An Insulated Life

I live an insulated life.

I saw one of the most horrifying sights of my life on Tuesday. While driving to meet a friend, as I approached the intersection of Springfield and Baltimore Avenues I saw a car blocking the way, as if it had stopped mid-turn.

It turned out that was exactly what happened. Crumpled in the road and motionless lay an African American - man or woman, I could not say. I rolled down my window and asked if I could help. A man stood with his cell phone and explained in stammering, disjointed phrases that he had been turning and hadn't seen the pedestrian before hitting him.

He had already called 911. I wanted to do something, but my friend was waiting for me, other pedestrians were converging on the spot to similarly offer assistance, and I figured my presence was only blocking the way. So I left.

The image has stayed with me. I do not go through the intersection without thinking of the person who lay there, and the poor man who could not comprehend his accidental deed.

I compare those images with images of the earthquake in Haiti this week, after which not just one but thousands of people lay broken in the streets. Natural disasters are unthinkable in Philadelphia, and near-instant mass death had occurred while I cooked jambalaya and listened to This American Life.

My first thought was that I was glad I was not there. I could not understand the random chance that once again left me born to such a comfortable life, but since I had that privilege I was relieved to possess it.

My second thought was that I wished I could be there. While I have indeed been blessed with the means to avoid most hardship, I serve a God who says that he who seeks to save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for His sake will save it for eternal life.

The fact is that while none of us can choose the hand we are dealt in this life, we are completely responsible for how we play that hand. And my God also says that from he to whom much has been given, much will be required.

This same God had complete freedom to remain in the very seat of heaven, waited on by angels and the whole heavenly host, sharing in the perfect loving company of the Godhead. Yet he freely chose to be born among the lowest of all people and ultimately die literally the most painful death imaginable for my sake.

Finally, he tells me that just as he was sent by his father, so he sends me. I cannot pretend to understand or receive his work for me if I take that gift and sit on it. And so I would follow him, to the ravaged streets of Haiti or to wherever else he might be found.

Yet the scene from this week challenges me. This small intrusion of reality on the road between the tricked out kitchen in which I eat and the gigantic iMac screen at which I work shows me how little accustomed I am to facing Death and Pain. I wonder - would I really follow him?

Most Americans like me will cope the best way they know how, by text messaging a $10 donation to a relief organization. I wonder if it is enough.

Lord, have mercy.

Dare I Bake?

Good things come in threes.

The bread plot deepens.

My dear friend Pat gave me a book of techniques and recipes for baking bread. I had started baking my own whole wheat bread a few months ago. My efforts, though amateur, filled me with delight during many toast mornings and many peanut butter and jelly afternoons. Making yet another decision which isolates me from the supermarket, I have sworn off store bought bread, if I can help it.

With this book I realize I may have started down a road whose destination I scarcely could have perceived. The first sentence I read spoke to sentiments I had already come to cherish in other contexts:

Although modern equipment seeks to duplicate, and thereby nullify, the hard work of the baker, in the actual bakery setting there is no true substitute for skilled hands (66).

Skilled hands! I have written before about longing for manual work with tangible results, even hinting at an inclination for cooking. Author Jeffrey Hamelman continues:

However, for someone aspiring to be an artisan in the historical sense of the word, that is, a skilled manual worker whose hands are integral to the creation of the product, a firm mastery of hand technique is required (66).

The claim that baking bread can connect one to the past, to a mode of being which has been largely forgotten, is exciting. Hamelman also makes it clear that this is skilled labor, not to be learned lightly or in a short period of time, and not to be despised.

Hamelman elaborates by discussing what exactly an artisan is:

One asks, is the baker an artist? An artisan? These days artisan and baker are often combined into one term, as if the unadorned noun baker needs further enhancement. To me, the baker is no artist, for an artist creates something new: This is the domain of poets and painters.

The skilled baker, working with his hands, doing the same work each day, takes his place with the artisans of history: the potters, coopers, carpenters, and smiths. His work may excel and reach toward perfection, but there is little, really, that is new for the bread baker to invent...The baker, each day, tries to perfect something that was worked out hundreds of years ago (86).

