I lost most of today to a trip to a lawyer–there are still tasks to complete in connection with the death of my mother-in-law.  However, on days when I do e-mail I am exposed to information from a variety of sources, and several of them caught my attention today.

One of the more notable concerned a ruling in a Kansas court allowing a man who killed a doctor who performs abortions to present a case for voluntary manslaughter rather than murder, based on the assertion that he believed that the lives of unborn children were being endangered and that he was saving them.  What intrigues me most about this is that several years ago I explored the possibility that the conflict would escalate into violence much on the same basis as John Brown’s attack at Harper’s Ferry did (the web site is currently experiencing trouble, I’ll get back to you with more on that).  This is a subject over which it is probably fairly common to have mixed feelings.  After all, everything that can be said against the pro-life protesters could have been said about the anti-slavery protesters before the Civil War, some of whom resorted to violence to protect the rights of the slaves.  We count them heroes now; the question in our day is very much whether those who defend the unborn will be heroes in the future or merely villains in the present.

There was another piece that caught my eye.  Apparently Brit Hume made a comment publicly that Tiger Woods ought to seek forgiveness through Jesus Christ instead of through the Buddhist faith of his mother.  This has stirred some serious outrage; but I agree with the columnist who defended Hume:  is it not possible in America for a public figure to speak positively of his own faith in public?  If Tiger Woods prefers to believe that forgiveness is neither possible nor necessary (the Buddhist position), nothing that was said will change that; but if Woods feels a need for forgiveness, telling him that there is a faith which offers it puts no one under any obligation to embrace that faith.  Neither of the two arguments that remain against Hume seem all that cogent to me.  One is that Hume is a news analyst and ought to be “unbiased”; but “unbiased” (apart from being impossible) does not include leaving behind your own knowledge of the world.  If a news commentator suggested that a judge ought to consider Dworkin’s arguments for judicial activism or Bork’s arguments for Constitutional originalism, those statements fall within the realm of the commentator bringing his knowledge of the field to bear on the circumstances in the news.  In the same way, if such a commentator suggests that a man who appears to be seeking absolution look for it in Christianity (where it is offered) rather than in Buddhism (where it is nonsense), that is a similar application of knowledge to the circumstances.  The other is that Hume ought to have made his suggestion privately; but just because two individuals are well-known does not mean they know each other in the way that enables them to chat in person.  Hume seems to me to have acted appropriately.

All of that, however, is just a part of my reading for today, and I would prefer to pass to you information about some writing published earlier today for your reading pleasure.  The Examiner has another short piece on temporal anomalies, entitled Butterfly Effect part 11:  on the edge, dealing with the trip to the past in which he tries to arm himself with a knife.  I hope some of you enjoy it.

–M. J. Young

The theory of the butterfly effect, from which the film Butterfly Effect in which I am currently analyzing the temporal anomalies for The Examiner, is that one little detail can tip the balance of events drastically.  However, inherent in that theory is that this one little detail combines with innumerable other little details to bring about the outcome–as illustrated by recent events here.

The recent death of my mother-in-law has, in addition to saddening the family, put a serious pinch on our finances, and will continue to do so for at least a month, as the expense involved exceeds the sum of all our savings (such as they are), her insurance, and the next few paychecks, which were shortened by virtue of missed work days.  We are thus struggling financially through Christmas; we might have a tree, thanks to the interest of our eldest, whose own financial difficulties cause me to question whether he is wise to do so, but the more grateful.  Thus when late Friday my computer crashed and would not reboot, I had serious concerns about how I would pay for diagnosis and repair–but knew it had to be done somehow, even if it took a few days to do it.

Then the blizzard struck overnight, and by morning it was doubtful whether even my four-wheeled Jimmy would be able to negotiate the streets–which would have been pointless, as a phone call demonstrated that the computer place was not open anyway.  I left a message Saturday and again Sunday, but they did not re-open until today.  I will be taking the stack to them as soon as I am finished here, and hopefully will have money by the time they have fixed the problem, which hopefully will be before Christmas.  One cannot predict these things, though, so I hesitate to make any prognostications.  It might be the boot drive (I do not have boot disks for the new operating system), or the cable to the drives, or a weakening power supply.  Whatever it is, it has crippled me in so many areas.

