This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education featured an excerpt from Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s new book, Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening.  In the excerpt, Cowan advocates for the abortion of children found through prenatal genetic testing to have conditions like Down Syndrome.  Anyone who knows me will know I vehemently disagree with her position on several levels.  I submitted the following as a Letter to the Editor of The Chronicle:

To the Editor:

Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s “Medical Genetics is Not Eugenics: Parents shouldn’t feel guilty about prenatal screening” (Chronicle Review, 5/16/08) rejects classic eugenics with its lofty goal of “improvement of the race” and instead advocates a new micro-eugenics with a smaller, more selfish chief goal: protecting the comfort and independence of the parents of children prenatally diagnosed with genetic abnormalities by ending the life of the child.

Dr. Cowan eagerly advocates 21st century genetic testing, prenatal diagnosis, and pregnancy termination, yet clings to an outdated and discriminatory early 20th century view of those with disabilities, calling those with Down Syndrome “chronically dependent” and “suffering.”
I’d like Dr. Cowan to meet Karen Gaffney, the remarkable woman with Down Syndrome who recently swam the nine miles across Lake Tahoe.  And I’d like her to meet Sujeet Desai, a musician who plays six instruments, and his wife Carrie Bergeron, a community college graduate and national speaker; both have Down Syndrome.  And I’d like her to meet my son Caedon, age 2, who experiences advantages in medical treatment, developmental therapies, and educational inclusion that were unavailable to children with Down Syndrome even a decade ago.  We’ve yet to see what great things Caedon and others of his generation will contribute to society given these new advantages.

Far removed from the forced institutionalization of earlier generations, many people with disabilities now live meaningful and increasingly independent lives.  Life is indeed challenging for those with Down Syndrome and other genetic abnormalities and for their families, and I am thankful for the advances that allow this increased achievement and independence.  Further, I welcome additional advances in medical genetics that will cure or reduce the severity of these abnormalities.

We should all reject Dr. Cowan’s outdated and discriminatory view that death is the appropriate outcome for those with prenatally diagnosed genetic abnormalities. 

I got to work on the media production team at Pine Ridge again yesterday and learned a lot while doing it. I’ve done a lot of media work over the years and have been doing it at Pine Ridge for several months, but yesterday was my first day in the switcher/producer role.

There were six of us on the team - Travis, Lance, Elijah, Brad, Matt, and me. The first service was a little rough, but the second service really worked well. And I think the reasons it worked so well are pretty applicable to a lot of other teams as well:

1. Prepare. When I arrived about an hour before the 9:30 service, Brad (running lyrics & message slides) had already printed copies of the message notes for both of us and had already created all the necessary slides for the songs and Tadd’s message. The order of service was complete and entered into our Planning Center collaborative site. We were ready to go.
2. Be Agile. Then, things changed. We couldn’t print the service outline from Planning Center because the printer wasn’t working. No problem, Elijah (running sound) went to print copies in the office. While he was doing that I rebooted the computer to try to re-establish communication with the printer - and when the computer rebooted we no longer had internet access (oops…and I’m supposed to be a tech guy). No problem, we got the files we needed off of another computer using an external hard drive. Then Les (worship leader) changed the order of some songs, removed a song, and added a song that we didn’t have the lyrics for in ProPresenter. No problem, we all marked up our service outlines and we decided we could live without projected lyrics for that song and we’d go with displaying just the live video feeds instead. Everyone stayed calm and quickly solved the problems with alternate solutions.
3. Know Your Role. The first service started, and we couldn’t get any good camera shots of the guitarists because there wasn’t enough light on them. We asked Matt (running lights), and he said the breaker tripped for that bank of lights (see “Be Agile” above). Someone (I still don’t know who) ran to fix the breaker, and meanwhile Lance (camera #1) and Travis (camera #2) worked like crazy to get good and creative camera shots of Les, who was the only one with sufficient light to be picked up by the cameras.
4. Communicate. In the first service I (switcher/producer) missed some opportunities to showcase some really good camera shots, so we talked about that between services and Lance did a great job communicating a plan to have the right camera focused on the right element at the right time in the second service.  Tadd commented on the meaningful lyrics of the newly added song during the first service, so Brad entered those lyrics for the second service.  Matt let us know that the lights would be fully operational for the second service, and I think he may have adjusted to get more light on the guitarists as well.  Travis let us know that he loses many of his possible shots when everyone stands up to worship, so Lance knew I’d rely on him for most of the camera work during those times and Travis focused on getting the few shots he could given the obstacles.
5. Check Your Ego.  The communication was only able to work so well because we all talked and listened openly without fear of stepping on someone’s toes.  Most of us have done multiple positions on the media team, so we’ve all got ideas about how to do each job better, not just the job we’re working that week.  We get stronger as a team when we take advantage of others’ experience instead of working in a silo because I think my way is the best way.
6. Close the Loop.  We talked for about 5 minutes after the second service about what went well and what could be improved.  Capturing those thoughts when they’re fresh is much more meaningful than trying to remember a few hours or few days after.  We planned to make some changes to the set design & lighting to create better camera angles.  We decided to do a midweek run-through whenever the stage design changes so the camera operators can learn which shots work best in the new setup.  We decided to to try to attend band rehearsal whenever possible to learn the songs and make the best choices about when to display lyrics vs. live video, when to focus on Les, when to zoom on a guitar solo, etc.

It was a great week, we learned a lot, and the team really worked well together.  I guess Tadd thought so too.

