Strangest airport ever

Here.

Is this for real?

On this day 68 years ago

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been reading excerpts from four centuries of English diaries each day, following along in the Faber Book of Diaries.

Somewhat comforting to think that we all have similar problems, no matter the year or how famous we may be. For example, 68 years ago today Noel Coward noted in his diary that “Obviously, no matter how hard I work, I shall never be able to save any money.”

Next four churches in the Church Visiting series

Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious

I attend the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Haddonfield, NJ, where I listen to lots of very soothing reading on the topic of Truth.

Here comes my Lord, on a cross

I attend Kingsway Assembly of God Church, in Cherry Hill, NJ, where I hear two pastors give impassioned exhortations concerning the Lord’s supper.

I was moved in the Lord’s power to thresh their chaffy, light minds

I attend Haddonfield Friends meeting, where I sit in comfortable silence in a very old meetinghouse, inspect the graffiti carved into the old pews, and listen to some thoughts on death. I read George Fox’s Autobiography in preparation for this visit, and am dumbstruck.

If I Could Hie to Kolob

I attend the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Cherry Hill, NJ in another attempt to see an entire Mormon service. Again I arrive at the wrong time.

This is in no way an ecumenical event

Covenant Presbyterian Church
Cherry Hill, NJ
July 15, 2007

In July I attended another type of Presbyterian Church, a congregation in the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) denomination. This group formed in the 1970s, coming together as a group of churches affiliated with other Presbyterian groups but unhappy with liberal tendencies among those churches, such as ordination of women and rejection of Biblical inerrancy. Many people also believe that they were upset by the mainstream church’s opposition to the war in Vietnam and support for the civil rights movement and the Equal Rights Amendment. The PCA has been concentrated in the deep South, with headquarters in Georgia, although the denomination has many evangelical and missionary outreaches to other areas of the country. They have about 330,000 members in the US -- a rather small group.

Sweet yellow cherry tomatoes

Today I went to the local Farmers’ Market. It’s crowded, so I had to park a few blocks away. On my walk, I happened to notice this garden, which seemed to be bursting through the white fence:

I walked around to the side, and was able to see into the yard:

How lovely!

In front, the owners of the house seemed to be having a quiet brunch on their beautiful porch:

I love these small New Jersey towns.

Back home, I unloaded my haul from the market:

Everything looks good, but the yellow cherry tomatoes are the real find today – wonderful flavor!! I made a tomato, basil, and mozzarella salad for lunch:

What a nice start to the weekend!

Violent crime rate tracks lead poisoning levels two decades earlier

"Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries. "It is stunning how strong the association is," Nevin said in an interview. "Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead."

. . . Most of the theories [on why crime has declined in recent decades] have been long on intuition and short on evidence. Nevin says his data not only explain the decline in crime in the 1990s, but the rise in crime in the 1980s and other fluctuations going back a century. His data from multiple countries, which have different abortion rates, police strategies, demographics and economic conditions, indicate that lead is the only explanation that can account for international trends.

Because the countries phased out lead at different points, they provide a rigorous test: In each instance, the violent crime rate tracks lead poisoning levels two decades earlier. [italics added] "

Article in Washington Post

I find this fascinating, and immensely disturbing. Disturbing because it’s more evidence (to me, at least) for a wholly materialistic theory of personality. In addition, although I’m happy to be a Presbyterian, I don’t find this particular kind of predestination very comforting.

The fact that minute amounts of various chemicals can have profound effects upon our personalities – you might as well say upon our souls – is something that anyone interested in theorizing about sin and responsibility should find very, very troubling. We have abundant evidence that it’s so – just look at antidepressants and various other mood-altering chemicals, including such stand-bys as alcohol. There’s also the evidence of inherited genetic defects, and problems of metabolism, and so on.

Sometimes an invisible miniature alteration to a gene or bond or process somewhere in these astounding bodies of ours has profound effects upon stuff that we like to think of as immaterial and also basically under our control – our wishes, thoughts, habits, inclinations, personalities, abilities, moods, -- ourselves.

The older I get, the less I am inclined to think we should punish folks who have trouble doing the right thing. The more I am inclined to think, “There but by the grace of God (or my metabolism, or my genes) go I.”

I am reminded of a friend who has worked for many years with the mentally ill homeless and semi-homeless population in Philadelphia, who says that at the end of it all, her conclusion is “They’re doing the best they can. We’re all doing the best we can. But it’s a lot harder for them than for us.”

Photo courtesy Flickruser Dominic's pics

Schiller had spent the last 25 years of his life creating the pins, using a tool too small to be seen by the naked eye.

Convicted forger, in Sing Sing, etching the Lord's Prayer onto the heads of seven pins - six silver and one gold.

According to the link, the work caused him to go blind.