Category: mostly unimportant

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“Stuff”

Here’s the DVD collection…and some strategically placed pictures…

I think I may be reaching a turning point (a fork stuck in the road).  I think it’s been a few years coming, but hasn’t really crystallized until recently.

I want “The Avengers” on Bluray (~$25).  I’d kinda like “The Amazing Spider-man” on Bluray (~$19).

But, I can rent each movie from Amazon for $3.99.  And let’s be honest: how often do I watch the same movie twice within a year?

Perhaps I should back up a step.  I love movies.  I have four shelves (or five, if you count the DVDs not currently “shelved”) of DVDs, some TV shows, some motion pictures.  I’ve got all of the Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, Spider-man, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Evil Dead and Lord of the Rings (among countless others).  I like having those at my disposal at all times.  But, being completely honest, I haven’t watched any of the Matrix, Back to the Future, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings movies in the last 2 years.  There’s always new stuff available, we’ve got Netflix bringing me a steady stream of content, my Hulu queue is chock full of hours of stuff I still need to watch before they expire…

…and along with all that, I’ve got a job, I still play video games, I have responsibilities at church, I’ve got chores around the house…and I’ve got a 2+ year old to play with for most of my time at home.

Some of this is simply derived from the changing times.  When I started buying DVDs in 2000, there was no “Netflix”, and cable was only available in the “common rooms” of the dorms unless you paid extra for it.  Movies were how we entertained ourselves.  Granted, as a Freshman in college, your time is seemingly endless, so there are many hours to fill.  Over the years, my DVD purchasing slowed to a trickle, around 2 or 3 per year, and we even traded in a box of them after we moved back to St. Louis just to make room on the shelf (which is good, because Meg got a ton of movies for Christmas last year).

But as the years have worn on, technology has changed, high-speed internet is more available, my free time has decreased on most nights, and I’ve moved four times in the last 7 years.  And each box of DVDs serves as a reminder of how much stuff I’ve got.  The DVDs by themselves take up multiple boxes, but we’ve also got tons of books (heavy ones, in fact…), we’ve got board games we rarely play, we’ve got musical instruments I wish I had more time to enjoy (though, I likely will in the near future, thankfully).  We’ve got camping gear in the basement I get to use once a year if I’m lucky.

Some of these feelings have been stirred up by the Christmas season.  This year, for the first time in many years, I didn’t buy anything on Black Friday (at least nothing on sale…).  There were plenty of game sales, movie sales, computer hardware sales…but nothing was really appealing this time around.  Also this year, Brooke and I decided against writing Christmas lists for ourselves (though we’ll make one up for Meg).  We both have plenty of “stuff” sitting around the house.  We’ve got clothes.  We’ve got “toys.”  We’ve got things we don’t have the time to use.  That isn’t to say we don’t want anything for Christmas, but we’d rather not put a long list out there for our parents and siblings to fill out or draw from.  A few thoughtful things are great: twenty is more than we need.

There’s a growing movement that gets revisited around Black Friday each year, and was recently discussed on my usual NPR program, OnPoint (I haven’t listened yet, but it’s in my queue…).  There are folks out there who try to live on 100 items or less, making it something of a challenge to have literally 100 total items to your name (socks count as 2 “items,” if that gives you a feel for this concept).  Now, we could never, uh, ever do that, but the idea behind it is still worth considering: if an individual can live on 100 items and find happiness, could we stand to get rid of some stuff, too?

So yeah, while I would love to have “The Avengers” and “The Amazing Spider-Man” on my shelf, I know I’ll just watch each one once and then pick them up again next year or in two years when their sequels come out.  At which point, I could just spend $4 to watch it now and $3 (or less…) to watch it again in a few years.  $7 is less than $25.

And it’ll save my Dad’s back to have a few less DVDs in boxes when he helps us move next time. 🙂

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Empiricism vs Rationalism

As part of the grant I’m on at work, I am expected to attend “continuing ethics training” each year.  Last Wednesday was the first of two sessions, each a little over an hour long, and I ended up presenting a case study to the other folks in the room regarding the way science is conducted and how it is perceived by the general public.  This past Wednesday, however, we had a guest speaker in the form of Stephen Lefrak, a pulmonary physician that also has research interests in medical ethics.