With the NC primary next week I’ve gotten more and more depressed about the candidates.  Here’s my hopeful thoughts from 2004:

My controlling question is this — what’s best for the United States and the world over the next 4, 8, 12, 16 years? If Kerry wins then he’s the incumbent candidate in 2008 with Edwards as the Veep again, which puts Edwards as the candidate in 2012. If Bush wins then he’s done after this term, and with Cheney’s age & record & health we’re looking at a fresh Republican candidate in 2008 along with a fresh Democratic candidate (Edwards or Barack or Bayh, just please not Hillary). That at least creates the opportunity for both parties (or at least either party) to advance a centrist candidate that I can get excited about voting for. Imagine that - a Presidential candidate I can get excited about supporting!

What a disappointment.  I hoped for fresh candidates and instead got McCain 2008 (a party-line retread unrelated to the “Straight Talk Express” of McCain 2000), Hillary 2008 (shrill and divisive and with none of the hope and optimism of Clinton 1992), and Barack 2008 (how does he seem so stale and caricatured already? wasn’t he the fresh face at the convention in 2004 and the candidate of “Yes We Can!” just a couple months ago?).

We’ve had a Bush or Clinton in the White House since I was in kindergarten, and that’s unAmerican.  We don’t do dynasties.  I’ve given up hope of having a fresh candidate, but I’ll at least settle for having fresh names in the White House.  As long as we don’t have Hillary on the Dem ticket (as President or Veep) then I can at least cling to that (and I’d feel the same way about Jeb Bush if he were running on the Republican side).

So I’m voting for Obama in next Tuesday’s primary.

But I don’t know who I’ll vote for in November.  If Hillary is on the Dem ticket then I’m voting for McCain.  If the Dem ticket is Clinton-free then my vote is up for grabs.

This is for all the guys out there.

When I grew up, porn was a pretty strictly defined thing (Wikipedia defines porn as “the explicit depiction of sexual subject matter, especially with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer”).  We didn’t have the Internet, and none of the five TV channels we got showed anything racier than “Dallas.” Even when cable and satellite came along, MTV still showed music videos and they were pretty harmless (check out Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” video - it’s practically as innocent as Hannah Montana).

Porn was pretty much limited to videos (VHS tapes and even film reels) and magazines (Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, etc.). To get porn you or your friends had to either find it in your parents’ closet or under your big brother’s mattress or go down to the corner store and look the sales clerk in the eye when you bought the magazine or rented the tape.

These specific things were Porn, everything else was Not Porn, and the line between them was clear.  If someone asked me when I was 15 “Have you looked at porn lately?” the answer was an easy yes or no - if I’d looked at Those Magazines or Those Videos the answer was yes; otherwise, no.

Now, we’ve opened Pandora’s Box and erased the line between Porn and Not Porn.

Network TV used to be Not Porn, but have you watched Dancing with the Stars, or Desperate Housewives, or a dozen other shows?  Or the commercials and promos during otherwise family-friendly shows?

Cable used to be Not Porn, but the sex scenes on The Real World clearly have the “intention of sexually exciting the viewer.”

And online is the most problematic.  It’s easy enough to avoid the dedicated Porn sites (Playboy.com and others).  But what about the “sexually exciting” material on YouTube, or Flickr, or Facebook, or any Google search?

I could ask a guy now “Have you looked at porn recently?” and he could honestly say he hasn’t looked at any  magazines or any videos or any porn sites but still have spent hours each day consuming sexually explicit material through all of these traditionally Not Porn avenues.

So now that porn is out of the box, the questions have to change.  It’s no longer “Have you looked at porn lately?”  It’s “What have you been looking at lately?”  And even moreso, it’s “Do you have X3Watch installed on all your computers?”  And it’s “Do your kids have a TV or computer (aka the Porn Pipelines) in their bedroom?”

Some people can’t stand that Roy Williams showed a little Jayhawk love at the national championship game.

What the haters don’t realize is that Roy is continuing a long tradition of Jayhawk love among UNC coaches.  Check out what the coach is wearing in this 1911 UNC team picture:

This Sunday at Pine Ridge Church is going to be all about our addictions. It’s part 2 of the Mind Storm series, called Mind Trap. Tadd says, “We are talking about the addictions and strongholds in our lives and we are leaving NO stone unturned!! … The church has done a pretty bad job for far too long of picking certain sins and separating them from the others. It’s okay for us to bash and frown on certain sins and somehow we have decided that some sins are okay for the church to discuss, but others are too taboo to talk about.”

The biggest topic that’s taboo for churches is sex addiction, and especially the porn & masturbation addictions that have most guys (and most pastors) in a stranglehold, and often lead to adultery & divorce.

Tadd’s going to bring it stronger and more directly than most people have ever heard in church before, and I’m looking forward to seeing guys (and women) being really challenged and giving up the sin some of them have held on to for 10 or 20 years or more (just like I did).

Related: audio from week one of Mind Storm, called Mind Set:

I expected there to be a parade of warm-up acts before former President Bill Clinton spoke at Elon yesterday, and there were. The President of the College Democrats chapter spoke, Elon mayor Jerry Tolley spoke, and North Carolina field director Mike Trujillo spoke. I had my digital video camera with me, hoping to capture some memories of the day, especially since Gretchen and the kids came to yesterday’s event as well.

It was Trujillo who gave the soundbite of the day. He had randomly selected a few people from the audience who had texted him to come to the stage, and later to meet President Clinton. I’m not sure what brought it on (maybe he was trying to be funny?), but at one point during this process Trujillo said into the microphone, “That just means you’ve got a whole bunch of mama’s boys just like me wanting to get a mommy elected President.” The crowd stood in awkward silence for several seconds before Trujillo mercifully went about getting people onto the stage (”Mike, do you know the route to take?”).

Here’s the audio of it: