Author Archives: Raymond Yee

Notelets for 2006.01.13

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eastbayexpress.com | News & Features | City of Warts | Let the Bulldozing Commence | 2006-01-11:

    On to the California Department of Health Services
    laboratory, at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Berkeley Way. On one
    end, you have the Gourmet Ghetto. On the other end, you have downtown
    Berkeley's movie theaters, restaurants, and nightclubs. But for some
    reason, there's an eerie no-man's-land that keeps the two from becoming
    one grand boulevard of eateries and nightlife. That'd be the
    intervening parking lot and hideous eight-story monolith, where worker
    bees once toiled in research laboratories run by the state Department
    of Health Services.

Yes, tear it down -- but just keep the parking lots!

More Companies Ending Promises for Retirement - New York Times.
Another story about how companies (even companies that are doing really
well) are moving away from their pension plans, shifting the long-term
risk to employees.

Last weekend, I learned about the Jewish concept of Lashon hara, making me more conscious of my own need for good talk.

Talking to the great but imperfect

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Boy, I wish I could talk directly to Milosz or a prophet of old. As a
Christian, I believe that we can pray directly to the One In Charge,
the Lord God Almighty. Alas, that isn't enough for me. I want to
consult unearthly wise people who had walked before me on this planet,
who struggled with pain, doubt, temptation, and defeat. I believe that
Jesus did all those things, and hence, God can sympathize with our
plight as humans. Yet Jesus did not sin. I want to commune with great
but frail people who sinned as I have. I want to ask how they kept
going even while they bumbled and messed things up. To his credit,
Jesus never screwed up -- he was perfect.

Let there be no mistaking me: it's the greatest news that Jesus was
both like us and not like us. He showed us that there is a way beyond
our own individual and collective quagmires. I don't need a besmirched
Jesus. Yet, even as a card-carrying Protestant, I confess to the appeal
of holding up a pantheon of capital-S Saints, those who fall between us
and perfection.

Losing courage at night and the importance of stopping

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For the vast majority of nights when I turn off the lights for sleep, I
have been blessed by a clear conscience. Last night, I started to lose
the courage of my convictions, which is a terrible thing to happen when
I'm trying to sleep. I need to put a stop to working too late. The
demons of self-doubt are strongest when I set out to work on a task
that is greater than the time I have before me. It's time to reapply
what I learned when writing my Ph.D. dissertation: set a time to stop
work well before bedtime (regardless of how much I accomplished or
didn't accomplish that day), and honor the Sabbath. When I was feeling
most desperate and helpless, working long hours for six days a week,
Sundays were the most sweet. I long to come back to that experience of
rest and freedom in the midst of busyness.

Ballets Russes

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On Saturday, Laura and I saw the film Ballets Russses.
It was not our first choice; we had ended up at the Shattuck Cinemas
mistakenly looking for another movie. I was so pleased to see Ballets Russes.
I expected to like movie but did not come prepared to be moved to
tears. It turns out that I'm not the only one who was moved by the
film. Joining many other critics, A. O. Scott of The New York Times called it
"a moving, invigorating elegy to the civilization that sustained it." I
had the feeling that because the movie tapped into a lot of my
particular interests and current "issues," I found Ballets Russes
to be even more affecting than a typical viewer dialing into the
universal themes of the fragility and timelessness of beauty, the
redemption of suffering, the folly of power struggles and giant egos,
the tradeoffs between age and youth, the desire to make art (and all
that other stuff.)

On a more prosaic front, I've noticed that the Wikipedia article on the Ballets Russes does not mention the movie -- and that there is no article on the movie so far. Time to correct these deficiencies?

First impressions of “Total Truth”

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my copy of Nancy Pearcey's
I've started reading Nancy Pearcey's Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, partially in preparation for "Keeping Religion in its place?" conference
to be held at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley on Friday, January
27 and Saturday, January 28. I don't know whether I want to spend most
of a Saturday at the conference, but I'm sure the Friday lecture will
be worth hearing.

I have mixed feelings as I start the book. I can sympathize with many
of the things Pearcey has to say: the fundamental way in which
worldviews consciously or unconsciously shape everyone's ideas, the
marginalization of Christian thought from much of high academic
intellectual discourse, the call for Christians to live out their
convictions in every sphere of their lives. But I wonder, why does she
seem (at my early stage of reading) to accept so heartily and
uncritically intelligent design and compassionate conservatism. I'll
have to see for myself once I read further along.