Poking the Skunk

So I just talked to my Market Research professor about the textbook, because we found an error* in class and he mentioned that he would have to tell the author about it.

He had mentioned before that he knows the author pretty well**, so I told him after class that I had found a few more errors (including a couple not mentioned here) and asked if he wanted to forward those along.

His eyes lit up and he rubbed his hands together. "Oh, yeah," he said. "That would make him really mad."

I like my professor, but I'm not sure I want to be encouraging that kind of behavior...

* Which I didn't think was an error as much as a really, really dumb hypothesis.

** It turns out they are writing a textbook together on another subject.

History is a long time

Fish is nothing if not succinct:

Only 3 points to go!

I feel like I'm watching one of those movies where the hero starts blasting away and never bothers to reload, and you're like, "He's only got three bullets left," and there's an army of bad guys just over the horizon that you can see but he can't.

Of course, in the movie the hero kills them all with the jawbone of an ass or something, but somehow I don't think Bernanke's middle name is "Samson."

The hardest 'disconnect' between being a student of history and living thru history is in realizing that what took 18 months or 5 years then takes 18 months or 5 years now.

As students we cover it in a couple of paragraphs, with all the causes and effects neatly connected and laid bare. But with what we see before us, not so much. It's still going to take us the whole time to watch it. Which is fine, because it really does give people a chance to plan, even to react.

This is going to sound weird, but history is surprisingly forgiving. Sure, we're never getting another chance to load the boat with sub-$300 gold, but we may see $700 again*. Nothing goes in a straight line.

We may** be in for a short-term turnaround here. Sentiment on the dollar is so negative and the market so weak that I should not be surprised if we see a short-term reversal.

Unfortunately, that does not change anything but the time scale. Bernanke only has three bullets left. The first money copter does not arrive for 4 months at best.

And in the real world, 4 months is a long freaking time.

* for the record, I bought my last sub-$600 a year ago. If it drops 20% from ANY point, I'll be buying it like Mitt Romney buying votes.

** wow, is THAT a weasel word.

Drinking and marketing

"The result is that of all Jack Daniels sold is now sold outside the United States."

You read that conclusion correctly.

The ironic thing about market researchers is the importance they put on delivering useful information to their customers. Sure, market researchers collect data, but data is not information until it's put into a form that the business can use as a basis for intelligent decision-making.

So there's a really insightful "Research Snapshot" on page 22* that reveals all manner of data about the how people around the world consume JD. At a dinner party, 4 or 5 Japanese will drink a bottle of JD as a dinner beverage. Aussies mix it with soft drinks. In China, they drink cheap knockoffs. And that's all well and good, but one useful piece of information might be how much Jack Daniels is consumed outside the US as opposed to within it.

Coincidentally, that is precisely the information that has been omitted from their conclusion.

* of the same textbook that misdefined "research" on page 5.

The Church of Bernanke

Your intolerance will not be tolerated

[beser] Today my History class took a feild trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Its a museum showing kids not to be prejudice and all that good stuff.

[beser] Anyways, one exhibit is two doors next to each other. One door has a sign hanging over it saying "Those with prejudice walk through this door" The other door's sign said "Those without prejudice walk through this door". Obviously the door for people without prejudice isn't openable because as the tour guide says "Everyone has prejudice".

[beser] So, I start tugging on the door and say "What the hell is wrong with this damn door, did some damn Jew make this?" and the tour guide kicked me out and i had to sit in the bus for 15 minutes...

Why my kingdom needs only one law

Like the lotto says

You can't lose if you don't play:

LONGBOAT KEY, Fla. — ... Mr. Giuliani's risky strategy of skipping the first half-dozen presidential-nomination contests has gone nearly according to plan — three different candidates have won. Each state so far has been a battle between just two or three candidates*, and none so far has built lasting momentum.

My plan for winning the nomination goes even further, as I plan to skip ALL the primaries and caucuses. It's risky, I know, but so far I have succeeded in evading victory in every one of them.

* also known as "people actually running for President," and none of which has been named "Giuliani."

Meanwhile, back at the Fed...

(hat tip: fish)

Is God Bullish on Gold?

A rerun from two years ago, not because I'm lazy but because its... no, actually it's because I'm lazy.

New Era Investor ruminates on the new year:

Every New Year's Day our church is given a verse for the year ahead which we hope is meaningful perhaps even prophetic... (This year) that verse was Haggai chapter 2 verse 9, but as I consider the year ahead for gold and silver, verse 8 leapt at me as well. Here are the two verses combined:

Verse 8: The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts.

Verse 9: The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.

Will the glory of 2006 be greater than that of 2005? We certainly hope so. As for "peace", we hope the shorts will have no peace at all!

Now I'm pretty sure God doesn't have a target price for MSFT and if he's in the market at all he's probably short GM. And I'm always amused by those (NOT New Era Investor, BTW) who try to enlist God on their side to make their stocks go up or their team win. God is probably not all that interested in tipping footballs to help you win the office pool. That being said, I'm sure we'd all be better investors if we could take market advice from God.

So let me take this saw out on this limb and give "God's perspective" on the gold market (checking for lightening right now. Nope, sky is clear. Here we go.)

God is not so much interested in markets as he is in truth, honesty, and fair play. How does that work into the gold market? It's actually pretty simple: gold and silver - historical and biblical money - are measured in dollars. It used to be that a dollar was defined as a certain amount of gold or silver. In that case, where the dollar simply stood in for metals, it was what the Bible calls a just measure or a just weight. When you took your beans or sheep or whatever you were selling to market, you got a certain amount of gold (or dollars exchangeable for gold). If the deal was fair (i.e. if the scales were not cheats) buyer and seller both came out ahead. Economics is not a zero-sum game, but a positive sum game, and I believe God designed it (and us) that way to facilitate peaceful and voluntary interactions and relationships.

So when "dollar" meant "gold" it was true money and received the blessing of God, as he says in Proverbs 16:11: "A just weight and balance are the LORD’S: all the weights of the bag are his work." Remember, God is interested in principles, and one of the foremost is that we deal honestly with one another.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century: we decided that paper was better than gold. Gold keeps the peace because it makes war expensive. Gold preserves freedom because it makes government expensive. Government doesn't like that - it likes war and more government - which is why the first thing that goes out the window in times of war and government growth is gold.

Since the Federal Reserve was foisted on the nation, the value of the dollar has gone from 1/20th of an ounce of gold to 1/535th* of one. The dollar has depreciated by 96%. It is, in fact, a false measure, because you never know from day to day what your dollar will buy (you only know that it will buy less than yesterday). We call that economic phenomenon "inflation," but God calls it theft. He calls it a false weight or "divers" (different) weights.

And He has a few things to say about false weights, spoken in perfect 16th century English:

Le 19:36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.

De 25:13 Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small.

Pr 20:10 Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD.

Pr 20:23 Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD; and a false balance is not good.

The practice referred to was simple. A man would have two weights, a big and a small. One was for weighing the gold given to him, the other for weighing the gold he was giving. In this way, he screwed his neighbor by reducing the value of his money. This practice led to coinage, which standardized weights and measures. Then government started debasing that currency (taking out some of the good metal) until we were left with the copper-core tokens we have today that look like silver and gold but are not. In other words, government committed an "abomination" by creating a system whereby workers got continuously screwed, just like the seller facing a buyer with false weights. They work more and more and get less value even if they get more currency. That's why prices go up: government is creating these paper nothings with impunity, which steals the value of the ones in your wallet.

Now, is that going to make God happy? I think not. We have created an entire economic system based on the very thing God warned against: false weights and measures.

What has this to do with the gold market? Everything. The gold market is a measurement of the strength of the dollar. When Gold goes up, it's mostly because the dollar is going down. Gold is a measure of inflation (or the expectation of inflation) and gold going up continuously means that the false measure known as the dollar is seeking its true value: nothing.

I'm not going to pull a Pat Robertson and say that God is going to judge the dollar. God has not clued me in about that. But I do think that God gave us gold and silver for a reason, and that it is perfect for commerce for a reason, and that it is beneficial for human relationships for a reason, and that if we ignore those reasons and his gifts - including gold and silver money - then we are bound to suffer for that.

God is not bullish on Gold because it's a good investment, but I do think he's bullish on it because it's honest. A just weight is "God's work," and I think it is for that reason a good investment. Likewise I think he's bearish on the dollar because it is a false weight. If we continue to debase our money, then we will suffer, not God's wrath, but the effects which are built into God's just universe. God has no need to step in and smite us: he has designed humans to work a certain way and when they ignore that, they bring bad effects on themselves.

When this whole phony edifice collapses, a lot of people are going to claim that God has judged us (and it might be true, I don't know) and a lot of people are going to blame God for the horrible circumstances that follow. But like the people of Jerusalem in 587bc who, after repeated warnings to leave the city decided to stay and ended up eating their own children when Nebuchadnezzar besieged it, we can ignore God's warnings and persist in doing things our way. The effects of that on all of us will be as horrible as they are foreseeable. There is no new thing under the sun.

But don't bother blaming God when the mess we created lands us in poverty. He'll be on the phone to his broker, shorting the yen and the Euro anyway.

* As of 1/28/08, 1/915th of an ounce and falling.

John McCain on the PPT

(hat tip: Snoop)

I'm rich, boitch

The KC Star has a little widget to calculate how much helicopter money is coming your way.

Hat Tip: 3am

UPDATE: I thought you said crossing the streams was bad: "I do know that it will help stimulate the economy. But if it does not, then there will be more to come," said Pelosi, D-Calif.

I love this plan. Let's do it!

A defense of literalism

Over in the Fire Swamp I posted a long-winded defense of treating the Constitution as literally as possible. There's no need to re-post it here when you can read it with a click. But for those of you who don't have and don't want an L.Com account, feel free to comment here.

Black guys never get a break

I've heard of being negative, but sheesh:

Heart disease deaths in the USA have fallen below the American Heart Association's prevention goal for 2010, and deaths from strokes are nearing their own record low, the AHA said Tuesday...

These advances didn't benefit everyone, AHA notes. The death rate for blacks dropped by 23.8%, compared with 25.6% for whites. "While overall statistics look better for the U.S. as a whole," Ridker says, "a major portion of our population is not benefiting from this shift."

Let's see if I can get this straight: heart disease deaths "plummet" (the title of the article) at 25.8%. But Black guys are "not benefiting," weighing in at a mere 23.8%. I guess a 24% reduction in the death rate is absolutely worthless if someone else managed to get above that?

But I think it's USA Today's own fault that black guys are still dying of heart disease. After all, it was USA Today columnist Julianne Malveaux* who said about Clarence Thomas:

I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. Well, that’s how I feel.

I mean, with USA Today giving away the secret of killing them, how can black guys expect to compete?

* Winner of the 1994 "I’m a Compassionate Liberal But I Wish You Were Dead" Award.

I will not blog about Bernanke today

Spending our way out of poverty

The Star Tribune explains modern macroeconomics in one sentence:

The call has gone out for Americans to shop the economy into recovery.

It sounds crazy, insane, but only because that's exactly what it is.

The Star Tribune has distilled the essence of the Yale MBA and the Princeton PhD*, the CNBC talking head and the professional economist, into a single sentence**. All the polls that are concerned with 'confidence,' all the schemes to cut taxes and write rebate checks, the lowering of interest rates to increase home values, are concerned with one thing: getting the consumer to consume. And it may sound like the height of arrogance for little old uneducated me to stand here and tell you that most of the biggest brains in the modern world of finance are not just wrong but exactly wrong; I'm willing to live with that, and I say this: if you consume everything, eventually you will have nothing.

There are really only two ways to approach macroeconomics, the study of the 'general' aspects of economic activity, as opposed to, say, the family budget, which is microeconomics. The first approach concentrates on, nee worships, GDP***. That is to say that it worships a number that represents economic 'activity'. It worships 'doing something.' It worships movement, while it totally disregards where that movement is heading. The second way is to foster future 'C' by increasing 'I' today, to assert that if you wish to live better tomorrow, you must increase your income today: you must produce and you must save. The entire modern world of macroeconomics is aligned against this idea.

One will find in many articles the 'fact' that consumption ('C' in the notation below) is 70% of the economy. And it's true by definition. But from that simple fact, modern economics makes a mistake that is poised to impoverish us all: that the easiest way to increase GDP is to increase C, that the best way to increase our total economic activity is to increase consumption. That could not be a more dangerous approach, because modern economics - or more properly "econometrics" - ignores the fact that consumption is a losing game. Consumption means that real goods disappear.

Work with me here while I put my world-class ignorance on display. It is a fact that consumption cannot exceed income over the long term; you cannot eat today what you will grow tomorrow. You know that in your own life; if you spend more than you make you'll go broke. It's a fact. In fact, it is the CENTRAL truth of budgeting.

Modern macroeconomics tries to avoid that fact through credit, by allowing you to borrow today what you have will earn tomorrow. In order to foster that consumption it is essential that credit - debt - constantly expand - it borrows today's real goods from producers with a promise to repay them with production tomorrow. The housing bubble fostered GDP growth by allowing Americans to borrow more in line the rising value of their houses. The tax rebate is designed to foster GDP growth by giving people money to spend and it matters not what they spend it on. But it is insanity, it is a trap, because since we cannot individually consume more than we produce, we cannot collectively do so. We have tried, and we are failing as we must. Debt has its limits; you can only borrow so much from the future.

Once debt reached its limits you can only do two things with it, you can either pay it off which impoverishes you temporarily or you can default on it which impoverishes you AND your supplier permanently.

America is about to face a new old reality, that since one can only consume what is produced, and since production comes from 'I' - investment in those capital goods that create the things that are eventually consumed - we're going to have a period of decreased 'C,' of a lower standard of living, where the consumption fostered by borrowing rather than production comes to an end. Instead we will produce without consuming for the benefit of those who have produced what we have already consumed.

The 'credit crunch' is nothing more than that. It is not a problem of 'confidence,' as if as long as we could forever borrow we could forever spend. It is the problem that we have already collectively borrowed as much as was possible. We have borrowed on our houses and our credit cards to their limits, we have issued bonds and bills; now we must produce to pay back that debt. That means reduced consumption, that means a reduced standard of living, certainly that means a recession and maybe it means a depression.

The modern economist and our current government will do everything possible to foster continued 'C,' continued consumption, to keep the game going. But they are up against the hard fact that you cannot borrow from the future forever. The future eventually strikes back.

Welcome to the future.

* if you think Bush and Bernanke are uneducated, you could not be more wrong. But the fact that they are educated is 95% of the problem.

** An amazing feat for a member of the press. One can only assume he's the new guy.

*** GDP = C + I + G + (X-M)

An answer for bw

Lot's wife found on Mars

NASA discovers a mystery female*:

Perched on a rock, she could be waiting for a bus.

But if so, she could be in for an awfully long wait.

This photo of what looks remarkably like a female figure with her arm outstretched, was taken on Mars.

Unchanged from our prior discussion, my position on life in the universe is that I suspect it's all over in various physical and spiritual forms, and I would not be terribly surprised if we turned up something somewhere someday. But I can't help think that this photo looks a lot like the famous Patterson Bigfoot photo.

If one looks at the size of the 'figure' relative to the whole photo, then ponders the amount of time and effort it took to find this 'woman,' then considers that the entire photo has been looked over with similar effort and this is all that was found, I can't help but reach precisely the opposite conclusion that those fine folks at Rense do.

*Maybe to replace that crazy one with a butcher knife and a diaper they had before.

Crisis averted, um, delayed

CNBC reports:

A surprise Fed rate cut helped hold back a massive selloff in the stock market, although stocks remained lower on continued worries about the US economy.

Bernanke is a panicker. Pass it on.

UPDATE: So is Bush:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush won't rule out the possibility of an economic stimulus package larger than the $150 billion program already outlined to reinvigorate the ailing economy, the White House said Tuesday...

Lock limit down

Call me paranoid, but I'm always a little fearful of three-day weekends:

LONDON (AP) -- Stocks fell sharply worldwide Monday following declines on Wall Street last week amid investor pessimism over the U.S. government's stimulus plan to prevent a recession.

U.S. markets were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but were primed to open Tuesday's session with steep declines, according to futures trading...

As of 11:30 a.m. ET, March contracts on the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite all pointed to declines of over 4 percent at Tuesday's open.

And Asia and Europe still have tonight's trading to get through. Of course, futures don't correlate exactly with indexes, and there's always the off-chance the President's Working Group in Financial Markets (aka the PPT) will work up a little magic overnight. But if they don't, it's quite possible that the market will drop the requisite amount to lock limit down for a bit. That may even happen before the market really opens*. That means no one buys and no one sells, we have some quiet time to get our heads on straight and watch developments. Then we start over again. And maybe again.

This is not a crash prediction**, but it ought to serve as something of a wakeup call for the fact that the "credit crunch" is now contained to every market in the world. And we have not seen the last of it - we have not even seen the end of the first act. If the crash doesn't come tomorrow, it could come soon. Or not. There's simply too much government intercession to make such a call.

But that's not really what this post is about anyway - stock markets are a barometer, they are not rain - but rather the negative reaction of those markets to El Presidente's planned "tax rebate," which solution weighs in at about twice Hillary's solution and 50% more than Obama's***. The reaction ought to be negative, though quite possibly it's negative for the wrong reasons. The market seems to think that it isn't enough to avert recession, and they are correct. But I also think it's too much - or at least the wrong direction - to avert national bankruptcy.

The reason is this: $150 billion is about to be mailed out to taxpayers, ostensibly so that they can spend it. One of three things will happen: either they will spend it or they will save it or they will pay down debts with it.

If they save it, as I suspect they will do, all that has happened is that a negative $150 billion has moved from the balance sheet of the government from those of individuals. That's the best that can happen for individuals. Theoretically banks could also lend that money out, but they are afraid to so that's a wash.

If they spend it, then $150b in debt has been added to the balance sheet of government and people have more assets, mostly depreciating ones since you can't buy a house or a factory with $800. So the transfer becomes temporary on the consumer side, but is still permanent on the government side.

If they use it to pay down debts, then the money supply contracts by that much, which is liable to make the recession deeper. That's what happens when you have debt for money****; it sloshes around until it is either paid off or defaulted on, but either way it disappears eventually. It cannot grow at a double-digit rate forever, and no tree grows to the sky; it dies and falls on your house.

But in any case, the only guarantee is that the government is taking onto its own books $150 billion of the consumer's negative balance sheets - we have simply socialized the risks and losses in a way that the foolish are rewarded at the expense of the thrifty, since they will all be taxed sometime in the future to repay the money with interest. And we have ensured that the consumers have the ability to do it over again.

Whichever of the three happens, it is not likely to kickstart the economy in the way that politicians hope, because the problem is, first and foremost, the size of our collective debt load - governments, businesses, and people. Debt service now commands too much of our total income. And the only way to fix that is to pay off debts (not transfer them from one entity to another) or to default on them.

If we pay them off or the credit structure continues to implode and wipe them out, we get a deflationary recession or depression, as Mish expects, and his arguments are damned good. If we default on them by destroying the dollar - which means when this rebate doesn't work, we give another, then another, all the time transferring consumer debt to the government in the hopes that they will ring up more - then we will get an inflationary recession. Personally I suspect we will get both in that order. If the politicians will not allow a small recession, then we will get a big one.

We may know tomorrow or not. But we will know soon enough.

* Which is why I've pulled all my automated buy orders. Only a fool catches a falling knife when it is much safer (not to mention more profitable) to wait for the ringing to stop and walk over and pick it up. I also have two accounts that are 100% in cash to buy back in someday. A crash is not the end of the world, it is the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.

** which, in any case would come too late, since you can't buy or sell until the market opens.

*** see, I told you Bush could do them better.

**** which is the primary reason a nation should have gold for money, not because gold is magic but because it is real in a way that debt is not; it cannot be created from nothing, nor does it disappear in bad times. In fact, it is in bad times that gold shines the brightest.

I, too, was a Giants fan - for the day

Quote of the (Vox) Day

"It's always easy to tell how Ron Paul does in a primary; you need merely count the number of finishers reported, then add one."

Oh, it's true. Unfortunately, that trick doesn't work as well with polls.