Mercifully, I made the decision a few years ago to backup every currently active file to CD every Sunday night. That means I have copies of all the article drafts for The Examiner, and was able with only a bit more trouble than usual to upload the newest, Butterfly Effect part 5:  sophomoric antics, and to make the announcement in the usual places.  I cannot update those files, as I am using another son’s computer, and although he was happy to have me install my Windows 2000 program for his future use, I would not impose by using up his considerably more limited hard drive space with my files unnecessarily; nor would I overstay my welcome in his bedroom using his computer, but that he has other places to be enough of the time that I am only occasionally disrupting his sleep.

All of which is to say that I continue to post and announce those Examiner articles, and to post the chaplain’s Corinthians study, but that all other work is temporarily on hold pending resolution of the current crisis.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

–M. J. Young

There are two problems with going to bed early so you can get up early.  One is that you don’t really do it–you say you are going to go to bed early, but with one thing and another it’s actually much later than you intended by the time you are actually blanketed.  The other is that even when you do, you don’t sleep; certainly you do not sleep as well as you normally do.

I mention it because two days in a row I have had to be up at the Nine Five Equivalent of two in the morning so that I could be to these various funerial obligations by the Nine Five Equivalent of six in the morning.  Those of you who live in the nine-to-five world will not appreciate the difficulty of this if you take it that I had to be up at eight to be somewhere by noon, unless you understand the conversion involved.  It was early; I am tired.

That said, I did manage to get the latest Examiner temporal anomalies article posted and announced this morning before I left:  Butterfly Effect part 3:  Evan at seven attempts to reconstruct the original history of his early years, recognizing the problems inherent in doing so.

So before I fall asleep involuntarily, let me endeavor to finish the work I would normally do today.

–M. J. Young

I have over the years made frequent mention of my mother-in-law.  That subject now passes into history.  At 11:16 this morning, according to the health care professionals caring for her, she died.  The better part of today has been spent addressing what must be done when someone dies, and there will be viewing, funeral, and legal loose ends ahead, but in the main she has stepped out of our lives and into another.

It may disrupt things around here a bit, but by now you’re all accustomed to the fact that I live from crisis to crisis.

Anyone who needs information about the funeral should drop me an e-mail or give me an e-mail address by which to contact him.

–M. J. Young

Earlier this evening I delivered into the care of professional medical personnel the person for whom I have been caring in my home intermittently since the beginning of the year.  Her condition has deteriorated to the point that it was becoming unsafe for us to attempt to provide her care.  At this point, the best hope is that someone will be able to provide that care for her remaining years, and that life here might return to what passes for normal.  At least I should be able to make medical and other appointments for myself without worrying about who will watch her.

I also managed to post the latest Examiner time travel article, this one Theory 101:  What is a sawtooth snap or cycling causality?  I’m also getting comments on some of the other articles, a mixed bag but that’s pretty typical.

Time has gotten very short, though; I don’t know if I can get everything else done today.

–M. J. Young

Somewhere there is a universe in which my mother-in-law is actually able to take care of herself without calling for help every ten minutes for something no one can fix anyway.  I know I have not mentioned her in a while, and I probably should not mention her now, but she is driving everyone here to complete frustration.  Hopefully the situation will change soon; meanwhile, I’m very frazzled and trying to help people cope who are even more frazzled.

I mention that other universe because today I posted another time travel article at The Examiner, this one entitled Temporal Theory 101:  What is parallel dimension theory?.  The theory articles are not, I think, pulling the readership that the Primer articles were, but they will provide targets for future links when I continue to write on future movies.