In light of that dignified, counter-cultural, and inspiring narrative, dare I bake? Dare I teach these hands to massage something other than a computer keyboard? Dare I meet the ancients at the hearth?

I would sure like to, for several reasons:

• It seems a more universal skill than any other I possess. A baker can serve anyone, while (say) a programmer is of more limited use. It would be nice to think of returning to South Korea and having something to offer the people other than the English language.
  
• It seems an excellent way to connect with my European heritage, since most of these techniques originated there. It would be another way to live as white and redeemed.
• It seems to connect with other themes of thought which have occupied me in recent years, along the lines of what is lost through industrialization and mass production.
• It seems an appropriate exploration of masculinity. After all, it was said to the man, "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread" (Genesis 3:19). Infusing the wheat of the earth with water and air and then tempering it with the fire of the oven - yeah!
  
• It seems delicious.
  

Time will tell if I find the time. If so, I will tell.

Golden Breakfast

My kind of color coordination:
Eggs, cheese, honey, orange juice, butter, cornbread.

I have discovered breakfast.

First I discovered eggs, or what eggs should be. It turns out that what you put into an animal affects what comes out of it. Exercise matters too. When a chicken sits still and eats the cheapest food possible, the cheapest eggs possible come out. Those eggs are what you generally find in the supermarket.

Enter pastured eggs. Chickens are given freedom to move around. They eat healthy food, and have freedom to peck at bugs and what-have-you.

Does the result make a difference? Well, is there a difference between the following shades?

Those shades come from a photo I took of a pastured egg yolk with a supermarket egg yolk. The deep orange on top represents the pastured egg. I think it a safe assumption that the difference in color corresponds to a difference of nutrient content.

That's not the only difference. I was startled the first time I sought to scramble one of these yolks, because I could actually feel it give back when I pushed on it.

Let me tell you, the flavor speaks volumes more.

Back to breakfast. My housemate and his wife start every day with a spinach and cheese omelet. Culturally this seemed a bit extravagant, so I asked why. They said that, among other reasons, a higher-protein breakfast leaves them fuller longer and helps them have a healthier appetite through the day.

I tried it out, and my experience confirms their words. My old diet of a simple bowl of cereal left me hungry as few as two hours later, while after eating just two eggs with some toast I felt quite full for that same amount of time and not actually hungry for considerably longer.

Those reasons aside, that breakfast is delicious! Taking some time in the morning to treasure cooking and eating is a wonderful ritual. Prizing such luxuries as beauty and flavor and aroma really starts the day off on a good foot.

After all, what you put into an animal affects what you get out of it. If I want to be productive through the day I think I do well to invest time and money and thought into my fuel.

A Day in Philadelphia for $20

Why is there a British flag hanging in Elfreth's Alley?
Let's call it...a sign of the glory of the First Amendment.

Yesterday I went with my friend Pat, my sister Samantha, and her boyfriend Jace to Philadelphia. Jace is from Maine and had never been here before. He is also studying to be a history teacher. So, we undertook to show him historic Philadelphia, on a budget. Our itinerary:

• 8:04: Purchase SEPTA "Independence" day pass for $10 each and catch the R5 into 30th St Station.
• 8:45: In West Philadelphia ("born and raised..."), catch the El to 2nd and Market St.
• 9:10: Tour Christ Church at 2nd and Arch, birthplace of the Episcopal church. See George Washington's pew, a 300-year-old chandelier, and a 600-year-old baptismal font, among other treasures. Stingily give only $1 of the suggested $3 adult donation.
• 9:30: Walk through Elfreth's Alley, one of the few preserved colonial streets left in the wake of demolition for Independence Mall and I-95. Price: free.
• 9:45: Walk past Benjamin Franklin's grave on the way to Independence Hall. Price: Free.
• 9:50: Get a fresh, fluffy, warm, mustard-drenched pretzel from a food truck. The pretzel is so good it "lives up to Avatar's hype." Price: $0.50
• 9:55: Reach Independence Hall looking for tour tickets, only to discover we must walk a block to the "Independence Visitor's Center" to pick up the tickets. The Center is immensely pointless, a fact made more bitter by the knowledge of the aforementioned demolition of Elfreth's Alley-like neighborhoods in its place. Grudgingly pick up free tickets for the 11:45 tour.
  