He covered a range of subjects, but he specifically highlighted a series of studies he was involved with over 10 years ago, studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine, among other high profile journals.  Studies funded by the NIH and carried out by the National Emphysema Treatment Trial Research Group (NETT).  These studies involved a surgical procedure for patients with emphysema, where portions of the lung with damaged tissue would be removed, and the rest of the lung (presumably healthy tissue) would be restructured to form a better-functioning respiratory organ.  Lefrak and his colleague here at Wash U were involved early on with the trial, but left after they had serious ethical concerns, one of which centered on the idea of a “randomized controlled trial (RCT).”

For the sake of simplicity, an RCT is essentially the idea that you apply one of two (or more) potential treatments to a given individual, and that individual is selected at random from a given group.  In this case, the treatment was the surgical removal of lung tissue (presumably damaged) in order to refashion a healthier lung, and the group was emphysema patients.  However, and importantly, it was known at the time that you can’t just do this to someone that has lung damage spread throughout the lung: it only works if there is healthy tissue still in there to salvage.

Lefrak knew it wouldn’t work if the trials were carried out at random (i.e. paying no attention to the quality of the patients lungs, or whether they had healthy lung tissue remaining, or whether they had a “homogeneous” mix of damaged and undamaged tissue).  However, when this concern was raised in the pages of NEJM, he was essentially told that he couldn’t “know” it because an RCT had not been done to prove it.

As a result, almost 50% of the patients it was tried on ended up dying, for the very reason Lefrak and colleagues warned them about.

Which brings us to the title of this post: empiricism vs rationalism.  “Empiricism” is what drives the belief that an RCT is essential to making the claim that this kind of lung surgery is “dangerous” to a subset of individuals.  “Rationalism” is behind the idea that we actually know things about how the body works and can make an informed inference as to what the outcome would be without having to do the RCT to “prove” it.

The example Lefrak gave is that an RCT to prove that you need a parachute to jump out of a plane would be silly.  We already know the answer.

As Lefrak talked about his experience, it got me thinking about where our knowledge comes from and how we build upon it.  Whether I concern myself, personally, with “evidence” more than I should, without thinking rationally about a particular subject in order to come to a conclusion.  I’d consider myself to be a “rational” person, but perhaps not.  Then again, as he described what the surgery was seeking to do, my physiology training assured me that I would have been on his side from the beginning, rather than advocating the continuation of the NETT work.

It’s just something we, as scientists, ought to consider more often than we typically do, I guess.

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Another New Toy!

After more than 7 years of coveting a stand mixer and an anxiety attack in the kitchen store, I finally broke down and was willing to spend the money for a Kitchenaid mixer. I thought I wanted the standard classic in a lime green finish, but after some more research decided that the higher powered one would suit my needs for longer. So far, it’s made several batches of cookies, whipped cream, mashed potatoes, multiple loaves of bread, hamburger buns, and some beeswax lotion. Hooray!!!

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Pedometer Experiment Revisited

Back in February, we thought it would be helpful to get an idea of just how much physical activity we were getting on a daily basis at work and at home.  As of this weekend, I completed 6 months of data collection and figure I can stop wearing a pedometer for awhile.

As a reminder, most literature suggests you try to get to 10,000 steps/day, which is approximately 5 mi of walking.  We were able to achieve that on some days, but generally speaking, we were below that on average.  Still, part of the reason to do this in the first place is to know just how much walking you’re doing and whether you’re even close to where you “should” be.

I should note that Brooke wore hers through mid-June and then switched off to an Android app that allows you to keep track of calorie intake.  Between March and mid-June, her average number of steps was 6,388.7 each day.  These charts only reflect data collected on me (my “global” average for the 6 months was 7,078.7 steps/day).

I separated out the data by month to help paint a clear picture of where that “7,078.7” comes from.  You’ll see that my activity level was a little less in the colder months of the year, while activity increased during the warmer months of the year.  I haven’t subdivided it all out, but my activity on weekends varied widely, where some days I’d be lucky to hit 4000 steps (yay, couch and TV days!) and others I’d clear 12,000 steps (mowing, working outside, going to the park, etc).

Case-in-point, my “most active” day was August 24th, with 15,631 steps.  On that day, we were in Minnesota and visited the Mall of America…twice.