I had a dream today

Jones sets a bad precedent by brain-dumping his sleep images on my blog:

I had a dream last night that Osama bin Laden died and since he was dead those hiding him decided he no longer had to be hidden so they gave up his whereabouts and said that he died...well, where ever it was. I remember the country started with a "S" but didn't have a real name when I looked on the map. Regardless, the next part of the dream was the U.s. government attacking the country with a massive air strike and turning it into rubble as revenge for hiding him. I remember thinking it was a totally pointless move. Now that I'm awake, I wonder what it all means.

I didn't dream very much myself until I started hitting the recumbent bike a lot harder in the evenings, and now my nights seem to be full of things that confuse me*. But last night, Rogue and I took a big ride while watching a show on how to make fabulous cocktails**, and I slept downstairs because she had to work today and I wanted to sleep in - being a hard-working government employee I have the day off. [insert snarky or ironic comment here]

So right after she left I crawled into our bed and it was awesome... it was warm and smelled like her and I made a huge nest out of the 10 pillows that she sleeps with right in the middle of the bed (I usually just get one and about a foot on one side). And then I had two of the psychoest psycho dreams ever.

The first one was that I was back at the Prairie Village Pippin's***, a now-defunct restaurant where I worked in college and for a while afterwards. I was still my current age, but everyone there (and it was all the same people who worked there 20 years ago) were all the same age as they were then.

Lots of little stuff was weird, like we had three grills instead of two. No big deal. But then Donna the Manager comes back to the kitchen with a vegetable steamer - it was a huge plate of (get this) steamed vegetables - in her hand and says the customer wants a new one, but this time to sub 18 pieces of pizza for all the veggies. I woke up a bit confused, but I managed to shake it off and go back to sleep.

In the next one we tried out a new church, and it was really pretty nice - a public library in Johnson County****, but not the Johnson County Public Library (I didn't say this had to make sense). It had a black preacher, a really big fat guy, and he was yelling and hooting and running around. And I remember thinking that was pretty cool, since we have black foster kids and they would enjoy a multi-racial church. But every once in a while, everyone in a whole section (like a dozen people) would pop up and run across the church to a different section and sit down. Then a minute later, some other group would do the same. and they would either run in a perfectly straight line together, or as a square. It was really coordinated.

So the preacher is walking around and he comes up to Rogue and I (we had no kids with us for some reason) and he gets right up in her face, and he asks, "Are you feeling good today?" Now when our daughter Rebel Nun was a little kid, she used to to stand there and refuse to answer a question. It was incredibly annoying. And that's what Rogue was doing. And he's like, "I said are you feeling GOOD today?" And he starts kissing all over her face. And she wouldn't answer the question until he left, and then she pipes up and asks if she could have his microphone. Then I realized my sunglasses (which for some inexplicable reason I was wearing indoors) were really 3D glasses from the movie Magician's Nephew - I could tell because when I looked at them, they said that all over the rim.

Then I woke up confused again, and only an hour had passed. So I figured I'd better make some breakfast before something really confusing happened.

* Rather than just my days, as had been the case prior.

** During which I learned one very cool thing. My favorite drink, a rum and Coke, is also called a Cuba Libre (Free Cuba). So now when I have one I can, in good liberal fashion, imagine that I am doing something to help those oppressed by a left-wing dicta...oh, wait, left-wing dictators never oppress anyone. That's only right-wing ones. My bad.

*** It's been a long time since I had Pippin's dreams. The last one I remember was something of a nightmare. You see, we used to get our orders via a hanging aluminum wheel with springs on it. The waitress would attach the order to the wheel via a spring which would make a snapping noise. Then she'd spin the wheel and the order would come into the kitchen. A lot of snaps meant a lot of orders, and since when you worked the grill you were facing away from the window, the snapping noise was how you knew you had more orders. I said all that to say this: I dreamt that I was working the grill, which was actually 2 grills (one for meats, one for sandwiches) and the grills went as far to the left and right as I could see. And they were both covered with orders, more orders than I could possibly manage. And behind me I'm hearing "snap, snap, snapsnapsnap," a million orders coming in. And I'm all panicked. And as I look down, I see that I have no hands, but that the ends of my arms turn straight into spatulas, like Ted Nugent's guitars on the cover of "Scream Dream." And I let out a scream and I wake up amazed that I didn't pee myself. This dream was not as bad as that one.

**** Which itself was pretty weird, since most of my dreams take place in Duluth, Minnesota.

An exercise in market research

I would field test this data myself, but being married for 20+ years it is not a market I have any more than an academic interest in. However, since my sons are now in such a market, I heartily encourage them to do the requisite research before making any kind of a purchase.

You guys can borrow my MGMKT*534 textbook if you wish, though I'm still in the process of correcting some of its more egregious errors.

Research this

OK, so I cracked my Marketing Research textbook open today for the first time, and what to my wondering eyes should appear on page 5 but this clinker:

"Literally, research (re-search) means "to search again." The term connotes patient study and scientific investigation wherein the researcher takes another, more careful look at the data to discover all that is known about the subject." -- Zickmund and Babbitt, "Exploring Market Research," p.5

Bullscheisterhosen*, says I; it means no such thing.

Actually, that was just my first thought, but being the good student that I am, I decided to follow the book's admonition that scientific conclusions are based on actually looking at data rather than simply going with one's first impression.

The authors appear to be defining the term by its assumed derivation rather than on how it is used - and their conclusion is a bit of a strain, IMO. To research something there is no requirement that anyone has looked at the data before. In fact, one of the objectives of research is to look in completely new places. In that sense, the word is the opposite of "re-search," which really connotes covering old ground. That's our first clue that all may not be as it seems. Our second is that people never use "research" to mean, "search again."

It appears that the "re-" is what throws them**, because that Latin prefix often, even usually, means "again," as in renew, recharge, rearrange, rewrite. But it does not always mean that. To "reconnoiter" does not mean "to connoiter again;" usually it means one is looking at some unknown place for the first time. To "release" does not mean "to loose again." To "relax" does not mean "to become lax again." In those cases, "re-" means to do or become completely that. If you release something, you set it completely free. It need never have been free before.***

So while based on its usage I suspect that the re- in "research" means "completely" rather than "again," there is one necessary place we ought to research, an etymological dictionary. There we will find an interesting entry:

Research: 1577, "act of searching closely," from M.Fr. recerche (1539), from O.Fr. recercher "seek out, search closely," from re-, intensive prefix, + cercher "to seek for" (see search). Meaning "scientific inquiry" is first attested 1639.

It turns out that "research" does not come from the Latin directly, and since it is "old Latin" (which is not necessarily the Latin from which French derives) that uses "re-" to mean "again," I am not surprised to find that the "re-" here is simply an intensifying prefix, making the meaning something akin to "really, really search." Which by an extraordinary coincidence is how the word is used.

Thus I think our research is at an end.

Is it nitpicking? Absolutely. Am I just being a jerk? It would not be the first time. But I do wonder about a textbook dedicated to research that can't even bother to research the correct etymology of what is ostensibly the most important word in it and therefore makes up a misleading definition based on the authors' deficient understanding of their own language.

Perhaps that's just a hidden exercise for the student, or perhaps the most important word is really marketing. After all, if you market correctly, it doesn't really matter what you're selling, does it?

* Pardon my German.

** And others who jump to the same conclusion.
*** A mistake that Genesis "gap theorists" make when they ask, "If the earth had not been “plenished” prior to [Adam], why would he be told to re-plenish it?"

Kettle, meet Joseph Farah

WND's head pot levels an accusation of blackness:

Some of these misguided Christian clerics cite a handful of random, out-of-context verses that might, possibly, in some way, maybe, be interpreted, if you use your imagination, to suggest we should just forgive and forget all transgressions and trespasses against our national sovereignty and our laws regarding our nation status.

I won't deal with those Scriptures again, except to call your attention to the earlier work.

I will, however, introduce just one more verse I think is very relevant. It is Deuteronomy 27:17: "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark. And all the people shall say, Amen."

Amen, indeed.

Farah's take seems to be that Moses here is talking about 'transgressions and trespasses' against national sovereignty, and since no one has accused illegal immigrants of literally removing a neighbor's landmark, it seems quite possible to me that he's using (and I quote from somewhere close) a random, out-of-context verse that might, possibly, in some way, maybe, be interpreted, if you use your imagination, to relate to the political issue of illegal immigration*.

But I suppose before we can decide if a verse is 'very relevant' or if it's that other thing, it might be a good idea to understand the verse in question. Let's look at it again:

"Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark," or in the vernacular, "The man who removes his neighbor's landmark from its place is cursed."

Now, what does it mean to remove (lit: "to move away," or "to displace") someone's landmark? I went back and checked the translator's notes for the Geneva Bible and found a very succinct explanation, that here God "condemns all injuries and extortions." But that seems to give us two very different interpretations here, unless an illegal immigrant is to be presumed an extortionist, which I think we can all admit is a bit of a stretch. The strong usually extort from the weak, and there are few weaker in a society than its immigrants.

So what does the verse mean? One way to find out is to look at the places it is elsewhere used in scripture. Two of the three other uses are found in the Proverbs, which we will skip for the reason that their uses are poetic and don't add much** to Deuteronomy. But in the same book (19:14) we find an expanded version of the same command: Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it. In short, the landmark is a literal "land mark" which denoted the boundary between two fields, fields that were the property of families, provided their livelihood, and passed through inheritance***.

Now if I am your neighbor and we have a land mark between our fields, it might be very tempting to sneak out in the middle of the night and move it a little, an act that would make my field bigger and yours smaller. Moving a landmark was a sneaky way to steal land from a family, and if it was done through threat of violence it was an extortion. In either case, it is still an injury; that's why the Geneva notes call it such.

Therefore our verse has everything to do with stealing your neighbor's physical property and absolutely nothing to do with where a person lives, so long as they live there peacefully. If Mexicans were clandestinely moving the border marker pictured above, then the verse might apply - in a collective sense they would be stealing our land****. In the sense of individuals who choose to live peacefully on one side of that rock as opposed to the other the verse does not apply at all.

Of course, the misuse of an isolated verse happens all the time, especially when it comes to political application. But it's fair game to be pointed out - and I might add, mocked profusely - when the writer at the same time calls out his political opponents for doing the same thing.

* The Christian's treatment of the illegal immigrant is a different issue altogether and, I might add, one where Farah's case is significantly weaker.

** Though the second, Pr. 23:10, also warns not to 'enter into the fields of the fatherless,' i.e. to steal the harvest from a weaker member of society. Extortion is at least implied.

*** They also reverted to the original families in the year of jubilee, meaning that they were a more-or-less permanent fixture. Land could be sold, but it still legally went back to the family after an appointed time. Under Hebrew law, the land belonged to the Lord, and this arrangement was designed to ensure that no Israelite family would be forever disenfranchised.

**** Which might even be a cause for war between the US and Mexico, coincidentally how that border came to be where it is today.

Good Advice

The Girl's Guide to Geeks exhibits an incredible grasp of common sense*:

Because they have been so abused and ignored by society, many geeks have gone underground. You may actually know some and just haven't noticed them. They often feel resentful, and misunderstood, and it is important to realize this as you grow closer to them. Don't ever try to force the issue, or make crazy demands that he choose between his computer and you. Remember, his computer has been there for him his whole life; you are a new interloper he hasn't quite grasped yet.

I don't really have anything to add to this excellent article other than to dispel the nasty stereotype that all geeks are into Star Trek. I don't like it at all**. It's not that I dislike it, I don't. I simply have a deep and abiding ignorance of and apathy toward anything Star Trek and always have. There are Sci-Fi geeks and there are Fantasy geeks, those who play KOTOR and those who play NWN. And while the Sci-Fi geeks are the majority, I personally think the Fantasy geeks are smarter and better-looking***.

Therefore girls, if you want to catch a geek, Star Trek is simply not the guarantee it's promoted as. You may have to expand at least into Dungeons and Dragons, or if you can't stomach that, be familiar enough with Tolkien**** to avoid confusing a halfling with a half-elf or a troll with an orc, and to understand that not all those who wander are lost.

Which is why they don't ever ask for directions.

* for something written by women, or more appropriately, TO them. The women's magazines are filled with Pandagon-style rubbish, and Dear Abby and her ilk are just as bad. That's why Starbuck's is filled with unhappy 30-something single women rather than unhappy 30-something single men.

** So perhaps, under the No True Scotsman Fallacy, I am not really a geek.

*** Aw, yeah, bring on the Geek War.

**** You can even see the movies, just know that Faramir was NOT like that in the books.

I suggest using a Sierra club

The Daily Green doesn't like the choices:

Washington, Oregon and Idaho officials should kill up to 30 sea lions a year to protect salmon trying to migrate up the Columbia River. That's the recommendation of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service...

The options include:

1. doing nothing
2. maintaining the status quo (ineffective harassment)
3. killing those sea lions that ignore nonlethal harassment (about 30 animals)
4. killing any sea lion within five miles of the dam (about 150 animals)

NOAA recommends option 3...

To the Daily Green's credit, they were one of the few news outlets to note the irony that the government is proposing to kill one protected (technically, threatened) species in order to keep it from eating another. And to their credit, they also note that the current government approach*, no matter how much fun for those hired by the government, really accomplishes nothing other than to annoy some rather hungry sea lions. So two thumbs up, Daily Green**.

But unless somebody important complains***, government wildlife managers are about to have a lot more fun, maybe even as much fun as this federal biologist, who gets to fly around in a helicopter with a shotgun, gunning down a couple dozen wild pigs a day. He and his team have to come to Kansas every year to hunt pigs because it's against the law to hunt pigs**** and the pigs' population keeps growing for some reason, in spite of that fact.

But if they are going to hunt sea lions, they ought to be a lot more sportsmanlike about it than they are in gunning down pigs from a helicopter. In fact, in order to promote carbon-neutrally, they should forget the helicopter and firearms altogether and outsource the job to a team of young men who like to get drunk and taunt wild animals. They could be provided with wooden clubs and all the vodka they could drink, and the rest of us would be provided with an endless stream of reality cable television programs.

