Laura and I are quite a bit behind in our movie-watching. I was interested in both X-Men 2 and The Matrix Reloaded, but never actually got out to the theater to see either of them. I'll probably catch them on video eventually. In fact, we haven't been to a movie theater since Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers premiered back in December. On the other hand, I just heard about a movie that opened this weekend about the life of Luther. And it's not some two-bit hack job of a "Christian movie" either, but a real big-budget production with real talent (Joseph Fiennes as Martin Luther, Sir Peter Ustinov as his patron Prince Frederick the Wise). I watched the trailer the other day, and it actually looked interesting and exciting. Everything I have heard so far indicates that this movie gets the history right on, and is respectful of both Catholics and Lutherans, while exposing the corruption that existed at the time and showcasing Luther's bold action and insights, which literally changed the world. I'm starting to get excited to see this, and may actually make it to a movie theater!

My original point was going to be that we actually did watch a movie, and a pretty neat one, last night at a friend's house. It was called Enchanted April. It's based on a 1922 novel and stars Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright (who was nominated for an Oscar). The basic story is that four women who hardly know each other rent a castle in Italy for a month. Although they all intend to simply keep to themselves and take a respite from their dreary London lives, they soon grow together and eventually learn life lessons that change not only their immediate points of view, but also the orientation of their lives after returning home. Sounds like a "chick flick," doesn't it? Well, I'd be hard-pressed to deny it. There's no action, no steamy love scenes, not even a real villain of any kind. But who says that a good movie needs to be built on such formulas? At least it's not single-mindedly focused on two people falling in love, which is my personal definition of the obnoxious variety of "chick flick."

EA is highly character-driven, and I found the characters to be quite engaging and pleasant. The movie strongly affirms many wholesome things of life, especially marriage, in a way that I really appreciate. None of its messages is any great revelation, but there are some principles that we can always stand to be reminded of. In particular, several characters come to realize that they have perpetuated their own misery and bitterness by holding it inside them, to the point that it stunts their ability to connect with their spouses in any real way. Although one resists the vulnerability that comes with reaching out, with no guarantee that her offer of herself will be reciprocated, she does do it and finds healing. This fits right in with the themes of Offense and Forgiveness that have been on my mind for the past couple years.

Enchanted April is a very "sweet" movie, so you are warned if you're the kind of person who doesn't like that. But if you're in the mood for something short, pleasant, and uplifting, I would recommend this movie. 

Posted by Matt on 9/29/2003 03:24:00 AM -- Permalink --  0 comments

Sadly, my Boys in Blue once again will not be in the playoffs. The Dodgers actually did rather well this season, staying alive in the pennant race until nearly the end (only today, with just three games left in the regular season, were they finally mathematically eliminated from any hope of the postseason). Following a tradition going back to the great Sandy Koufax, their pitching was something to be particulary proud of. Dodgers pitchers overall allowed barely more than 3 earned runs per game, which is almost half a run per game better than any other team. Unfortunately, their defensive excellence was balanced out by a hitting attack that was nothing short of pathetic, scoring fewer runs than any other team in baseball, and only scarcely more than their pitchers allowed. Dodger games this year have featured quite a lot of scores like 2-1 and 3-2.

The shining bright spot for the Dodgers, who for me always makes a game exciting, has been Eric Gagne (he's French Canadian, and it's pronounced GAHN-yay). Gagne is the Dodgers' "closer," which means that his job is to pitch the 9th inning of any game when the Dodgers are winning. If he successfully gets through the inning with the lead intact (meaning the Dodgers win the game), then he is credited with a "save." Yesterday, Gagne tied the National League record with his 55th save of the year, and if he saves all three of the Dodgers' remaining games (meaning the Dodgers would have to actually win all three of those games) he will set a new Major League record. His ERA is a phenomenal 1.22 runs allowed per 9 innings (anything under 3.00 is considered exceptionally good); and even more astounding is his average of 1.67 strikeouts per inning, which shatters the current single-season record (1.49) set by Randy Johnson in 2001. Fewer than one in every 5 batters even got to first base against Gagne this year, and nearly half of them (44%) simply struck out. A lot of people think that Gagne ought to be given the Cy Young Award, which recognizes the year's best pitcher. I would tend to agree with that, and I'll be rooting for him to win.