Overall, I’m glad the data suggest that I’m “trending upwards” on my walking each month, though I’m sure it will just go down again as it gets colder.  My monthly average is probably accurate for a given year.  While 10,000 steps/day is ideal, I can’t say I’m all that disappointed with 7,000 steps/day as a daily average.

Though, it would have been interesting to wear a pedometer back when I was spending 2 hrs each week mowing the lawn up in Iowa…

Note: We were pretty busy last month with a variety of things, so sorry we haven’t posted anything since, uh, early September!  Got more on the way. 🙂

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Brewing Necessities

The bulk of my brewing equipment, though I’ve got a bottle drying rack on that table now, too.

In the last few years of brewing beer, I’ve accumulated a few additional “toys” beyond the standard brewing kit you can get from just about any retailer.  Thus, I thought it could be helpful to outline some of the other accessories that I think are “worth it,” as funds become available.  I’m going to go in order of what I’d recommend acquiring first, and then go down to other “nice things to have,” plus a few things I don’t have yet, but are definitely on my list of upgrades.

Please note that I’m linking to equipment through Northern Brewer, but in many cases, these aren’t the items I’ve got.  I just wanted to link to examples and am too lazy to track down the exact stuff I’ve got.  Do some research to get the best deals, but these are probably solid examples of what to expect and how much they tend to cost.

