Inspired by a similar game in a David Lodge novel, some writers at New York magazine recently played “Humiliation,” where you sit around in a circle and admit what classic novel or movie you’ve never seen.  Some films they admitted never having seen were E.T., Schindler’s List, Gone With the Wind, and Citizen Kane.  So what about you?  What great films have you never seen?  I must admit, I’ve never seen a Hitchcock film in its entirety.  I saw the first ten minutes of the first two Pirates of the Caribbean films and found them terrific bores.  I’ve never seen a film with Marilyn Monroe.  Admitting such is not necessarily a humiliation, but films do make the fabric of much of our national cultural mythos, and so it’s interesting to hear what stories haven’t shaped our experiences and imaginations.

In case you missed it this week, the International Olympic Committee banned Iraq’s Olympic team from next month’s games in Beijing because of the Iraqi government’s “political interference in the Olympic movement.” This “interference” was the naming of a new national Olympic committee that was not recognized by the IOC. According to the Iraqi government, a new committee was necessary because of corruption on the old one along with the fact that four committee members, including its chairman, had been kidnapped and their whereabouts were unknown. Of course, eight years ago, when Saddam Hussein’s brutal son Uday was in charge of the team—raping, torturing, and murdering athletes who fell short of his expectations—the IOC looked the other way.

An editorial from yesterday’s Washington Post describes the hypocrisy of the current situation:

“That [the IOC] has chosen to crack down on the democratically elected government that replaced the Hussein regime—while welcoming to Beijing Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan, all of which it must consider innocent of any ‘political interference’ in sport—says a good deal more about the values of the international Olympic bureaucracy than it does about Iraq.”

Negotiations are underway to get the team reinstated. “We still have the hope the Iraqi flag will fly at the opening ceremony in Beijing,” said Jazair al-Sahlani, a spokesman for the disputed Iraqi Olympic committee.

When I was a kid, my mother always signed my siblings and me up for our library’s summer reading program. I still remember the thrill of getting an ink stamp on my reading log each week–and collecting little trinkets intended as incentives to keep reading.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that my public library now offers a summer reading program for adults, too. Each adult who reads 15 hours receives a reusable library bag, a coupon for a coffee from the library cafe, and a free ticket to a local baseball game. According to one of the librarians, the program generated a much bigger response than was initially expected.

Did any of you have the opportunity to participate in an adult summer reading program? How about your children?

On Saturdays, we consider a passage of Scripture:  

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

Hebrews 2:1-4

Happy Saturday!

Today’s quote is from a movie: “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.”

“Sonnet XVI: To the Lord General Cromwell” by John Milton

Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough’d,

And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud
Hast rear’d God’s trophies, and his work pursu’d,
While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbru’d,
And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises loud,

And Worcester’s laureate wreath; yet much remains
To conquer still: peace hath her victories
No less renown’d than war. New foes arise

Threat’ning to bind our souls with secular chains:
Help us to save free Conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw.

John Milton is 400 years old this year, eternally speaking, and Stanley Fish writes about why Milton is such a superior poet.  It is important to note, while reading Fish’s encomium, that Milton was a Puritan.

Rather than being employed for its own sake, [Milton’s] poetry is always in the service of ideas and moral commitments, and it is always demanding that its readers measure themselves against the judgments it repeatedly makes - judgments about the nature of virtue, about the proper mode of civil and domestic behavior, about the true shape of heroism, about the self-parodying bluster of military action, about the criteria of aesthetic excellence, about the uses of leisure, about one’s duties to man and God, about the scope and limitations of reason, about the primacy of faith, about everything.

Of course, the quality of his work transcended merely Puritan concerns, which is what makes it so lasting, and some to which all Christian writers should aspire.  You can read some of his poems here, and I’ll post one in just a few minutes.

We post a lot about food, foodies, and the culture of food growing, so I also want to post this funny short essay from The New Yorker: “Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers.”  Here are a few of my favorites:

• “Top thick slices of country bread with fresh goat cheese. Sprinkle with herbs and bake until crusty; serve to everyone but Jeff.”
• “Vegetarian friends? Try veggie rumaki: wrap a strip of imitation bacon around a water chestnut, spear with a toothpick, and broil-but instead of imitation bacon use real bacon, and instead of a water chestnut use veal.”
• “Steal Cheryl’s famous potato-salad recipe. When Cheryl asks, ‘Why did you steal my recipe?,’ say, ‘I don’t know, Cheryl, why did you break my heart?’ Then laugh so she knows you’re just kidding.

You just can’t have too many good recipes.

What do the men on the following list have in common:

Ludwig van Beethoven
Nicolaus Copernicus
Rene Descartes
Edward Gibbon
Horace
Soren Kierkegaard
Sir Isaac Newton
Blaise Pascal
George Santayana
Adam Smith
Leonardo da Vinci
St. Paul

Two things, really.  First, they are some of the great minds and talents of Western Civilization.  Second, they were all bachelors.  In this piece in The New English Review, Christopher Orlet considers the benefits of bachelorhood.  Marriage has its champions, but not all were meant for it.  And I’ve known many good men who have been called to a life of celibacy (not that all bachelors are celibates, by any stretch).

Some years ago a noted Japanese researcher analyzed the biographical data of some 280 famous mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and biologists and discovered that all peaked professionally in their twenties, at which point their careers spiraled downward. Married scientists suffered the worst decline in productivity. However, those who never married remained highly productive well into their fifties. “Scientists tend to ‘desist’ from scientific research upon marriage,” the researcher told an interviewer, “just like criminals desist from crime upon marriage.” One theory suggests married men lack an evolutionary reason to continue working hard (i.e., to attract females). Though it likely they similarly lack the prerequisite time and solitude.

I might qualify Orlet’s statement to say that married men don’t suffer a decline in productivity.  They just produce other things that are more commonplace: babies, families, other kinds of work.  But I can testify: my most productive years of writing - at least regarding quantity - were in my twenties, in graduate school, when I was without wife or child.  I worked 18 hour days, mostly writing and reading and talking about both.  Those were halcyon days.  I still write now, but in far less quantity and hopefully far more quality.  Nevertheless, I am productive.  I have the human beings to show for it.

We Americans may think we know a thing or two about political satire, but we don’t have anything on the Brits. Gerard Baker, the United States editor and an assistant editor of The Times of London, is, as they say, “spot on” in his column today, which chronicles Barack Obama’s world tour:

“And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth—for the first time—to bring the light unto all the world.

“He travelled fleet of foot and light of camel, with a small retinue that consisted only of his loyal disciples from the tribe of the Media.”

I can’t do it justice in this short post, so read the whole thing here.