HerbEly

Dilbert's Ultimate House

Take a virtual tour of of Scott Adams design of this house.

Escher in Legos

My son David. even with a college education, still enjoys Legos and has posted this site showing Escher's relativity in Legos. David, thanks for giving your folks a light moment.

Japanese Internment Camps: A Surprising Perspective

Michelle Malkin’s book on In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War on Terror reminded me of my 40th High School reunion. We were in Santa Fe and, being a compulsive newspaper reader, I picked up a copy of the Santa Fe New Mexican for September 26, 1999. It contained a guest column by internee Tatsuo Manabe.

I remember that camp. My father took me to see it after it closed. I don’t remember what he said – but it was along the lines of “This must never happen again”.

Manabe's column surprised me.

The Rich Man, Lazarus & Groundhog Day

The gospel for the twenty sixth Sunday, Luke 16:1-19 , blended with our Friday night film, Groundhog Day. Here is how.

Freshman Writing: Bush gets an A and Kerry an F

Stanly Fish writes in this morning’s NYT that his freshman English class examined speeches by Bush and Kerry. Voting on style alone, they found that Bush beats Kerry hands down. Is this important? Listen to Fish:

Beliefnet Poll: Rather's Apology not Enough

Beliefnet is running a poll on reader’s response to the Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s column on Dan Rather’s apology. He contends that, even though Rather should apologize to Bush as well as the public, people should not call for his resignation. As of this morning Beliefnet readers disagree by a margin of 57% to 43%. (You will see the poll questions to the right of the Rabbi’s column.)

Dan Rather & the Ethics of Apologies

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has an excellent piece on giving and receiving apologies. It has application to our personal and professional lives. Here is the opening paragraph:

Dan Rather is a really big name, perhaps the most important in American broadcast journalism over the past two decades. For years his integrity has been unquestioned. But now his involvement in the Bush forged-documents scandal—an ugly affair in which a senior producer for Sixty Minutes brought together the man behind the forgeries with a Kerry campaign official—has severely and tragically compromised his journalistic credibility and that of CBS News.

Nevertheless, I believe that Rather should not be ignominiously fired. He should be spared. Why? Because he apologized. And he did so unreservedly, without passing the buck. And we have to begin to forge a culture in America where apologies that are unaccompanied by “buts” (as in, "I apologize, but...") are accepted. Only in this way can we restore to our broken culture the idea of personal accountability.

To be read and pondered.

Richard Land Corrects the Washington Post

On Sept 16, I posted this comment on the WaPo's imcomplete quote of President Bush's statement about God wanting him to be President. Yesterday, the WaPo published this letter correcting its error

"Half-Quoted Convictions
The Sept. 16 front-page story "Openly Religious, to a Point" cited me quoting President Bush as saying, "I believe God wants me to be president."

Unfortunately, the article left out what came next. Mr. Bush went on to say, "But if that doesn't happen, that's okay. I'm loved at home, and that's more important. I have seen the presidency up close and personal. I know it's a sacrifice, and I don't need it for personal validation."

The whole quotation changes the thrust of the president's conviction.

RICHARD LAND
Franklin, Tenn.

The writer is president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.".

Thanks to my son, David for spotting this letter and sending it to me.

“…God wants me to be President..” – What Bush Really Said

In this morning's WaPo Alan Cooperman, has a quote from Richard Land, Bush said he was moved to run by a sermon delivered by his friend Mark Craig, a Methodist minister, in 1999 during his second gubernatorial inauguration. "I believe God wants me to be president," the Rev. Richard Land, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, quoted Bush as saying.

Cooperman apparently missed Land’s more complete statement,

Rathergate: the Crowd is Wiser than the Institution

My son, David has been talking for a few months about The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. I’ve been writing about the other side of the question: how institutions manage to ignore unpleasant truths. “Rathergate” provides an example of both: As Kathleen Parker has observed, the blogosphere has beaten out CBS on the question of whether Texas Air Nation Guard documents discredited George Bush. CBS, acting as an institution, behaved exactly the way several bishops, intelligence officials, and business executives do: it ignored warnings and accused Bush of shirking his duty.

For an explanation of why this happens, see my posting, Why Smart Executives (and Bishops) Fail.

Maybe Kathleen Parker is right: the wisdom of crowds, found in the blogosphere, can overcome the tendency of large instituions to ignore unpleasant truths.