Well, even with the Dodgers out of the picture, there is still much of interest in the coming playoffs. My tendency is often to root for teams that have not won a championship for some time, which is one of several reasons that I dislike the New York Yankees (in last year's World Series I got a nice fulfillment of this wish, not to mention a thrill for my California roots, as we reveled in the victory of the Anaheim Angels). This year will provide a lot of opportunity for that. Of the five teams that have gone more than 50 years without a World Series championship, two of them (the Boston Red Sox and the San Francisco Giants) have already made the playoffs. A third feel-good story will come out of the NL Central Divison, where the pennant race is still undecided between the Chicago Cubs and the Houston Astros. As every sports fan knows, the Cubbies have gone 95 years without winning the World Series, and haven't even been to the Series since 1945. The Astros have never been to the World Series at all in their history, but they have only existed since 1962. These two teams will go down to the wire -- they are currently tied, and both have three games remaining against sub-par opponents -- so that will be something pretty exciting this weekend.

The other drama that will play out this weekend is the quest of the Detroit Tigers to avoid being the worst team in baseball history. That "honor" currently belongs to the 1962 New York Mets, who lost 120 games while winning only 42. The Tigers were 38-118 on Tuesday morning, and things looked pretty grim, but they have since won their last 3 in a row. The Tigers are so bad that they are 20 games behind baseball's next-worst team (the Devil Rays). Thanks to their recent winning streak, the Tigers would now have to lose all three of their remaining games against the Twins, in order to set a new record for losing. On the other hand, they will have to win 2 out of 3 to avoid tying the record.

Back to the winners. Besides the Red Sox and the perennial Yankees, the AL playoffs will feature the Oakland A's and the Minnesota Twins (who rocketed out of a tight AL Central Division race by winning 10 games in a row over the past couple weeks). The NL playoff teams are the Giants, the Cubs/Astros winner, the Atlanta Braves, and the surprising Florida Marlins. Personally, I will be rooting for the Red Sox first (they are the anti-Yankees, they have the most dedicated fans in baseball, and they've had 85 years of no championships, the longest streak outside Chicago), then for the Cubs, Astros, and Giants. Failing that, I'll root for whoever is playing the Yankees.

Update 9/28: Remarkably, the Tigers won 5 of their last 6 games to finish 43-119. This is still the most losses in AL history, but they leave the '62 Mets in sole possession of the major league record for losing. Meanwhile, Gagne got no further saves and ends the year with 55. The Cy Young Award winners will not be announced until after the World Series. Finally, the Astros lost 2 games to the lowly Brewers while the Cubs won -- so welcome to the playoffs, Cubbies! Game 1 is on Tuesday. 

Posted by Matt on 9/26/2003 02:35:00 AM -- Permalink --  3 comments

One of history's most successful missions of exploration came to an end today, as the Galileo spacecraft intentionally crashed into Jupiter. This intrepid robot can now rightfully take its place among the greatest explorers of all time, including Columbus, Magellan, Lewis and Clark, Amundsen and Scott, and of course its outer-solar-system predecessor Voyager.

For myself, I feel a kind of personal connection with this spacecraft, because its life has spanned a period of time coinciding with the unfolding of my own career as a scientist. I was a sophomore at Caltech, just beginning to become interested in Planetary Science, when I drove over to the JPL auditorium and watched changes in Galileo's radio signal indicate that it had made its first entry into Jupiter orbit. That was fall of 1995, and I still vividly remember the sense of excitedly looking forward to the unknown that I had that evening, wondering what new knowledge awaited us as a result of this mission. Now it's eight years later, and the mission has ended just as I am gearing up to finish my degree. It sure has been an exciting time.