–M. J. Young

As I have mentioned before, I publish a daily Bible study under the auspices of the Christian Gamers Guild, being its chaplain.  It is not your run-of-the-mill study, more on the order of an undergraduate course in Biblical Studies; and its subscribers include a fair number of ordained clergy and educated laymen.  At present we are working our way through I Corinthians, and you can learn more about the list on my site, if you’re interested.

The study began several years ago with Romans, for which I have copious notes which I have been editing.  The originated as preparations for a course I had hoped to teach which never materialized, but when I had finished the postings on the Bible study list I was encouraged to put them into book form.

Over the weekend I reached the end of the editing of the last chapter of those notes.  The edits need to be incorporated into the text, but that is more than half finished at this point.  The text will then have to be reformatted for printing, but in all it looks like the exegetical and logical study of Romans might well go to print before the end of the year.

Of course, I still have to get Do You Trust Me? in print, and I don’t have the cash to launch that formally at the moment (I don’t have the cash at the moment for a family barbecue, and am not certain how I’m going to get enough gas to get my mother-in-law to the store tomorrow, but that’s the way it is sometimes).  It won’t be that way forever, though, so I’ll line up the books and see what works.

I’m also giving serious consideration to doing an abbreviated study in Romans, something which covers the structure of the book without going into the sort of detail the full study does.  That’s a bigger project, though.

–M. J. Young

I am angry at someone.  I have not yet determined who.  No, it probably is not you, so you can relax.

I am angry because I was sent on a fool’s errand simply because someone was too inconsiderate to answer a phone message to let me know it was not necessary.  I am angry because this is the second time this person did this, in very much the same way, with slightly different circumstances, although the first time there was considerably less inconvenience to me.

It goes back to our friend who was in the car accident almost two weeks ago.  We responded to his rather desperate situation by lending him our truck, somewhat hampering our ability to accomplish some of our essential chores.  We left “care and feeding” instructions with it, including that the brake fluid and power steering fluid had to be checked regularly, as they both leak slowly.

On Saturday, we were going to need it; by the time we actually got around to getting over there it was too late, though, so we didn’t take it.  We did move it, though–not I, but someone else involved.  This led to a phone call from them asking where we put it, as they could not find it.

Now, I don’t know where you would go with that, but my thought was that we needed to confirm that it was indeed missing and then call the police.  They, however, found it, and went to the movies and shut off their phones so we could not contact them.  I would have thought they’d have had the sense to call and say, “Never mind, we found it.”  Instead, they left us wondering for several hours until one of them–actually one of the backup people we called, a mutual friend closer to them than to us–got the message and let us know what was happening.  They are fortunate that the police were not making inquiries by then; we were very close to driving over to find out what happened, and that would have given us no more information than we already had.

I have not mentioned that driving over is an hour if the traffic is light.  It was not light on Saturday night.

So here it is Monday, and we get a message–and I do not know how we got the message, but I think it was a voicemail on our phone called in while we were sleeping.  We knew that our friend was not particularly mechanically inclined, but he had assured us that he would keep up on the fluids.  The message said that they could not figure out how to open the hood, and the brakes were failing.

That sounds like a pretty serious situation to me; it sounded like an emergency to the person who actually got the message.  Of course, it is still Monday, and I still had to feed kids and get my mother-in-law to the store.  Plus, it happens to be Memorial Day, so the store was going to close three hours early, pinching my time frame significantly.  Yet I had to add a trip over to check the truck.

Did I mention that this trip is an hour out of the way?  It is also an hour to get to my mother-in-law.  This trip was not the opposite direction, but it was certainly the wrong direction, and when I finished it I would be no closer to my shopping trip than I had been when I started.  I took the precaution of calling to confirm that there was still a problem.  I got a voice mail box, but left a message that I should be called if my information was incorrect.  Then I headed out to solve the problem with the truck.  After all, if they had solved the problem after letting us know they needed help, they would have called us, right?