  1. Propane Burner – To some degree, this depends on how good your oven range is, but even if it’s a good one, I’d still recommend getting one of these.  Firstly, they’re capable of getting your wort up to boiling in about 20 min.  Secondly, it’s really, really easy to kill the heat, thus stopping spill-over without having to pick up 3-5 gal of wort.  Thirdly, you can do everything outside, so even if you do let it spill over, you don’t have to clean up your kitchen.  Finally, these things are useful for more than just brewing, as you can host a shrimp boil, fry a turkey, etc.  So even though this kind of equipment can be somewhat expensive, I think it’s the first thing to shoot for getting after you get started brewing.
  2. Gasket Bottles – These things are great, so long as you plan on drinking these volumes of beer in a given time.  They’re nice because you can re-use the bottles and re-use the caps and gaskets.  You may need to replace the gasket eventually, but I’ve never had to do it.  Also, depending on where you get your beer, you can sometimes buy beer in this kind of bottle, meaning you are effectively buying a bottle that happens to also come with beer (win-win!).  The 1 L bottle size is probably easiest to come by and most useful for an evening, but the 2 L bottles are nice to have, too.  If you like Grolsch beer, you can get 16 oz bottles from them, or buy the bottles empty.  Regardless, you don’t go through bottle caps this way, and you don’t need to employ a capper.  Definitely worth considering!
  3. Bottle Washer – If you bottle beer, you know that cleaning said bottles can be a huge pain.  Homebrew frequently leaves a film on the bottom of the bottles that’s difficult to remove without a bottle brush, and while those brushes work, they really slow down the cleaning process.  Thus, if you’ve got a sink that can fit one of these bottle washers, I highly recommend it.  They’re only about $12 and are worth every penny.  The nice thing is that mine also fits 5 gal glass carboys, too, which are equally ridiculous to clean, so again, multi-purpose.  They’re probably awesome at cleaning baby bottles, too, but I haven’t tried…  Highly recommended!
  4. Wort Chiller – The need for a wort chiller really depends on your situation, I guess.  Essentially, when you’re brewing your beer, you need to cool your wort down quickly from boiling to around 70 F before you add yeast.  If you’ve just been boiling 3-5 gal of liquid, this can take…a…really…long…  …time…  Thus, you can speed it up with ice, with snow (in the winter…or in Alaska…), or you can get a wort chiller.  Mine works pretty well for cooling down 3+ gal of wort within about 20 min, so it really saves time over what I used to do (putting the pot in the sink and adding ice water to it), which easily lasted an hour or more.  If I had an ice maker in my fridge, maybe I’d have stuck with ice, but in our situation, I don’t have enough ice trays to keep the water cold.  Thus, for me, a wort chiller is pretty awesome.  Not the first thing I’d get, but still pretty useful.  But, if you live next to a 7-Eleven and can pick up a few bags of ice, that works, too.
  5. Glass Carboy – Starter beer kits don’t usually come with these, but having one or two of these on-hand isn’t a bad idea.  The small opening at the top isn’t ideal, and the glass is breakable, but at the same time, it gives you a chance to keep an eye on your beer during the fermentation process.  Also, if you’re concerned about flavors of your beer “leeching” into (or out of) the plastic bucket that usually comes with kits, then glass is definitely your friend.  You can also get these in a 3 gal size, which is nice for small batches (or for hard apple cider).
  6. Bottle Drying Rack – There are ways around this, of course.  We used to clean bottles and put them upside down in a laundry basket with a towel, and that worked just fine.  It took up tons of space, but it worked.  So, I’m saying that there are alternative ways of drying your bottles.  However, for $20, these things aren’t bad to have.  Probably not the first upgrade I’d head for, but definitely a nice thing to have.  
Next Steps (as in, stuff I don’t have yet, but am considering for the future):
  • Temperature control system – If you want to make lagers or pilsners year-round, there are a few options, but the best way is to use something like a freezer with an external temperature control system.  Basically, you put your wort in the freezer, modified with a control box that controls the freezer’s compressor to cycle on and off depending on what temperature the probe inside is reading.  If you want to keep your beer at 55 F, this will make it happen, and temperatures like that are required if you want to make certain beer styles.  If you’ve got a cellar, it may not be required, but if you want to make that style of beer all year, it’s a necessity to have this kind of temperature control.  Otherwise, like me, you can probably only make lagers in February.
  • Fermentation Heater – Depending on your situation, one of these could be useful.  Yeast like to be active at certain temperatures, and if you brew in the winter, you may need to keep your wort at a reasonable temperature for a few weeks.  For example, this past winter, my basement held around 55 F, which is too low for many ale yeasts.  Thus, I used an electric oil heater, sat it right next to the wort, and that kept the temperature closer to 70 F.  However, you can use something like this heating pad to achieve the same goal, perhaps a bit more elegantly.
  • Bottle Capper – The cheap capper that comes with a typical beer kit is “functional,” but it doesn’t cap bottles “cleanly.”  As in, sometimes, the bottle cap will slip to the side as you push down on the handles.  Thus, something more like this one, that you can mount on a table, can be better as you gain additional stability while you cap the bottle, and moreover, you get additional leverage (i.e. strength).  Not the kind of thing, you necessarily need, but wouldn’t be a bad investment for later down the road.
  • Kegging System – There are any number of ways to make this happen.  The cheapest way is to get a used keg and the additional hardware to allow you to carbonate your beer and keep it sealed.  Used kegs can be purchased from a variety of locations, but it’s key to make sure the seals have been replaced.  Still, the used one from Northern Brewer is $161, while the version with a new keg is $224.  Additionally, you can always spring for a fridge conversion kit to allow you to make a keg-o-rator, but for my money, I think a “keezer” is the best plan.  It involves taking a regular horizontal freezer, raising the lid with some 2″x4″ boards, and drilling some holes for the tappers.  It doesn’t involve making holes in the freezer itself: just moving the lid up about 4″.  Of course, a kegging system is a whole other ballgame and it depends on whether you like having your beer in bottles, or whether you want to be “over and done” after you transfer your brew to a keg.  Or whether you want to be able to take a 6-pack to your friend’s house, or if you can live with always taking growlers.  Personally, I like bottles, but having a keg wouldn’t be a terrible thing, either.
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Alternatives to the BSA

There are countless examples of this all over social networking.

In elementary school, I wanted to join Cub Scouts.  I think Mom and Dad just wanted me to be sure it’s something I wanted to do, as I had to press them on this for a few years before they relented in 4th grade.  I started in Cub Scouts, transitioned into Boy Scouts, and ultimately completed my Eagle Scout Award in high school, the Boy Scouts’ top rank.

To say “I learned a lot” from Scouting would be an understatement.  Aside from merit badges and outdoor survival skills, I learned team work, social skills and leadership skills from my experience in Scouting that was indispensable as I continued through life.  I have held multiple leadership roles in church, in concert/marching band, and in academic organizations since that time, but the roots of these experiences are drawn directly to Boy Scouts.  I continue to enjoy the outdoors, though I don’t spend as much time there as I used to.  It’s something I hope I can foster in Meg and in our future children as our society moves increasingly forward in this “Digital Age.”

About a month ago, the Boy Scouts of America reaffirmed their position against openly homosexual boys and leaders within their ranks.  It’s a position they’ve held for over a decade, openly, and one where I fully believe they’re on the wrong side of history.  It’s telling when both our Presidential candidates support the organization’s right to hold this view, yet still disagree with it.  As shown in the image above, more than a few Eagle Scouts agree with Obama and Romney and have returned their awards to the Boy Scouts of America to express their disappointment with the organization.

When this news was in the media more prominently, Brooke asked what I thought about the decision.  To be honest, I haven’t completely made up my mind.  I guess I’d like to think that the Scout Leaders I had in Troop 701 wouldn’t have turned anyone away that wanted to be there.  They were quick to provide support to those who wanted to participate, but couldn’t afford the dues or equipment to go on weekend camping trips.  They were supportive of Scouts that needed to focus on their school work rather than meeting obligations for the Troop.  In ways I imagine some pastors disagree with their denomination’s stance on this particular issue, I expect that the Leaders of my troop would have tried to simply “ignore” the issue, rather than actively seek out the homosexuals within their ranks.  Perhaps I’m wrong, but that’s what I’d like to think.

At the same time, I disagree with Chick-Fil-A’s stance on this issue as well, contributing their corporate funds in favor of “traditional marriage.”  To me, it’s bad enough when a corporate CEO makes comments I disagree with, but when the profits of an organization as a whole are used as a tool in a larger fight, it’s a bridge too far.

This all comes back to Meg (plus her sister(s)/brother(s)), though.  Brooke and I both want her to have access to experiences like we had:  Brooke had 4-H, I had the BSA.  Depending on where we live (e.g. the City of St. Louis), 4-H may not be a viable option.  We aren’t aware of many clubs in this area, so we’d possibly have to drive to another county to attend one.  There are Boy Scout troops all over, but their numbers have been in decline in recent years, possibly because of their silly political stances, but mostly, I’d argue, because our world has changed quite a bit since it was founded.

St. Louis On The Air had a show in late-July looking at an organization I’d never even heard of called the Baden-Powell Service Association.  Any of you that are familiar with Scouting will likely recognize the name, as Lord Baden-Powell is responsible for starting the Scouting movement in 1907.  It came to the United States in 1910 after William D. Boyce encountered “The Unknown Scout” while visiting London.

The BPSA is similar to the BSA, but has a few key differences.  One of these is that it accepts all people into its ranks.  Thus, it is a co-ed organization, open to the whole family, straight or gay, etc.  They also focus heavily on skills (in the form of “proficiency badges”), the outdoors, and service, similar to the BSA.  They even have a similar “Scout Promise” and “Scout Law” to the BSA equivalent.  It appears to place more of an emphasis on “service” than I remember from BSA.  We definitely participated in service outings, but I think the overall “family approach” to BPSA sounds like it may lend itself to family-oriented service opportunities than BSA did (when I was there, at least).

While the BPSA is part of a larger international organization, it’s decidedly smaller than the BSA.  So far as I can tell, the only “Group” in our area is in Washington, MO, which isn’t particularly close.  According to the NPR story, there’s interest in expanding to other locations here in St. Louis, but it doesn’t appear that there are many of these groups around the USA just yet.

Still, it’s nice to know there’s still interest in groups like this, and there are groups that are accepting of all people, regardless of their color or creed.  Hopefully, by the time Meg’s old enough, there will be more groups like this around the City (BPSA/BSA, 4-H, or otherwise) that can expose her and her friends to the same kinds of things Brooke and I got to experience growing up.

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Progress

I’ve been here at Wash U for over 6 months now and we submitted my first paper (from here) to Molecular Pharmacology this morning.  Granted, there’s no guarantee they’ll publish it or anything (in which case we’ll just send it elsewhere), but the fact that I was able to pull together enough data for a journal article in the relatively short time I’ve been here, while also learning electrophysiology, is pretty good.  The work we’re hoping to publish in Mol Pharm is what I’ll be presenting at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting this coming October in New Orleans (!!!!), so it’s kinda nice to know I’ve already got all the figures done: I’ll just have to arrange them on a poster-size sheet of paper and remind myself what I did almost a year earlier.

