Geeks were chic last year. Even Katie Couric says so.

This December, Beauty and the Geek wrapped up its fourth season. NBC premiered Chuck, starring a Nerd Herder, and ABC started Big Bang Theory, featuring two “brainiacs” who “can tell their quarks from their quantum physics, but have no clue how women add up.” Hollywood witnessed the success of gentle geeks like Juno’s Michael Cera.

Spencer Koppel, founder and manager of Geek 2 Geek, told WoW his geek dating service has seen more women seeking geeky men. When he started Geek 2 Geek in 2004, the ratio was 70% male to 30% female. Now the ratio is about 55% male to 45% female, and some of the 50,000 users are female beauties seeking geeks. One profile features a pretty blonde who admits, “Honestly: I’m not a geek at all. … I just joined this site because I’m into nerdy guys who wear glasses.”

It may sound trivial, but women’s interest in geeks reflects a shift in cultural values. Koppel, who will soon attend his fiftieth high school reunion, said, “When I was going to school as a geek it was kind of rough.” Couric said pop culture is finally valuing brains over beauty. Carrie Sloan of Tango wrote, “There’s been a paradigm shift, and the very stuff that used to be geeky — gadgets, technology, interactivity — is suddenly sexy.” Sloan quoted cultural anthropologist Kevin Anderson: “The supernerd embodies one of the primary obsessions of our current times: ability to access information.”

Koppel added that some things haven’t yet changed. Female geeks aren’t seeing the same popularity. According to Geek 2 Geek surveys, males – even geeks – still value looks over intelligence. But when it comes to pocket-protected guys with glasses and gadgets, American Hi-Fi is right: The geeks get the girls.

The story of Eman Jabbar and Luay Rudha begins much like that of Romeo and Juliet’s–but theirs has a much better ending. When Jabbar, a Sunni, met Rudha, a Shiite, it was love at first sight. But Jabbar’s family wouldn’t agree to the marriage–and then came the war, pitting Sunnis against Shiites, followed by a concrete wall separating the two groups. Six years later, though, love conquers all, and offers proof that progress is happening in Iraq.

News broke over the weekend that Fox News analyst and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol will be taking arguably one of the most sought-after jobs in print punditry: a yearlong op-ed columnist gig with The New York Times. The Huffington Post first reported the rumor on Friday, and the Times made its official announcement the next day.

Since then, the Left has erupted in outraged fury, threatening to cancel subscriptions, particularly on the blogs, with The Nation’s Katha Pollitt topping it off by telling readers: “Just shoot me.” Running amok are conspiracy theories like this one connecting Rupert Murdoch, who owns The Weekly Standard, to a plot to infiltrate and sink the Times with second-rate talent, advantaging his newly acquired Wall Street Journal.

Fairer-minded critics object to Kristol because of his over-the-top opinions, his perceived buddy-buddy relationship with the White House and his notoriety as perhaps the most unrelenting pundit-advocate of the Iraq war, one who also advises additional military action against Iran. They contend he lacks mainstream appeal by pointing out that in December Time effectively fired Kristol, whose once-prominent column in the magazine had undergone a slow fade into obsolescence. The hard-headed Kristol has fueled the fire. He told Politico.com he’s “flattered watching blogosphere heads explode.”

Times’ editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal has tried to defend the Gray Lady’s move, saying “this weird fear of opposing views” puzzles him. “We have views on our op-ed page that are as hawkish or more so than Bill,” he said.
The Times is giving a voice to “a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual,” he added, “and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that?”

The response to Kristol becomes more bizarre in light of the fact that currently The New York Times has just one center-of-right columnist: David Brooks, a “National Greatness” conservative who’s also an old Kristol acolyte. It has seven others occupying varying shades of leftiness — from Tom Friedman to Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich. And Brooks’ lone voice of conservatism, however revered, is itself an aberration: Being Jewish, pro-choice and a supporter of gay marriage, Brooks is an anomaly.

In reality, the Kristol’s selection may point to how narrow-mindedly the Times defines conservatism, says Jonah Goldberg: Kristol and Brooks are both considered neoconservatives, part of a group much derided by the Left whose brand of nation-building interventionism reshaped President Bush’s foreign policy after 9/11. As more conservatives distance themselves from the gung-ho policies of Kristol and his Standard, many on the Right say they, too, would have preferred someone else. But despite the shots from both the Left and Right, few critics have offered up their alternatives to Kristol, whose Harvard Ph.D. and professorship, editorship of an influential magazine, chairmanship of the Project for the New American Century and bloodline as son of one of conservatism’s most influential figures make his résumé — at least up next to the other Times columnists’ — hard to fault.

Photo: Fox News Channel

Marc Forster seemingly designed his movie, The Kite Runner, for those who read the book. I confess to not being one of them. Considering the number of people who have recommended this novel, I feel the odd-man-out; the movie exaggerated this sensation.

Not that I found the story complex. The tale begins in San Francisco, where Amir gets a call from an old friend asking him to come home and to “be good again.” This quest is the heart of the story. With the phone call, we journey back with Amir to his childhood in Kabul, playing with his best friend Hassan, whom Amir betrays.

As we see the betrayal and its ramifications on the friendship, we also see the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Amir and his father’s flight to America, and Amir’s path to manhood, marriage, and peace with his dying father. All these details, book readers assure me, carefully follow the novel’s structure.