Apparently, wrong.  An hour later (a bit longer, as I grabbed supper for myself on the road so as not to have to delay long enough to eat when I fed the kids) I am opening the hood to the truck and finding that the reservoir for the brakes is overfilled, and there is a new can of brake fluid (not the one I’d left) in the bed.  Of course, they haven’t kept the power steering fluid full, and the coolant level is low, but I took care of those items and then jumped back in my car and made best possible speed to my final errand.

I saw no one.  It may be that they do not know I was there–although I moved the seat to start the car when I was checking the transmission fluid.  I could have saved an hour of driving, maybe ten dollars in gas, a three dollar bridge toll, and a fair amount of aggravation, had they simply let us know that indeed they had managed to solve the problem after alerting us.

It is not that I begrudge people my help when they need it.  I begrudge them my help when they don’t need it and forget to let me know that they have things under control.  I have enough to do without adding such things to my workload.  I do hope this does not happen again.

–M. J. Young

I managed to finish the set work yesterday before making the trip to take my mother-in-law shopping.  It was, however, rather late by the time I got home and got some dinner, and I accomplished nothing more.  This, though, is typical for the early part of the week, when I have the heavier burden of the week’s work and usually a few errands as well.  Today, for example, I had to take our youngest guest to the doctor and get prescriptions filled for him (they are fully covered, but it’s still inconvenient), as he seems to have a cold.

I also have to make dinner, but am hoping that at the moment someone is doing some of the dishes, because if I have to make dinner and wash dishes it’s going to take a substantial chunk from my work time.

A friend has been trying to call me.  I keep telling people that the most reliable–probably the only reliable–way to reach me is by e-mail, and he has my e-mail address.  I have seen his name on my caller ID, but always at times when it would not be practical to return his call.  Hopefully I’ll catch one of his calls soon.

I’ve also been informed that our least problematic houseguest will be leaving us.  He will be moving north to stay with two other men in a large house that screams bachelor pad and has no kids and fewer pets.  It seems to me that it will be farther from his kids and his doctors, but he’s probably considered that already.  He will be missed.

–M. J. Young

The Saturn, the car with good gas mileage, has started losing coolant.  I’ve had to top it off a few times in recent weeks.  The problem is, I don’t know how fast it’s losing coolant–and this is complicated by the fact that the design of this vehicle does not include direct access to the radiator, but only to the overflow tank, which is under pressure when the vehicle is hot.  Thus I cannot easily determine whether there is air in the radiator trying to get out.

The problem was severe last night, as the car started overheating en route to the fulfillment of an interstate errand, and the one running the errand (not I) had to return to swap for the less-efficient truck.  This creates uncertainty, since on the one hand I had topped off the tank Saturday afternoon, but on the other hand I do not know that there was no air in the radiator and I do know that there was extensive driving done Saturday night and Sunday morning, which could have depleted the reserve.

Right now someone is driving the vehicle around locally to see whether the added coolant is sufficient; when the car returns, I will have to let it cool and then open up the overflow tank to check the level.

All of this is because it is Monday, and part of the Monday workload includes taking my mother-in-law shopping.

It has also been a strange Monday, as I was informed sometime late yesterday that one of my sons would need to be seen by a doctor today, so (after going back to bed after bus riders were organized) I forced myself out of bed once the office was open and made a call to get an appointment.  The first available appointment was at crack of dawn tomorrow–actually, eight in the morning, but that’s outrageously early by my standards–and so he did not go today.  However, I had by then forced myself into wakefulness, and so attempted to get started on my day–an effort which took longer than I would have preferred, and then was interrupted several times once the hurdles were crossed.

At the moment, then, I am trying to get as much of this work done as I am able while awaiting the return of the car so I can figure out what I’m doing for dinner and what I’m doing about the car.  Once those matters are settled, I will be dealing with my mother-in-law with whichever vehicle is guessed to be the better choice, and returning to finish whatever was left undone.

So maybe I do know what I’m doing; I just don’t know that I know.

–M. J. Young