It was very helpful to hop onto a project we knew would pan out.  At the time I started, I don’t think we intended to go as far with it as we have (my boss initially told me that I could have all the data done by the end of last year…HAH!), but it went in some interesting directions and lead to a stronger paper, in the end.  I definitely learned quite a bit during the course of the research, though there’s still a ways to go before I would consider myself an “expert” in these techniques and concepts.

Honestly, I’m pretty pleased we got this paper out.  My boss here is very focused on productivity, which is a good thing as I’d like to get a few papers out in my remaining time here.  Once this one’s published, that’ll be three “first-authored” papers (i.e. your name is first on the list of authors, indicating that you did the bulk of the work and the writing) in total.  I’d like at least one more, if not two, before I get out of here.

My plan is still to begin applying for teaching positions this Fall, preferably for liberal arts colleges in Missouri, Iowa or Southern Illinois.  Having 3 papers complete is helpful, but having a good deal of data toward a fourth one would be even better.  There’s something of a “quality vs quantity” game you play in this field, where it’s good to have your name on a bunch of papers (i.e. having a lengthy list of papers you’ve contributed to on your C.V. when you’re applying for a job), but at the same time, it’s arguably just as good to have your name first on fewer papers, making it clear what your contribution was to the work in question.  I guess we’ll see which one’s more important in a few months.

Regardless, I haven’t posted much about how things are going in the lab, largely because there’s not much to tell.  I’m learning more and more each week, I’ve presented data to the lab a few times, and I’m gaining more confidence that I’m not a complete idiot (though I still feel like it at times).  This environment is definitely different from my experience at SLU and Iowa, though: a far more “Ivy League” mentality about productivity, the quality of other people’s science, and the need to get more funding in order to do high quality work.  It certainly isn’t making me want to go into academic research as a career, but it’s nice to get to see it first-hand as I interact with other postdocs and students from around here.

So, now that this paper’s complete, I’m moving on to different techniques and different concepts.  I think this new project is a bit more interesting to me, from a physiological perspective, but is by no means easier to study.  In many ways, it’s addressing the kinds of things that other people have avoided because they’re such a pain to address, but we’re hoping the skills our lab has will give us an advantage that others may not have.

After all that work, though, I think it’s time for a three-day weekend.  Or maybe a vacation.

Or maybe both. 🙂

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A Nice Weekend

That, my friends, is Jon Foreman's back.

Awhile back, Kristen mentioned that Switchfoot was returning to Springfield, MO and that the venue they were going to play in was pretty sweet, the Gillioz Theater.  Thus, Brooke and I made the arrangements for Meg to hang out with her grandparents this weekend, for Rachel to stay at our house with Edie and Sam (and the chickens), and for Brooke and I alone (gasp!) to go to Springfield for the weekend.

We made it out of St. Louis early enough to stop at Heinrichshaus for a picnic lunch and a bottle of Chardonelle before continuing on to Springfield.  As always, we had a great time tasting Heinrich’s wares (he’s an old German guy who wears American-ized lederhosen, if you can imagine such a thing) and enjoyed the warm, summery afternoon outside.  After a few more hours, we hit Springfield and went directly to the concert.  The Gillioz Theater is definitely cool, as it’s an ornate, old-style theater with good acoustics and comfy seats.  I can’t say I was a huge fan of all the kids I had to sit with, though, as this event was apparently quite popular with the “Christian Youth” crowd (i.e. I think we enjoyed Switchfoot’s show at The Pageant more, if only because there was a cordoned off area for “Over 21” with a full bar…).  I was unimpressed with Switchfoot’s opener, The Rocket Summer, who acted like a pretentious emo wannabe.

Switchfoot, on the other hand, was amazing as always.  Their set was pretty similar to the one we saw two years ago, mostly songs off the last 3-4 albums and only two songs from their first few, but the new stuff is good so I can’t complain all that much.  As with the last time around, their lead-singer, Jon Foreman, ventured out into the crowd to sing with the fans.  This time, however, he ended up climbing around the theater-style seats, holding hands as he made his way to the center of the theater.  He happened to make this trip inward directly in front of us, to the point that Brooke, Kristen and her friend, Maggie, all held Foreman’s hand as he passed by.  I was trying to get pictures of this, of course, as these things usually go.  Regardless, while we got pretty close two years ago, we were close enough to touch the man this time around.