This was precisely the problem with the film. Watching The Kite Runner resembled reading a book report, all details and little emotion. I tired quickly of Amir’s exile in America… the community of Afghans, the wedding ceremony, the father’s illness… because it seemed unrelated to Amir’s betrayal of Hassan and his need for redemption. Having been given the thesis and argument, I failed to see the significance of these details, feeling that they interfered with the film’s heart. As for Hassan, I choose to be vague because his story (he is the title character) carries the emotional weight of the film and thus the reason to see it. It is also his story that earns the movie its “PG-13” rating. These scenes include violent assaults upon children and are not suitable for the young.

One Associated Press site has a one-question survey: When a new year rolls around, one of the first things I do is:

- settle in for lots of football.

- make New Year’s resolutions.

- start a new diet.

- start working on my income tax return.

- spend time in prayer and devotion.

- replace batteries in the smoke detectors.

- update my will.

I’m adding a couple of other choices:

- organize clutter.

- set up my new planner pages.

Which of these things will you do? What other things would you add to the list of what you usually do at the beginning of a new year?

Kristina Robb Dover is a hospital chaplain, and she says that the Health and Wealth Heresy (ala Joel Osteen) is trickling into hospital chaplaincy.  This is evidenced, she argues, by two things:

The first is that the terminally ill patient is always right. Because he is on the threshold of death, he is presumed to enjoy greater access to virtue and judgment than is attainable by those who dwell in the land of the living. He attains a kind of sanctified status.

The second assumption is that death, embodying a “natural” transition to a carefree afterlife, is a good in itself.

Dover says that for a Christian chaplain, these two commonplaces of the death experience constitute “some disturbing theological implications.”

Disturbing Theological Implication #1: “[A]n orthodox Christian understanding of human sin and our need for divine pardon is outmoded and inadmissible. Guilt, regret, or a conviction of divine wrath only fosters unnecessary discomfort, and must therefore be eliminated.”

Disturbing Theological Implication #2: “The chaplain must leave his ‘theology’ at the door before entering a patient’s room. The chaplain’s primary purpose is to embrace the patient’s definitions of truth and salvation, whatever they might be, with the goal of helping him feel affirmed and, in turn, pain-free and comfortable.”

So, what’s a chaplain - or any minister who ministers to those who are dying - to do?

Egyptian law forbade abortion except to save the life of the mother or in the case of fetal abnormality. But the Cairo-based Islamic Research Council, a division of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning, has issued a change: Any woman pregnant by rape must abort the baby immediately to maintain “social stability”.

That story, in the Daily Telegraph, got me wondering: What does Islam say about abortion?

Here’s a brief but comprehensive overview published by the BBC. Interestingly, I found myself wishing that Christian doctrine were as explicit on one point as Islamic doctrine: That a child should not be killed because its parents worry about how they will provide for it.
 

As Congress prepares to take up the question of sex-ed funding, you’ll see lots of articles on sex-ed. Most of them will say abstinence-only education doesn’t work. Here’s one that takes a more evenhanded approach.

HT: krm

It’s probably fitting that the tradition of declaring a new year’s resolution began with the Babylonians, associated as that culture is with wickedness and excess, which are usually the catalysts for my own resolutions. The passing of another year leads me to reflect on my unachieved aspirations. It makes me think about the great crevice between what I am and who I want to be. It generally leaves me, in other words, down in the dumps. Self-flagellating by nature and training, I try to rectify these feelings of failure by virtue of my Babylonian resolutions of excess: exercise more, pray more, read more, write more, do more, be more.

At dinner last night my wife pointed out how often we take our goal-orientation to the Lord. She told me about friends who, though they didn’t think it would be possible, decided to go through the adoption process with their foster child. That’s how they explained it, she said, that God had called them to go through the adoption process. Our temptation is to think that God is calling us to the end goal — in their case, to adoption. We project our goal-orientation onto God, and in doing so we make him too small and too big. Too small because we imagine that he needs us to achieve his ends, that this is the bulk of his working with us, to accomplish a heavenly To Do list. We make him too big at the same time, however, because we forget that he is authoring and perfecting our faith, which is less about achieving grand objectives than indwelling us, enduring with us, suffering with us, and ultimately, conquering with us.

He is much more God-with-us than God-through-us, yet I find myself seeing the world through the lens of my accomplishments, and seeing the Lord that way as well. What does he want me to do here? What is he going to make happen as a result of this trial or tragedy? When is he going to change these difficult circumstances? That when is frequently on my mind, caught up as I am in my goals. Not only do I imagine that God is trying, like me, to get a lot of things done, I imagine that he is at my disposal, to help me with my list. I talk a good game about being his instrument and so on, but in my heart I often have it backwards, asking his help with my will, rather than offering myself to his will.

And I forget that his will includes my transformation. I’m busily trying to improve my circumstances, and he is patiently improving me — though often I work against him — in those very circumstances I petition him to change. I imagine that there is some great work out there that he and I need to roll up our sleeves and get done, quick, before another year passes. Perhaps there are some things he has in mind to use me for, but I think I need to focus less on the accomplishments of my hands and more on the transformation of my spirit. I need to pray for the stillness that is an end to resistance and stubbornness, which are two of my many flaws.

It’s not exactly a new year’s resolution I’m after, fraught as that phrase is with human effort. I think what I need, instead, is a new year’s resignation. Rather than roaring into January with a flurry of new efforts, I think I will begin with as much stillness, and listening, and patience as I can muster. Because the real work at hand, at least for me, is in the depths of my own heart.