See? Everyone wins, especially the salmon, which is who the whole sordid business is really about anyway.

* hiring people to shout at the sea lions, throw firecrackers at the sea lions, and shoot rubber bullets at the sea lions. Think of it as an Intifada without funny hats.

** Let it never be said that I refuse to give credit to granola-eating, moonbat bunny huggers when it's due.

*** In which case the plan will be publicly scrapped and then quietly implemented when no one is looking.

** You can still kill pigs, on purpose, with a gun, so long as you get a free permit from the government. You just can't hunt them.

I took my first marketing class ever today

...and I don't think it's going to be as bad as I feared.

UPDATE: OK, so it's not actually marketing per se, if by that we mean America faces the daunting prospect of asterisked billboards across the fruited plain*. It's "Marketing Research," which focuses on data collection and the statistical analysis thereof to understand what customers a) want, and b) intend, rather than presentation of products for those customers**. I'm not taking the class for my own edification (it's job-related) though I can see how it may turn out to be helpful for historical research.

But I did notice a couple strange things about the makeup of the class. The first is that it's about 2/3 women***. The second is that of those women, fully half are east Asians of various nationalities, but there are no male Orientals in the class.

It will probably turn out that the Asian guys are all in engineering while the gals all go into business, but based on my sample size of one class I'm not ready to draw that conclusion. I just thought it odd enough to note.

* No, JN, even I don't think the rest of the nation will appreciate my bizarre obsession. I'm amazed that you people even put up with it here.

** So think "heavy on the math, light on the gin and cleavage."

*** Apparently shattering the stereotype that chicks don't 'do' math.

Make the payments count

MoneyCakes* calls out the big guns:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Thursday that legislators should enact a fiscal stimulus package in order to help beleaguered consumers as recession fears grow...

During Thursday's hearing, Bernanke said he thought a fiscal stimulus package of up to $150 billion, would be "reasonable."

And to think I thought Senator von Munchausen's plan was expensive at $70b**.

But Congress should get smart about this and kill multiple birds with one stone. See, in thinking about what I'm going to do with all the free money Congress is going to create from nothing for me, I got to thinking about those checks I used to get in the mail from phone companies. You remember those? They had a little bit of legalese on the back that said that this was a real check, but if you cashed it you were agreeing to have your phone service switched to their company. I got checks up to $100 at times. Man, I must have switched companies 8 times in like a month and a half. I'm rich, biotch!

So Congress could send out checks like that, for $500 or $1000 or $2000, with writing on the back that essentially says that if you cash this check, any complaint you have against the government for acts past or present (*cough* reparations *cough*) is legally and morally paid in full. Government took your ancestral land? Paid in full. Government lost or leaked your private data, resulting in your credit rating or reputation being destroyed? Paid in full. Government fraudulently prosecuted you, bankrupted you, or destroyed your livelihood through regulation or incompetence? Paid in full. All these complaints could be done away with in one fell swoop. But it need not stop there. I wonder how many Americans would sign away their troublesome right to free speech and assembly, to a trial by jury or to bear arms, in exchange for a little made-from-nothing money. Quite a few, I suspect.

On the other hand, those who take the cash might not be that foolish in retrospect, because those things are being lost so we can all be perfectly safe from Osama bin Laden*** anyway. So you might as well get a good HD-TV out of the deal.

* (hat tip: Huck)

** I guess I should have realized that for both parties to be happy, we essentially need to double the number either one presents.

*** Or the next Hitler-of-the-month.

And your little dog, too

John Harwood counts the monkies flying out of, um...

Just before Christmas, populist Democrat John Edwards proposed $25-billion in spending on energy, job training, and unemployment programs. Last week, Hillary Clinton upped the ante with a $70-billion package, nearly half targeted to the housing crisis...

Mr. Obama [would] accelerate his previously announced plan for a $500 credit against each worker’s payroll tax liability; to ensure its stimulative effect, he’d abandon for now the imperative of offsetting tax increases.

I haven't seen a final number on Obama's proposal, but based on the trend you can probably assume that it's more than $70b, and based on his abandonment of the imperative* of offsetting his tax cuts with tax increases, we can certainly conclude that such money will simply be borrowed or printed into existence.

But the imperative** thing to understand is not the specifics of any plan but the underlying assumption: it is good to stimulate the economy by spending, and it really doesn't matter who spends (government in the case of Edwards and Clinton, individuals in the case of Obama***) just that spending occur. It doesn't matter if it's wise or even Constitutional; it's just the ramming through of economic activity to drive the right numbers up. This is pure Keynesian Madness, as malpracticed by both parties, and is the cause of nearly every economic problem America faces. Of course, both parties also believe it to be the solution at the same time.

But the Democrats are going to have to work harder than that if they wish to beat the GOP at the stimulus game****. Bush's addition of $3.6 trillion to the national debt since 2001 is the equivalent of a $514 billion stimulus package every year Bush has been El Presidente. That's about 20 times the 'populist' John Edwards' package, year after year.

All I can say is that it's a good thing that Republicans are fiscally conservative, because if they weren't, spending might really get out of hand.

* I didn't think it was even theoretically possible to abandon an imperative, but Obama has done it. He is both audacious AND hopeful.

** In the non-Obama sense.

*** Which is why Obama here betrays his inexperience, because his plan - while being the best of the three for individuals - could have precisely the opposite of the intended effect. Let's say that rather than just blowing the $500 on Pokemon toys, Americans got smart and paid down their debts. Money supply would immediately contract, in all probability deepening the very recession he's trying to avoid. Far better, from the Democrat perspective, to let the government spend that money. That's called "leaving it to the experts."

**** The Democrats' response to the delirium tremens of debt addiction is Pabst Blue Ribbon to Bush's Hot Damn 100.

Chick TV

Greater Expectations

My favorite time waster is Free Cell. Because I'm on dial-up at the house*, I have lots of "extra" time between page loads, time that screams out for a distraction. And Free Cell is it.

Which was great with XP. Free Cell is a fairly challenging game, not easy enough that I won all the time, but I was good for 90% or so. The big problem is that you can get ahead of yourself, and with but a single 'undo' move available, it's not hard to work yourself into an unrecoverable corner. Sure, you could cheat the stats by shutting the computer down without exiting the game, but that's not really fair, is it**? So I spent a lot of time hovering right around the 90% level, and if a game would drop me below, you'd better believe I took it seriously.

Enter Vista, with its new rules, including unlimited undos***. Now you can't get hung up because of a few bad moves, In fact, you can back up all the way to the beginning and start over.

Now a lot of guys would expect that I'd be happy about that, because it's a lot easier to win. But I'm not, because now there is no excuse for losing. That's right; where I was satisfied with a 90% win rate before, now nothing less than 100% will do. It drives me crazy, and more than once I've been involved in a particularly tough game right at bedtime and spent an extra half hour winning it.