We joke that, at our next concert, the subsequent logical step is for Jon Foreman to sit on Brooke’s lap and sing.  😛

Regardless, we spent the next day hitting up quite a few different things, including a visit to The Home Brewery in Ozark, MO (I picked up a bottle washing attachment for our basement sink…should make life easier!), a trip down to Copper Run Distillery (where we tasted vodka, “moonshine,” whiskey and rum…the latter of which, we grabbed a bottle of…), then later to Mother’s Brewery to taste their beers and have one or two pints before heading to the Springfield Cardinals game ($6 lawn tickets…can’t beat that!).

Nice day for a ball game!

After the game, we went to a bar to hear some of Jake’s co-workers play in their retro 80s cover band (who were pretty good, to be fair).  Overall, it was a busy, yet good day!

In the end, while we obviously missed Meg, it was nice for the two of us to get out of St. Louis for a weekend, not to be tied down by a dog to take out or a toddler to watch…er…”toddle.”  We had a great time and will probably have to do it again, once Jake and Kristen finish filling their pool…  🙂

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METAL n/

I guess it started a few years ago when Stu came in to St. Louis to hear a band play at Pop’s, over in East St. Louis, and wanted to crash at our place for the night after the concert.  I ended up going along, mostly because Stu was paying for the ticket, but also because I’d never experienced what can only be described as a “death metal concert.”

The first thing we did was went to Walgreens to get ear plugs.  Bear in mind that I’ve gone to more than a few concerts in my times and I’ve never needed ear plugs.  I always felt it was counter-intuitive, as you’d think you want to listen to the music, not reduced the sound by 30 dB.

I’m glad I had the plugs.  Then, and each subsequent time I’ve joined him at one of these things.

This past Sunday, on his birthday, Stu wanted to go see some bands at Fubar, a concert venue near SLU.   Before that, Stu, his roommate, and I went to La Vallesana, a Mexican place on Cherokee Street, which was pretty spectacular.  The menu was very reasonable (one could even say it was “cheap”) and much more varied than the “traditional Mexican restaurant,” especially in the different meats they offered.  I had a Quesadilla “Al Pastor,” which involved a dry-rubbed pork and pineapple concoction.  Mmmmmm…  They don’t serve beer, though, which I find interesting for a Mexican restaurant (though they did have Mexican Coca-Cola, including real sugar, not that “high fructose corn syrup” shenanigans).

After that, we went to Fubar.  If you dare flip on the YouTube link above, you’ll hear the style of music being played there by the headlining band, Origin.  It was a lengthy music fest, of sorts, with six or seven bands participating, starting at 5:00 (we didn’t get there until after 7:00…thankfully…as we didn’t leave until after 11:00…).

I should note that my favorite band name was “Cattle Decapitation.”  No joke.  That’s their name.  They’ve put out 10 albums since 1996.

Regardless, it’s always an interesting experience to go to these concerts with Stu.  This is a guy that had long hair back when I met him in high school (and has since chopped all that off and is a software developer), so I was first exposed to this style of music back then when we’d go out to lunch during band camp my sophomore year.  While I can’t say I’ve grown to like death metal, as a genre, I have always appreciated the speed at which their drummers play.  What these guys lack in “finesse,” they have orders of magnitude more in brute strength and stamina, where it isn’t unusual (heck, it’s the norm) to see them play constant sixteenth-notes with their feet using the double-bass pedal for a full song, or multiple songs in a row, without much of a break.  It’s nuts.  I’d be curious how many of them run marathons…

At the same time, while I stand there, watching the bass player and the electric guitar player move their hands across their respective fretboards very quickly, all I hear is a low “E” tone.  I pulled out my phone and used a “guitar tuner” app to verify this fact.  Yup.  All I heard was a single, low tone, while I could see their hands moving all over the place.  It was likely an effect of the deafening live sound, leading to dissonance that my poor ears couldn’t handle.  When I say “it all sounded the same,” that’s what I mean: it was one friggin’ note.

It’s also interesting to see the characters that go to these concerts.  This Sunday, I was wearing a striped polo shirt and Stu had a grey-ish t-shirt on…and I’m pretty sure we were the only people there with any colored clothes besides black or white (we mostly stayed in the back, by the bar…).  Most folks had long hair, there were very few women there.  I didn’t see a ton of piercings (though, more than a few of those giant rings in some dudes’ ear lobes).  I noticed only one obviously drunk guy: everyone else either had nothing in their hands, or water, or a soda.  A “mosh pit” opened up a few times, but really, the participants seemed like they were skipping around in a circle, pushing each other.