The Galileo Home Page has a sequence of its Top Ten science images from Galileo. Here are some of my own favorite Galileo discoveries:

• On its way to Jupiter, Galileo executed the first two close fly-bys of an asteroid. The unprecedentedly high-resolution photographs of heavily cratered asteroid surfaces gave the first hints (since confirmed by further asteroid missions) of just how violent the history of the Asteroid Belt is. Even more surprising was the discovery that the asteroid Ida has a satellite! This revelation has led researchers to look for other satellites of minor planets, and many have been found. My personal favorite is the binary Kuiper Belt object known as 1998 WW31.
  
• Soon after reaching Jupiter, Galileo measured the mass distribution and magnetic parameters of the four main moons -- Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The first major surprise was that Ganymede has a full-fledged, self-generating magnetic field, making it by far the smallest solar system object known to have one. Measuring this field has helped refine theories of why certain planetary bodies (like Earth) have magnetic fields, while others do not.
  
• Europa also has a magnetic signature, but it is not consistent with a self-contained field. Rather, it is most likely due to the interaction of Jupiter's enormous magnetic field with an ocean below Europa's surface. This was the first clear evidence (later backed up by Galileo's extensive geological mapping) that Europa has an ocean, and has given rise to a great deal of excitement about the possibility of the existence of life there.
  
• The mass distribution (or "moment of inertia") of Callisto revealed that this outermost large moon does not have a well-developed core. This indicates that Callisto never got warm enough for its ice and rock to separate -- unlike the other three Galilean satellites -- and that it remains more or less an enormous "dirty snowball" to this day. This low-temperature requirement has placed an important constraint on any theory of Jupiter's formation, and has led researchers to think in productive new directions.
  
• Galileo extensively mapped not only landforms, but also compositions and temperatures, of all four satellites. On Io, the most volcanically active body known to man, the new data has led to new theories of volcano mechanics, and have led some to believe that Io's crust floats on an entirely molten "magma ocean." By learning more from this extreme natural laboratory, people I know at the U of A are drawing conclusions that could significantly impact our understanding of how volcanoes work on Earth.
  

This has only been from the top of my head; there is a great deal more I could talk about. The total cost of Galileo was $1.5 billion, or an average just over $100 million per year over the 14-year mission. For such a huge scientific benefit, this is an exceedingly tiny amount compared to what we spend on welfare for the poor, or sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Unmanned planetary exploration is even a rather small percentage of NASA's budget, most of which goes to the overpriced and uninspired space shuttle and space station programs. I hope taxpayers will keep this in mind, and continue to support space exploration.

The sequel to Galileo is already soon upon us. The Cassini spacecraft will go into orbit around Saturn next summer. This mission will not only investigate Saturn itself and its spectacular ring system (which may also influence theories of solar system formation), but will also send back the first detailed maps of Saturn's large moon Titan, which is the only known body other than Earth to have a large-scale nitrogen atmosphere. I am currently reading a book called Mission to Saturn, which gives a lot of information on what Saturn research has been up to this point, and what we can expect from Cassini. The book has been very interesting so far, and is very appropriate for non-scientist readers. Other upcoming missions that I'm excited about include the Messenger mission to Mercury (launch 2004, arrive 2007) and the New Horizons mission to Pluto (launch 2006, arrive 2015). If, like me, you are a fan of solar system exploration, there is plenty more coming up soon to get excited about. 

Posted by Matt on 9/22/2003 01:11:00 AM -- Permalink --  0 comments

Yesterday morning, as is my routine, I dropped Laura off at her lab and then flipped on talk-radio as I drove away. This is exactly what I did two years and two days ago, and ever since that day I have had this irrational fear that I will discover that something terrible had been happening all morning while I was blissfully and ignorantly going about my preparations for the day. It's not so much a fear of terrible things happening, but of the incongruence between those things and my peaceful morning. I know it makes no sense that, of all the things to take away from 9/11, that should be the thing to bother me. But it's just where my mind goes.