Some people call that anal-retentive, but I like to call it, well, anal-retentive, I guess****.

* I asked the cable guy about getting it run out here. He looked at my kinda funny, gave a cable in the wall a pull, and said, "Ain't gonna reach."

** Yes, I've done that on occasion. But I was almost under 90%. You understand.

*** You can even escape a loss under Vista by undoing every move and then ending the game, something unavailable under XP.

**** (hat tip: Happy Gilmore)

I screwed in two light bulbs by myself

But then again, I'm only 1/4 Polish.

And maybe they're even real numbers

The BLS deals an unsurprising hand:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Wholesale inflation shot up in 2007 by the largest amount in 26 years even though falling gasoline costs allowed price pressures to moderate in December.

The Labor Department reported that wholesale inflation was up 6.3 percent for all of 2007, reflecting a huge increase for the year in various types of energy costs ranging from gasoline to home heating oil.

The year ended on a more positive note, with wholesale prices falling by 0.1 percent in December. That reflected decreasing costs at the time for gasoline and other energy products. It was a significant slowdown after prices had soared by 3.2 percent in November, which had been the biggest one-month increase in 34 years.

Wholesale inflation, being 'in the pipeline' rather than 'on the store shelves,' is one of those numbers that is closer to reality than the CPI, not because it's higher but because it has been less massaged*. 6.3% is an incredible PPI number, even assuming it is anywhere close to the truth. At that rate, your standard of living will be halved in about 7 years, making those New Year's weight loss resolutions in 2015 much easier to keep.

But that's only the good news. You see, buried in the BLS numbers are a few other numbers that are not quite so tame. Like Finished Goods, up about 6.5% for 2005 and 2006 total, they were up 6.3% for 2007 alone, and a 13% rate for the past 3 months of 2007. In other words, finished goods inflation doubled in 2007, then doubled again since October. That's gotta make you feel good.

But a 13% 3-month inflation rate in finished goods is not the worst number, it just happened to be the top line of the chart. There are a few others that are far worse, like finished energy goods (51%), food and feed** (19.2%), materials for non-durable manufacturing (20.3%). No wonder El Presidente is begging his financiers for more oil; those costs find their way into everything***.

Remember when Michael Sivy said that $90 oil was no problem for either the bull market or the economy? That was awesome!

* It's as amazing as it is consistent how inflation numbers get smaller and smaller the longer the BLS 'measures' them. I need to get them to measure my weight for a while.

** It's a good thing food and energy come out of inflation once it reaches the CPI, I can tell you that.

*** But they'll have to fax it over, because the rising VLCC Spot Rate says the ships are already full. And if petroleum banker Matt Simmons (warning, big .PDF) is correct, it only gets better from here. He says the reason the Saudis are not producing more is not because they don't want to, but because they can't. And they will likely never produce at a higher rate than they are producing right now. Which means that this is as good as it gets.

Why yes, I do have a case of the Mondays

They just need to make posters

Kansas is about to get serious about bad words:

Topeka — The Legislature could make an unusual statement about popular culture this year and criticize gangsta rap for profanity-laced language and what critics consider messages that demean women and promote violence.

Rep. Peggy Mast, an Emporia Republican, plans to introduce a resolution condemning gangsta rap after legislators begin their annual session Monday. She’s doing so at the urging of Sonny Scroggins, a Topeka activist who has long liked rap — he names 50 Cent as a favorite — but is tired of the language rappers use.

What a resolution is, is essentially the opinion of the legislature on an issue that they recognize they have no authority* to legislate on. Usually they're passed for the purpose of telling everyone what a fine chap Hermo Slagmeister was for risking his life to save a traveling-circus harp seal during the Great Abilene Windblast of 1936 or some such. But the legislature really has no power to enforce the fine chappitude of Hermo; they are simply saying it and hoping that you all believe them and go along with that**.

This is different from a law. Laws come about when some 6th grade teacher wants to show her class how the "system" works***, so they put their little skulls full of mush together and come up with an idea that no one has thought of before, like declaring the Barred Tiger Salamander to be the "state amphibian." That's a law, and that can be enforced. Let's say some alpine newt comes along and he wants to be the state amphibian for a while. Or maybe the bullfrog does. Well that's just tough. It's the law, buddy. Now go catch me a fly or something.

It is very important that this distinction be kept in mind. If you ask any legislator why they voted to make the salamander the state amphibian, or the ornate box turtle the state reptile, or the bumble bee the state insect, they'll tell you that the law was passed because it was fun or to make someone happy. Law is not serious. But when it comes to resolutions, legislators are deadly serious. Let it be known, across the fruited plain that gangsta rap "is not something that Kansas approves of or welcomes,” Mast said.

Take that, Luther Campbell.

* and so even though they can't enforce anything, it makes them feel like they are accomplishing something. It has been argued that government would be much better if passing such resolutions was the only authority they had - that way legislators could work out all their guilt, god complexes, and other emotional issues without bothering the rest of us. I would not go that far, but I can certainly understand the sentiment.

** I ignore all resolutions passed by the legislature as a matter of course, as all good citizens should.

*** If they really want to see how it works, they would establish a PAC which could raise a bunch of money to spend on behalf of legislators, who would then get the state to underwrite half a billion dollars in revenue bonds for them.

The wife sent this to me

Implementation

Roland asks for clarification:

I'd love to see the post on women submitting. I guess I'm more liberal than I thought. I submit to my wife as well. Just can't seem to get around those crazy passages in the Bible, no matter how much I want to.

And I'm happy to oblige, so long as we set a few expectations/limitations up front:

The first one is that I'm talking about authority, not implementation. For all the fun I have with posters of sandwiches and ironing boards, I cooked dinner tonight and did the dishes. I did so every night this week but one*. The reason is that Rogue worked later than I; since I was home first it was the least I could do to have dinner ready for her. But that implementation, that service, does not change anything I'm about to say about authority or submission for reasons that will become apparent.

The second one is that this applies only to a) Christians, who b) accept the Bible as authoritative. In short, I'm going to argue that a certain thing is what the Bible, and specifically Ephesians 5, says. If someone does not accept the scriptures as authoritative, then fine, none of this applies in their case. That person shouldn't bother to tell me Paul wrote this because he hated women or some such. Paul would probably be as confused by them as they are by him.

The last one is that we are going to try to answer a very specific question: does the Bible teach that wives are to submit to their husbands or does it teach that they should each submit to one another equally? In other words, is Paul's teaching egalitarian or is there a sex-based distinction that applies to matters a) of authority and b) in marriage?

And that's all we are going to answer. Everyone will have to work out the inferences, implications, and implementations for themselves.

Of course, the big question (one might say problem) with my position is what to do with that one verse that seems to turn up everywhere someone starts talking about submission, Ephesians 5:21, that states "Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God." It usually appears alone, in boldface, looking so authoritative that one is tempted to think the argument is over at that point. Actually, it has not yet begun.

