On blame

After Katrina, Working Assets designed a billboard which placed a photo of the submerged city alongside a quotation from famed small-government crusader Grover Norquist, stating his desire to reduce the federal government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

I always wonder how fair it is when we take a major, unforeseen disaster as evidence of a flawed ideology.

Today the AP ran a story entitled "Conservatives seek government solutions after oil spill." In it, they recall Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's 2009 promise to refuse federal stimulus money, in contrast with his eagerness to work with the federal government (and its resources) to deal with the oil spill. It's interesting to ask small-government conservatives from the region how they rationalize it, but ultimately not very satisfying: I gather that most would say that disaster recovery is precisely one of the few proper roles for the federal government. I can't tell if the reporter was fishing for hypocrisy, but I don't think there is much to be found here.

A much more lighthearted effort in this same vein is the Facebook group entitled "Plugging the Gulf oil leak with the works of Ayn Rand". Lord knows she wrote enough pages.

I know my opinion usually falls on the left, and I spend a lot of my time trying to be as charitable as possible toward the right. My aim is not to let anyone off the hook, or to conclude that the Gulf disaster is ideologically neutral. But if you think you're in a position to score ideological points off of this disaster, the relevant question is not whether you own a copy of Atlas Shrugged; it's whether you own an automobile.

When disaster strikes

I've been thinking this morning about how our society/nation/culture reacts to major disasters. When we look at the Deepwater Horizon spill, the Upper Big Branch mine collapse in early April, or even the financial collapse, Congress and the media seem to take up the public's interest by identifying those at fault and figuring out how to prevent the same thing from happening again. The answer, in each case, seems to be regulation: introduce more of it, or make sure that the regulatory structures aren't being tainted by corruption.

If you're interested in the question of blame, I highly recommend this piece from the Times-Picayune. The author thinks that what the American people need, alongside a proper outrage, is an appreciation of the technological challenges involved in both the drilling and the repair operations. He begins, "Pity the President of the United States who has to admit to the American people the limits of American know-how." Though I'm not going to make any excuses, I honestly felt similar pity for Bush during Katrina: when a cataclysmic event strikes, how much can we really expect of the federal government?

As for the question of regulation, I touched on the topic in a paper I wrote about the financial services industry for my Agrarian Theology class this semester. The problem with recovery through regulation is that these disasters keep happening because we are basing our livelihood on inherently risky enterprises:

The consensus solution to the contraction of credit markets has been to introduce governmental regulation of derivatives markets and to loan tremendous sums of money to banks (money which, of course, the federal government has borrowed from foreign creditors). It is unclear whether we have gained any cultural or moral wisdom. “A human economy cannot prescribe the terms of its own success,” Wendell Berry writes. “If we see the human economy as the only economy, we will see its errors as political failures, and we will continue to talk about ‘recovery.’” Indeed, the entire purpose of the federal government’s drastic intervention—what is meant by the term ‘recovery’—seems to be the stabilization of financial institutions so that we can resume borrowing and lending in a way that generates artificial wealth without being bounded by the limits that constrain real wealth. Constraint, of course, is a virtue well understood by farmers and entirely foreign to bankers.

More on offshore drilling

The NYT article about how the Coast Guard plans to burn up the oil spill is running underneath a banner advertisement ... for offshore drilling and underwater pipelines.

If, for some reason, you so desire, you can hear more from "the people of america's oil and natural gas industry" at this website.

Spin, Baby, Spin!!!

The Department of the Interior has finally approved a plan for a private company to build a large Wind Farm in Nantucket Sound. The payoff is not that tremendous -- an array of turbines over an area the size of Manhattan will only be able to generate about 75% of the electricity needed by the metropolises of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard. But it seems like a step in the right direction. And while I am sympathetic to opponents' concerns about disruptions to tourism, boating, and aviation, I also feel reasonably sure that we'll never end up having to set the windmills on fire in order to keep them from poisoning our food. Given the choice, I'd love to expand offshore wind farms rather than offshore drilling for oil. (The best choice, of course, would be to use less electricity.)

Durham!

Check it:

Durham, a Tobacco Town, Turns to Local Food

Engagement Rings

If you're reading this, you in all likelihood have heard already that Heather and I got engaged this past week. We're really thrilled about this change, about moving forward with wedding planning, and about our life together!

A lot of folks have been curious about our decision to both wear engagement rings. Apparently this places us on a high rung of the egalitarianism ladder. Unlike many of the things we do in life, we actually weren't trying to make a big statement with this; it just seemed like the natural thing to do. The thought process went something like this:

1. Whatever we get, we want it to be either recycled or conflict-free.
2. We don't feel too compelled to get an engagement ring with a gemstone in it.
3. Do we even want to mess with engagement rings? (Yes.)
4. Why? (To be a visible sign of our engagement.)
5. Then let's both wear something!

Eventually, I came across this design (above) by Beth Cyr, who is in Athens, Georgia. I guess they're probably designed to be wedding bands, but we needed a matching set of something interesting. The design has a single leaf, and is made of recycled silver. We're very pleased.

We've struggled a bit to explain why we both have engagement rings in a way that doesn't disparage couples who do things the traditional way. That's certainly not our intent. But I've been glad for the opportunity to spark a lot of conversations about marriage customs. My hope is that the most interesting question in people's minds might not be "Why would a man wear an engagement ring?" but, "Why not?"

Poem for spring

I don't usually take the time to read the poems in The New Yorker, but this one caught my eye a few weeks ago because of its biblical reference. It may have been more appropriately read when it was published (the March 22 issue), because since then it feels as if we've bypassed Spring and landed squarely in Summer.

The poem's title is "Ecclesiastes 11:1," which reads: "Cast your bread upon the waters, and you will find it after many days."

Ecclesiastes 11:1

We must cast our bread

Upon the waters, as the

Ancient preacher said,

Trusting that it may

Amply be restored to us

After many a day.

That old metaphor,

Drawn from rice farming on the

River's flooded shore,

Helps us to believe

That it's no great sin to give,

Hoping to receive.

Therefore I shall throw

Broken bread, this sullen day,

Out across the snow,

Betting crust and crumb

That birds will gather, and that

One more spring will come.

--Richard Wilbur

Conference pride

(I try to confine my blog posts to a few categories: news/politics, interesting theological tidbits, sermons I've written. Please forgive this week's parade of posts related to college basketball.)

In the early part of the last decade, while I was an undergraduate, it felt as if the ACC represented the cream of the crop in college basketball. But by the middle of the decade, it became increasingly clear that the Big Ten and (later) the Big East were superior, at least in terms of their NCAA tournament performance. But now that Duke has won the 2010 title, take a look at the last ten champions:

2001: Duke

2002: Maryland

2003: Syracuse

2004: Connecticut

2005: UNC

2006: Florida

2007: Florida

2008: Kansas

2009: UNC

2010: Duke

In the last decade, the ACC has produced more Final Four teams (9) and more champions (5) than any other conference. Perhaps most remarkably, 19 out of the last 23 Final Fours have featured either Duke or UNC. While all this speaks more to the reliable excellence of Duke and UNC than to the overall strength or depth of the conference, it's a good bit of evidence to keep in our back pocket in case we lose the all-important ACC-Big Ten challenge next year.

Go here to see the history of Final Four appearances.

Things that don't help our reputation.

If you harbor any stereotypes about Duke students, there's a chance they are true.

Champions!