Anyway, the news that greeted me yesterday morning was not nearly so bad, but I did learn that Johnny Cash had died at the age of 71, after a long illness. I'm not actually the biggest fan of Cash's music, or of country music in general -- though I've always thought that "A Boy Named Sue" was great fun -- but Cash has been on my mind recently. A few weeks ago, I was intrigued by this article on Slate commenting on his recent rendition of "Hurt," which was nominated for a Video Music Award. I also followed a link to watch the actual music video (this requires broadband to work) (update 11/8/05: that link no longer has the video, but you can still find it here).

I found the video to be very moving, and it has stuck with me since. The song itself (originally by Nine Inch Nails) is a cry of despair from a life ruined by drugs. The poignancy of the video comes from its juxtaposition of images from Cash's own life, and the knowledge that he himself struggled and suffered greatly from drug addiction, though he eventually overcame it. The most powerful images were of the elderly Cash singing the song, seemingly haunted by his former life and its consequences; and of his faithful wife June (who passed away last May) looking on with sad and tender concern, a reminder that we can only do so much to spare our loved ones from pain.

It seems to me that this video strikingly illustrates some basic truths of life, though they are not ones that are fun to think about. We reap what we sow -- and though there is redemption in Christ (and from what I can tell, Johnny Cash himself found that redemption), that does not mean that the pain or the consequences necessarily go away. To me, it was these ideas that made the video profound. What do the rest of you think? I pretty much experienced the video in a vacuum, knowing next to nothing about the music of either Johnny Cash or Nine Inch Nails. Those of you who are fans of one or the other may have experienced it rather differently, and I'd be very interested to know what you thought of it. 

Posted by Matt on 9/13/2003 11:48:00 PM -- Permalink --  1 comments

I spent the past week at the DPS meeting, which is the Planetary wing of the American Astronomical Society. This is my favorite conference of the year, bringing together several hundred researchers covering fields from meteorite chemistry to atmospheric physics to observing planetary systems around other stars. It's a great opportunity to keep abreast on advances in the many facets of Planetary Science that I don't deal with everyday, and of course an opportunity to get out the word of what I'm working on, to people who might be interested in it. And it sure didn't hurt to be right on the harbor in Monterey, CA, where I could watch the sea lions in my spare time and enjoy substantially sub-100-degree temperatures.

Before I left, I had mostly written out a continuation of my discussion of "separation of church and state," but finishing it ended up taking a back seat to my frantic preparations for the meeting. Sorry for the delay, but anyway, here it is: 

Posted by Matt on 9/08/2003 04:04:00 AM -- Permalink --  0 comments

More Regarding "Separation of Church and State"

I guess I'm not done stirring up controversy. :) Here is some more discussion on the current politics of "separation of church and state," which I also discussed last time. Some of these comments are regarding a video that we recently watched in church, entitled America's Godly Heritage and hosted by David Barton. Although I will go on to criticize this video in some ways, let me say first that Mr. Barton had a number of worthwhile things to say. He pointed out the godly worldview of many of America's early political leaders; the positive correlation between religious values and a responsible, law-abiding citizenry; and the troubling fact that America has become less dependant on those values in recent decades.

Q: Was the First Amendment originally intended to prevent the government from endorsing Christianity?

A: Almost certainly not. Although many of the Founding Fathers were concerned about the government becoming entangled with any particular Christian denomination, their actions clearly demonstrate that they expected a general Christianity to be a common denominator in American discourse. One clue to the original meaning of the First Amendment is that, although the Constitution specifically demands that no religious test may be required for public office, this was clearly not considered an impediment to requiring officeholders to affirm a non-denominational statement of Christian faith (which they routinely were). In other words, "no religious test" meant that you couldn't be required to be Episcopalian or Methodist, but you could be expected to acknowledge Christianity. Also, as the AGH video points out, the public school reading curriculum was largely based on the Bible and other religious texts, and no one said anything in court about it for over 150 years. To claim that the Founding Fathers themselves anticipated anything like current disestablishment policy is certainly anachronistic.

Q: Does this mean that it's wrong to interpret the First Amendment in such a way today?