The first thing you will notice about it** is that it is not a sentence but a clause set off as a verse*** and followed by a period. It is not a complete thought, merely the end of one. And the thought begins at the beginning of chapter 5 (the overall theme starts in chapter 4, but we needn't go back that far) when Paul says,

Be therefore followers of God, as dear children, and walk in love in the same way Christ also loved us and gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God...

He is talking to the entire church and is going to lay out a collective way of life that he will compare to the way Christ and the church are related, how they interact. The rest of chapter 5, up to our verse, is made up of short statements, you might call them proverbs or homilies, ending with this:

...Do not be foolish, but understand the the will of the Lord. Do not be drunk with wine (in that is excess) but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always to God our Father for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

In short, submitting ourselves to one another ought to be the normal course of events for the general lifestyle of the Christian. This probably cannot be emphasized enough. We are to submit to one another, defer to one another, seeking not our own will but that of others. It is a general command to all believers to be carried out especially in their relationships with other believers.

Now, once we move past the general command, Paul is going to draw a distinction**** - a very specific distinction even though it exists within his general theme. He is going to carve out a special role for a specific group of people, and those people are called to display, for the rest of the body, two specific attributes of the general relationship above. This should not surprise us, for as Paul teaches in 1Cor 12 there are many parts in one body and they are not all the same, nor do they perform the same functions.

Immediately following Paul's general command, he writes this:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Here we have a very specific command, submit. It is to a specific sliver of the body: wives. It is to illustrate one very specific attribute of the relationship between Christ and the Church: our obedience to him.

Then Paul follows it up with the flip side:

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives...

There is more behind the ellipses, but that's the essence. And what we have here is another specific command, love and give. It is to a very specific body: husbands. And it is to illustrate one very specific attribute of the relationship between Christ and the Church: sacrificial service.

Paul then summarizes the above, emphasizing the purpose of the distinction:

For this is the reason a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife: they they become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Let every husband love his wife like he loves himself, and let every wife see to it that she reveres her husband.

What Paul has done here is commanded that every marriage between a man and a woman be an example of the marriage between Christ and his church. On the one hand, you have submission, obedience: as Christians submit to Christ, so a wife submits to her husband. On the other, you have sacrificial service: as Christ gave everything for the church, so a husband must give everything*****, all he is and has, to his wife. Together, husbands and wives present millions upon millions upon millions of little examples of the relationship of Christ and the church.

The roles of Christ and church are not interchangeable. Jesus does not submit to his church - he is not under its authority - the authority of the head rests in him alone, and he alone commands it. On the other hand there is truly nothing the church can sacrifice for him. It can only obey, and that is its highest calling. The relationship is symbiotic perhaps, but that does not negate the distinction in the roles to be played.

So bringing us back from Happy Jesus Land to real life, there are real implications to the above, and the first is that, like the distinction in roles between Christ and his church, the roles in marriage, which are a model of that relationship, also have a real distinction.

That distinction is designed to solve the real problem****** under consideration: there can only be one head for any one body. Two seconds' thought on the idea will make obvious that no matter how we try, we cannot make a democracy of two people. Because husband and wife are one flesh, we should expect that 99% of the time they will be on the same page, and if they are, as believers, in submission to Christ, this will be the case. There will also be plenty of times where the husband agrees to the wife's desires and defers to her expertise, but - and this is the important part - it is his decision as the head.

That's because if they simply cannot agree on what "they" ought to collectively do, there are only two choices: either they must separate or one must have the deciding vote. Christian marriage does not allow separation (again as Paul emphasized above, "one flesh.") Therefore there must be one of the two who has the final say, and as in the relationship between Christ and the church Christ is the head, in that relationship modeled on earth the husband is the head. That is the role he's given. The role of the wife in such circumstances is to submit to her husband, to defer to his will, as the Christian is to obey the will of Christ.

A marriage relationship built upon any other authority structure fails to model what Paul calls husbands and wives to model, the relationship of Christ and his church. It is really as simple as that.

So all that said, where do we bring in the multitude of verses that say that there is no distinction in Christ? Gal 3:28 stands in for all of them when it says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus." We bring them in Paul's general sense. All Christians, individually, are without racial, ethnic, or gender distinction in Christ. We are all equal members of the body of Christ, for "there is no respect of persons" (Eph 6:9) with God.

But within that body there there are certain people who are called to special standard. This special group is asked to display some very specific attributes of the heavenly marriage, to re-create that whole relationship in miniature as a model for the world to see. Those people are husbands, who are called to serve their wives and sacrifice for them as Christ did for the church, and wives, who are called to submit to and honor their husbands, as the church does for Christ.

UPDATE: I said that the reason that my cooking for my wife would not negate the fact that she is to submit to me would become apparent. And if it hasn't, I'll spell it out: I cook for my wife as Jesus cooked for his disciples (Jn 21:12). I lotion her feet when she's tired as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples (Jn 13:12). That is my given role, not in the church but in the specific relationship we call marriage. But that sacrifice, that service, did not mean that Jesus was no longer the head of the church - he did those things because the head must be the servant of all (Mk 10:44). My service to my wife does not negate my authority; it shows that I am worthy of it.

Authority does not mean I should order her to make me sandwiches all day, though that is the impression a lot of people have: when they talk about submission, they really mean service. But they are not the same thing. Service ought to run the other way from submission the majority of the time; I ought to be serving her, giving myself to her as Christ gave himself for us. But as Jesus is the head of the church, so I am the head of the household, and as Jesus is the final authority, so am I. I run a benevolent dictatorship, but it is a dictatorship nonetheless. Her submission is but a recognition that I am given the final authority within this model that we are called to as married Christians.

I will answer for how I play my role in this model called marriage, for how well I obey the specific commandments that God has given me as a husband. And so, for the role given her, will my wife.

* Last night, when Rogue took the boys for pizza. But even when I work late, I cook far more often than she does. She does laundry far more often than I. It works for us. Plus I'm a better cook, but don't tell her I said that.

** You'll notice it because I'm going to point it out. Plenty of people don't notice it.

*** And another reason to hate verse divisions.

**** Actually, he's going to draw quite a few. A number of them (e.g. masters and servants) are unrelated to our purpose here, but if you read through them, up to 6:8, you'll see that they fall into exactly the same pattern we are establishing here. And this, to be blunt, is where the liberal case fails: they fail to note that there are specific cases with specific requirements within the general.

***** Which is why (and I don't care if it looks foolish or not), there is nothing my wife and I own that is only in my name. There is plenty in hers. If we were to divorce (God forbid) not only would she get everything *we* own, I would give her everything gladly. That is the sacrifice I am commanded to give her, because that is how Christ gave himself for me.

****** There is, of course, the problem that some wives do not respect their husbands and do not want to submit, and that some husbands abuse their power and are not worthy of respect. Those are not failures of design, but of implementation.