. By the way this post was on my list I have been meaning to write it for several months.

Ra Ra Riot

I just got Ra Ra Riot's album - the Rhumba Line. It's really good. Their sound is somewhere in between Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend and the Shins. Here's their single, Dying Is Fine.

The Story of Stuff

I support my freedom to read what I want!

Read this today. It could qualify as a list of my favorite books! Do we really want a vice president who wants to tell us what not to read????


"Here is a list of books that Sarah Palin tried to have banned from
the Wasilla Public Library, according to the official minutes of the
Library Board. When she was unsuccessful at having these books
banned, she tried to have the librarian fired.

*/_This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla
Library Board._/**

As many of you will notice, it is a hit parade for book burners.*

*A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Woul d Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawre nce
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher
Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zi lpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster
Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween
Symbols by Edna Barth*"

Everything that happens...

Here's a quick little music review before school starts and I'm too busy to even trim my toenails (sorry).

If you ever got into Talking Heads you know David Byrne, the genius award-winning front-man with a quirky sense of humor. He's pure artist, dappling in opera, set design, sculpture, and every and any type of collaboration.

His most recent collaboration is a 30-years-in-the-making album with "the father of ambient music" Brian Eno. Eno is also a songwriter and collaboration king, working with U2, David Bowie and many others.

Together they created "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today", which you can hear here. Eno describes the sounds saying: "Upon starting this project, we quickly realized we were making something like electronic gospel, music in which singing becomes the central event, but whose sonic landscapes are atypical of such vocal-centered tracks. This notion tapped into my long love affair with gospel music, which, curiously, was inadvertently initiated by David and the Talking Heads."

Beautiful original songs, great for listening to while traveling, making out (haha), working, or relaxing.

Barack Roll

This made me laugh to beat the band. Parts, anyway...

Infanticide in Illinois

A few years ago, a couple in the Chicago area found out that their unborn baby had Down syndrome. They decided to abort the child, so doctors induced labor at Christ's Hospital. The violent contractions almost always kill the baby at this stage in its development. This one lived. Jill Stanek, a nurse, was shocked at what happened next. The baby was not placed in an incubator, he was left to die. Someone suggested they put him in a linen closet until he died, but Jill took the child in her arms until he died, 45 minutes later.

Jill soon found that it is perfectly legal in Illinois to let a premature baby die if he is born in this way. She eventually found her way to state senator Patrick O'Malley, who proposed legislation to right this wrong. The bill was careful not to infringe about the "right" to abortions (this is Illinois after all). It stated that "the words 'person,' 'human being,' 'child,' and 'individual' include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.” All babies who were actually born would then have to be treated, whether or not they were wanted.

Only one state senator spoke in opposition. His name is Barack Obama. His comments on March 30, 2001:

There was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with respect to caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit further, and so … this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a nine-month-old — child that was delivered to term. That determination, then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.

Essentially he argues that infants born this way may or not be "persons," but that their rights as persons are secondary to the constitutional right to an abortion. Therefore, infanticide is necessary to maintain this right.

Obama pledged in July 2007 that "the first thing" he will do as president is to erase all federal and state restrictions on abortion. His top priority would be to re-legalize partial birth abortion and to force states to fund abortions. Barack Obama is a "new kind of politician" alright. He is new in the sense that he is more to the extreme left than anyone in the Senate. In 2001 the Senate considered similar legislation to the bill Obama opposed in Illinois, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. It passed 98-0.

I know most of you are leaning towards Obama, but does this trouble you? I would never argue that being a Christian means you have to vote a certain way, but how does the abortion issue factor into who how you vote?

The Population Dilemma

Hello my sleepy bloggers. Hope you are all having an enjoyable summer.

In an effort to encourage some discussion, I thought I'd mentioned this article I read about environmental effects of overpopulation and over-consumption. Obviously this is a problem: more people = more stuff = toll on natural resources. Simple math.

My question is: what do you think we can do about it? The article talks of needing new models of growth, new concepts of living, possible re-haul of our global society. Since most of us are entering that phase in our life where we are starting to think about possibly having children, I want to know if this influences your thinking. Would you not have children solely as a reaction? Would you adopt instead? Do you think it's ridiculous to even consider alternative options?

While overpopulation may not seem a problem right now, one cannot deny the fact that it is forecasted to be a problem when our children are grown. Is there anything TO do?