A: Not necessarily! In 1791, the Founding Fathers were justified in assuming that practically everyone participating in the American system of government was at least nominally a Christian (I don't know if there were Jews in any significant number, but they apparently were not given much thought in any case). For them, differences among Christian denominations were the full extent of religious diversity. This is no longer the case. I think a very strong argument can be made that the principle behind the First Amendment is more important than how it was originally translated into policy. And that original 1791 principle, I believe, is that the government may not take sides in the religious controversies that exist among its citizens. The religious pluralism of today's America is very different from the prevailing Christianity of 1791, and I think it is valid to say that the religious neutrality intended by the First Amendment can and should now be extended to include neutrality between Christianity and non-Christianity.

Q: Did the Supreme Court say that schoolchildren may not bow their heads to pray over their school lunches?

A: Absolutely not! The AGH video makes this allegation, but it is based on a false representation of a particular ruling (here is what Mr. Barton actually said). To find out the truth, I rode my bike over to the U of A Law Library and made a photocopy of the ruling myself (it's Reed v. Van Hoven, and the citation is 237 F.Supp. 48). For one thing, I found that the case was never argued before the Supreme Court at all (though Mr. Barton clearly implies otherwise), rather it was handed down by a single federal judge in Michigan and never applied anywhere in the U.S. other than his own jurisdiction. As for the decision itself, it is entirely concerned with forbidding the state government from directing the religious activities of students, and never says anything about restricting the students' right to Free Exercise of their religion on their own initiative. Although the ruling was flawed in some ways, it hardly set up the kind of anti-religious police state insinuated by Mr. Barton. In fact, the actual outcome of the case was that the judge denied an injunction requested by atheist parents against the school's accomodation of student prayer, but he also issued some guidelines to ensure that the school did not become too entangled in that prayer. It is true that one of these guidelines says that prayer before lunch should be limited to a "silent prayer during [a] moment of silence," but in the context of the ruling this is clearly opposing an organized recitation of a pre-lunch prayer, not students praying individually on their own initiative.

The fact is that U.S. courts have always recognized a very broad right of students to pray at school, and one should not believe scare tactics to the contrary.

Q: Did social indicators from murder to divorce to bad test scores all skyrocket because the courts "took prayer out of schools"?

A: This is another of Mr. Barton's allegations. He spends a good deal of time in the AGH video displaying graphs of various indicators of anti-social behavior, every one of which shows a dramatic turn for the worse at 1962 (the year in which the Supreme Court ruled that public schools may not lead their students in prayer). Even if you grant that he has accurately represented the data (and I have serious doubts about that), there is very little to support his assumption of a causal link between these social trends and the Supreme Court. Quite a number of things changed in this country during the 1950's and 1960's. Many of these changes had detrimental effects on our moral climate (while many others were positive), and very few of them had anything at all to do with the Court. In my opinion, the fundamental problem in this country is no different from that of any other time or place in history: that people refuse to allow the transforming work of God to take place in their lives. And that is something that can neither be done nor undone by laws.

In a similar vien, Mr. Barton displays some statistics showing the superior performance of private Christian schools when compared to public schools. He claims that this is because there is still prayer in the Christian schools, but in truth there are far more significant (and relevant) differences. Students in Christian schools are far more likely to have parents with a stable marriage who are involved in their lives (by far the best indicator of scholastic success), and also to be middle- to upper-class. Parents in these categories are not disproportionately generated by the Christian schools, rather they are disproportionately likely to send their children to Christian schools. Furthermore, private schools have the option of kicking out problem students, which has the unintended consequence of removing their lower test scores. If Mr. Barton really wants to find out the statistical effect of a school's Christian outlook, he should compare Christian schools to a segment of public school students who have a similar demographic makeup. But for whatever reason, he does not do this.

Q: Do people object to the Ten Commandments because they don't like to be told "Don't steal" and "Don't kill"?