The thing that really gets me, though, is how very little these guys all probably make on a given night.  The advance tickets were $18; at the door, they were $22.  There were maybe 100 people there when we walked in, though surely some people came and went.  Let’s say they sold 200 tickets to this thing and sold all of them at $22: $4400 would have been the ticket sales.  Divided among 6 bands (though, I’m sure the divisions wouldn’t have been an even split), that’s $733 per band (not per person)…and that assumes that the venue would take no money from the ticket sales, which obviously isn’t the case.  In the end, each band member was probably lucky to walk out of there with $100.

Point is: the bands themselves make practically nothing from tickets, so they must make up the difference in merchandising.  I saw some folks going up, buying things, but I can’t say I saw large crowds around the merch table.  It makes me wonder how bands like these expect to “make it.”  Bear in mind that these are national, touring bands, that people (not me…) have heard of before.  These are the popular groups.

So yeah, it’s always an interesting exercise for me to tag along to these concerts.  I’d kinda like Brooke to come along sometime, so I can get her “sociological perspective” on these people.  Not sure Stu wants to be buying two extra tickets, though… 😛

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History is Written by the Victors

 

I have a confession to make:  I’ve been reading a book.  Yes, it’s true.

Right around Palm Sunday, I read/heard some interviews with Bart Ehrman, a religious scholar out of the University of North Carolina.  He was talking about his most recent book, “Did Jesus Exist?”  Hearing the interview reminded me that I actually own another book by Ehrman, “Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.”  I picked it up a few years ago after seeing the interview above (on another book…”Misquoting Jesus“) on The Daily Show.  I actually tried reading it back in 2006, but one thing led to another and I stopped.  What can I say…

Regardless, I picked it back up again and am about halfway through.  Part of what intrigued me about Ehrman’s books, in general, is that they are not only discussing the content of the Bible and other historical documents, but also the context in which they came into existence, how and when they were discovered, and how accurate their translations were.  I can’t say I’ve ever been a huge fan of the idea that the Bible should be taken literally, and books like these make it clear that there was quite a bit of politics involved in which books made it in and which ones didn’t.

This book, specifically, is talking about different, early forms of Christianity that were “snuffed out” by what he terms the “proto-orthodox” church.  That is to say, the earliest version of what we have today.  He points to the Gnostics, the Ebionites and the Marcionites (thus far) as examples of competing views on how Christianity should be viewed.  The nature of Christ, Himself.  How much the Old Testament (and Judaism) should figure in to what eventually becomes “Christianity.”

Reading through it, two things come to mind:

1). The Early Christians didn’t know everything, either.  Barnabus, for example, traveled with Paul and shows up in Acts and a few Epistles.  He wrote a document, “Epistle to the Hebrews,” that suggests that Jewish Law (e.g. Leviticus, the Ten Commandments, etc.) was not meant to be taken literally and that things like “don’t eat pork” really meant “don’t eat like a pig.”  This guy knew and traveled with Paul and even he disputed the meaning of ancient texts…and he was around at the time of the writing of many of our “ancient texts.”  And these discussions between Paul and Barnabus (and others) were going on while they were writing what got into our Bible.

2). It’s easy to look at “Christianity” as a mish-mash of different belief systems today when you look at Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics, Baptists, and so on and so forth.  Each one has their own “quirks,” traditions, hierarchies, et cetera.  And there are definitely individuals within each group that thinks that they have it “right” and that they are “saved” and the others are not.  Strangely enough, it seems like this is the way it has been since the beginning.  The only difference is that one group (the one inspired by the writings of Paul) won out 2000 years ago and effectively stamped out the others.

Crazy to think about what that would mean if the same thing happened today, eh?

Regardless, it’s a pretty fascinating book, and brings up many interesting ideas that help out in my various discussions.  We’ve been reading through the Gospels in our small group, so the things this book presents really gives me a different perspective than what the others in the group are bringing to the table.  At the very least, it certainly highlights the fact that the Bible is an important document to many, but as with anything historically-based, it’s shaped by those who came out on top.