• 10:00: Stop in and see the Liberty Bell. Have the feeling that the history presented here is to real history as muzak is to music. Nevertheless, the bell is cool. Price: free.
• 10:15: Stop for another pretzel at another cart. Find the second every bit as delicious as the first. Price: another $0.50.
  
• 10:15 Walk to the Second Bank of the United States, and stumble upon an incredible exhibit of portraits of Founding Fathers and their contemporaries. Here is history intelligently and legitimately displayed, as the exhibit tries to explain these folks as products of a movement called the Enlightenment, grouped so as to leave room for visitors to make their own inferences and contextualization. See some really cool paintings. Price: free.
• 11:30: Return to Independence Hall for tour. Hear excellent tour guide involve the whole group, which included visitors from both coasts, the South, Canada, and France. Price: free.
• 12:30: Walk to Reading Terminal Market for lunch. Realize there are better times to go than Thanksgiving weekend at peak lunch time. Wait around 45 minutes for a cheesesteak at Spataro's, which proves pretty much worth it. Save money and unnecessary calories by bringing a water bottle from home. Price: $8.
• 2:15: Walk to City Hall. Explore the tallest masonry building in the world. Find the city's Christmas Village set up in wooden huts on the west side. Meet Germans selling roasted nuts. Find out from the merchant that his group came from Bavaria just for this market and will return two days after Christmas. Share Pat's roasted pecans, which are out of this world. Price: free to me, $4 to Pat.
• 3:30: Walk through Love Park with the intention of reaching the Franklin Institute.
  
• 4:00: Stop in to see the Comcast Center's video wall, and receive 3D glasses for their "Holiday Spectacular" show. Enjoy the beautiful screen, though it is merely a glorified screen saver. Discover exactly how empty Christmas becomes when stripped of its Christian context, as most spectacularly displayed by a children's chorus of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" for the finale. Price: free.
  
• 4:25: Return to Love Park for photos of Sam and Jace under the iconic sign.
  
• 4:45: Take the El past the giant clothespin to 5th and South with the intention of dinner at Pietro's and an exploration of the street. Price: free.
• 5:15: Elect instead to return home for free lasagna from Mom's kitchen. Stop by Carpenter's Hall, site of the First Continental Congress. Price: free.
  

A wonderful day with a few surprises to boot. Total cost was $10 for SEPTA, $1 for the Christ Church donation, $1 for two pretzels, and $8 for lunch.

$20 for a day packed with history, culture, and delights for the senses in a world class city? Sounds like a great deal to me.

Next Up: Unintended Consequences

Please don't take this away!

"A bike is a legal vehicle with the same rights and duties as a motor vehicle."
"A Guide to Biking in Philly"

That quote defines a broken and inadequate philosophy toward biking which is harmless when tacitly ignored but harmful to society at large when actually enforced. Unfortunately, it looks like there is a new push to enforce this misguided idea, with tickets for $119.50 likely being written to cyclists in Center City as I write these words.

I see only one reason why a bicycle should be governed by the same rules as a car, and it is not a good one: thinking through proper regulations for bikes would require work, maybe even hard work. Applying rules designed for cars is simple, and might make sense to someone unacquainted with actual cycling experience on the city streets. But if carried to its extreme, streets would become unsafe and inefficient for all users of the road while severely hampering cycling in particular.

Cars have four wheels. Pedestrians have zero wheels. Bicycles have two wheels. As a first approximation, it might make sense to treat a bike as something between a car and a pedestrian. I think this idea is a much better starting point than the quote above.

For example, bikes go faster than pedestrians, but not as fast as cars. That means they should ride on the road, but accommodations should be made for the fact that they are slower. A great solution is the bike lane, which unfortunately does not exist in most places and is often obstructed when it does. However, bikes are flexible! They can bend themselves to be more like pedestrians or more like cars in any given circumstance, and this great advantage allows them to cope with most perils the road throws their way.

In my estimation, the crux of the issue lies in the assertion that bikes, like cars, should never be allowed to proceed through red lights or stop signs. To say otherwise would seem a dangerous idea if bikes were just like cars, but looking through the lens of a pedestrian provides a different perspective.

In Philadelphia, pedestrians frequently move through a red light when there is no car traffic coming. This behavior has the dual benefit of first, saving pedestrians time, and second, getting them out of the way so that when the light turns, parallel traffic need not wait for them to cross before turning. At times, pedestrians cross when it is unsafe to do so, but that does not invalidate the fact that jaywalking in general increases efficiency and productivity for everyone.

In this respect, bicycles are a lot more like pedestrians than they are like cars. A cyclist is equally as capable as a pedestrian of riding to the front of an intersection, determining whether it is safe to go through, and proceeding when it is so. In fact, doing so makes things easier for automobiles, since the slower bike is now out of its way and the car is free to go its normal speed.

I do not deny that reckless "jayriding" is hazardous, inefficient, and stupid, but that fact should not be used to condemn safe use of the practice. If bikes are prohibited from jayriding, the result in a city with ever increasing bike traffic will be a pileup of bikes at the light. This result would be inefficient, since not only would the cyclists' commute time be greatly slowed, but cars would also be inconvenienced by the obstacle which multiple cycles present. Given sufficient volume, this situation would also be unsafe, since there is not much space for bicycles to begin with.

How does a city prohibit behaviors like unsafe jayriding while allowing safe and productive use of the practice? This is the kind of challenge which city legislators should take up if they truly wish to make city streets safer and more efficient. Actually condoning moving through a red light for anyone may be hard to swallow at first, but that is only so if one has only experienced the perspective of an automobile.

It is easy to shackle cyclists to all of the limitations of motorists while denying them any of the benefits of the pedestrian side of their nature, but actually doing so almost keeps cycling from being worthwhile. Depending who you are, that may not be a problem. In a society as auto-dominated as ours, most people probably would not care, and many would probably be happy to have streets sanitized of the two-wheeled nuisances.

But any Center City rush hour prominently displays how broken our auto society has become, and any look at obesity statistics shows how sorely many Americans are lacking exercise. Within the city, biking is faster and more efficient than driving, with virtually none of the parking hassle. It is also a great way for people like myself who struggle to get enough exercise to burn calories.

In short, biking is a godsend, working against several social problems at once, and we ought to seek to make even more provision for its use rather than bullying cyclists off the road. There is no question that as use has increased, more regulation has become necessary. Let us hope that we as a city can rise to the challenge of doing so in an intelligent, useful fashion.

If this is the placebo effect, I'm going to look like a fool.

To try and make ends meet while unemployed, I have been taking part in a study of the effects of Adderall on memory, concentration, and personality. For that work this morning I took a pill which was either Adderall or a placebo, watched an hour of the Planet Earth documentary while the drug kicked in, took a personality test, and took part of the SAT.

The drug's effects are likely still with me as I compose these thoughts.

This was my first time taking a pill for the study, but I feel pretty confident that this one was the real stuff. The sharpest changes I notice are an increased need to concentrate and increased self-awareness.

I say "need to concentrate" rather than "ability to concentrate" because I feel a drive to go deeply into whatever is my focus. I dove deeply into each separate task on the SAT, yet switching gears was unpleasant. I wanted to be absolutely immersed in each task while I was doing it, and having to come back to the surface before diving into a different task was unpleasant.

This behavior made clock management a little more difficult. Rather than having the back of my mind tethered to the big picture of completing the entire test as best as possible, I wanted to delve fully into every problem and task for its own sake, spurning the larger task at hand.

While I was able to concentrate more and attack problems with fiery zeal, I don't think I necessarily performed better. For instance, at the beginning of the math section there were several problems which I had trouble completing, yet with which I was fairly sure that I would not normally have much trouble. I felt as though there were a couple of circuits in my brain not connecting well.

I think the increased self-awareness I notice may not be directly due to the pill, but rather due to my curiosity as a scientific observer of myself in changed circumstances. Nevertheless I found myself thinking about my posture and my motion on my bicycle in ways I don't normally, which are the kinds of observations I wouldn't be making just based on searching for the pill's effects.

The questions lurking behind any such study are, first, can we actually expand human capabilities with this pill? Second, should we?

The consequences of answering those questions with respect to Adderall are pretty benign, since its effects in any rate aren't dramatic. Whether we do or we don't, most people's lives probably don't stand to change much.

But those answers will follow us once we open the door to more dramatic "enhancements." Our ability to change who we are and our descendants will be undoubtedly will increase, whether by taking drugs to change our minds and our bodies, by altering our genetic code, or by other means. In my opinion, the answer to the first question (can we?) is a clear yes.

I wonder whether many who are providing those yeses to the first question will give the second question a second thought. To most I expect it, too, leads to an obvious yes.

The specter of transhumanism has already graced our baseball players and our Olympic athletes, and it looms larger in the future as we journey inward. Should we? I hope to write more later.

Great Plain Drain

Meritocratic winners debate whether the world is getting better and better,
or whether it is getting worse and worse.

Tomorrow's anticipated World Series opener between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees carries an interesting twist. The starting pitchers, C.C. Sabathia for the Yankees and Cliff Lee for the Phillies, each won Cy Young awards* in 2007 and 2008, respectively, while playing for the Cleveland Indians.

In other words, if you're a Cleveland baseball fan, you probably want to kill yourself.

I'm struck by how similar this situation is to a more widespread and more consequential phenomenon in our country. I witnessed it as a student at Penn, a university which boasts an acceptance pool from all fifty states and many countries besides.

People entering Penn may come from all over, but graduates are not nearly so far-flung. They tend to congregate in the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast and of the West Coast. My dear friend Ben, who returned to his native Minnesota for law school in Minneapolis, is by far the exception.

The result is what some have called the "Problem of Meritocracy:" the nation's smartest are drawn from all over to the coasts, leaving the "flyover states" desolate of leaders and thinkers with perhaps the highest potential. This article puts it aptly, likening the SAT to strip mining:

For the meritocratic system is a method that uses impersonal technology (e.g., the SAT) to help us identify valuable natural resources (bright kids), and then pitilessly removes them from their ecological contexts (local communities), never to return them, thus creating cultural landscapes just as ravaged as the denuded mountainsides of Kentucky coal country.

I am not sure what I think about this issue. If you ask me, the principal advantage in going to the University of Pennsylvania compared to the much-cheaper Penn State University, where one could ostensibly learn the same facts and study the same subjects, is in being surrounded by brilliant friends and classmates. This grouping would not have been possible had we not been brought from hither and yon to the same twelve square city blocks.

In addition, my primitive understanding is that the "knowledge-based economy" into which the United States continues to develop requires collections of really smart people. Take a company like Google for example, whose achievements have made significant improvements in daily life for just about everyone who uses the Internet. Those achievements were all developed by groups of very smart people who likely came from all over.

Yet I also know that a great deal of this coastal congregation amounts to selfish gain rather than the greater good, as a large stack of currency trading books I saw today reminds me. The University instills certain values, but duty and responsibility are not among them, nor anything that acknowledges anyone is responsible for students' success but themselves.

Perhaps the great danger in meritocracy lies here, in the easy bridge it offers to entitlement. Those who have conquered meritocratic establishments do so by definition according to their own achievements. That is probably a better system than the old standby of heredity, but it hides the many factors that students have no control over yet which play crucial roles in their successes.

Since students are led to feel entitled to their standing, nothing inhibits them from adding to that privilege rather than sacrificing for others' benefit. Notable losers in this exchange may be the communities which poured their resources into raising these children to begin with, or anyone not blessed with the same kind of golden ticket.

I have pride in my hometown of Phoenixville, which is doing just fine without me, but to which I would love to contribute meaningfully someday. I know there are countless other locales which are not so lucky, and which could be enlivened greatly by the devoted attention of their native sons and daughters.

Make no mistake. I will be rooting for Cliff Lee to absolutely topple the Yankees hitters, while I hope C.C. Sabathia is himself toppled by the Phillies' bats. But lurking in the back of my mind, as I watch the game with many friends who are lucky in the same way I am, will be a feeling of loss for the Cleveland fans and the large swaths of America which they represent.

*The Cy Young award is given annually to the American League pitcher and the National League pitcher deemed to be the best in his respective league.