A: I lost count of how many times Mr. Barton said this in the AGH video. The Ten Commandments are nothing more than an expression of universal moral law, the argument seems to go, and no one could object to them unless they object to the whole concept of morality. But in fact, there are a number of reasons why people might find the text of the Ten Commandments to be contrary to their beliefs, even if they agree that murder and theft are immoral. The most obvious of these are the first three commandments, which have nothing at all to do with universal moral law, but rather with worshipping the God of the Bible. The Sabbath commandment also speaks undeniably of a religious observance, one which in fact has been the cause for persecution of dissenters at many times in history (in Puritan Massachusetts, for example). I've even heard people say they object to the tenth commandment because it mentions a man's wife in the same context as his cattle, and they feel that this treats women as property. Whatever one thinks about that, I don't think it can be denied that the text of the Ten Commandments has clear religious content, and may be contrary to the beliefs of non-Christian (but nonetheless upstanding) American citizens.

Q: When the courts tell people like Roy Moore to remove religious displays, aren't they trampling on the First Amendment right to Free Exercise of religion?

A: Every American citizen has the right to Free Exercise of his religion. He can pray in public, display any religious text he likes, etc. This is a fundamental meaning of the First Amendment, and every court in the nation recognizes it. Controversy arises only when a person is arguably acting not as an individual but as a representative of the government. It is in these cases that the principle of "benevolent neutrality" becomes operative. This is not to say that you fall under a "gag order" when you get elected to office -- anyone who reads about politics knows that there is broad latitude for a public official to speak openly of religion -- but problems arise when it looks like the government is "endorsing" a particular religious belief.

Oftentimes it is not easy to make this determination. As many legal scholars have lamented, the rules on what is "endorsement" and what is not are rather fuzzy and ill-defined. And to be sure, there have been a number of cases in which I think the courts have gone too far in removing religious displays from public view. On the other hand, when you take a two-ton granite monument, inscribe it with a number of Bible passages, and display it in one of the most prominent locations in the state (the center of the rotunda of the state judicial building), I don't think there is much doubt that you are intending to use the government's stamp of approval to exalt specific religious beliefs. As a matter of fact, Judge Moore freely admits that this is his intention. There is no question of Roy Moore's right to say what he wants as an individual (which is certainly not being threatened), or even of the government's ability to acknowledge the religious values of citizens as long as it doesn't endorse them (for example, the courts have said that Moore's monument may be displayed in the judicial building, as long as it is not in such an exalted location). Rather, it is a question of the government representing all of its citizens, whether they are Christians or not.

Q: The Founding Fathers believed that Christianity was essential to the success of American democracy. Does this mean that the Christian religion ought to be endorsed in the law?

A: As the AGH video rightly points out, George Washington, John Adams, and many others of our founding leaders believed that American democracy would stand or fall with its citizens' attitude towards Christian morality. However, if you pay close attention to their words, they did not necessarily conclude that legal support for Christianity was a remedy for this concern. Adams, as quoted in the AGH video, said that "we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion." This is absolutely true, and I certainly agree that the deterioration of religious and moral consensus in this country has contributed to a great deal of trouble (although skeptics may point out instances where religion itself becomes violent, I would argue that this is a separate problem). But is this deterioration actually due to decreased legal support for Christianity? Adams would say no, that the government becomes powerless to enforce morality if the people themselves have abandoned it. And here we have the root of the problem. If there is moral decay in this nation, it is because we, the Church of Christ, have failed to confront the materialism and self-centeredness of our society and to model and proclaim something better. It does no good to blame the problem on politicians, nor is political action alone going to ultimately solve anything. Rather, both the problem and the solution lie within the lives of individuals.

Of course Christians should be involved in politics. Like all American citizens, it is our civic duty to speak out for the causes that are important to us. But for one thing, we must always do it with the gentle and respectful spirit that God calls us to. And for another thing, I see little benefit in spending time advocating that the government pay greater "lip-service" to Christianity. A society may have laws that fulfill every wish of the antidisestablishmentarian, yet have a serious lack of righteousness among the population (many examples from the history of "Christendom" come to mind). On the other hand, a vibrant and transformative Christianity thrives in many parts of the world despite laws that are actually hostile to it (far worse than anything we deal with here). No law, however just, can change people's hearts. Rather, we must seek to change people's hearts so that they will desire more just laws. 

Posted by Matt on 9/08/2003 03:45:00 AM -- Permalink --  6 comments