Mentally Homeless

10/17/2007, 10:00 am -- by Chloe | 11 Comments

Imagine your doctor telling you that you are seriously ill. He books you into hospital for an operation. You go in, are shown to your bed and are asked what you want for supper.

The next day you sit by your bed, now familiar with the hospital and its regime. You wait patiently.

The next day is followed by another. Nothing happens. The days turn into weeks; and then months.

And one day a nurse says: ‘Tomorrow you are going home.’ ‘But I thought I was seriously ill,’ you say in surprise. ‘Oh, you are,’ she replies, ‘but our budget doesn’t extend to curing you. This is all we can afford.’

— John Bird, The Mail on Sunday, February 2007

This is the image John Bird presents of the way the UK deals with homelessness. Essentially, government-funded programs provide soup kitchens, hostels, clothing and flats to homeless people depending on need, urgency, and of course, funds. It’s a social program designed to keep legitimately poor people off the street. It generally does a good job of weeding out those who are homeless due to drug or alcohol addiction, which is why between 87 and 90% of homeless people in London are there because of addiction.

John Bird is one of the founding members of the Big Issue, a magazine which provides homeless people with 10 free issues to sell on the streets, then allows them to buy more magazines as they sell. The Big Issue is a not-for-profit organization, designed to enable the homeless to make a living and gain both the skills and the resources to rehabilitate themselves.

One would think that, as a founder of an organization aimed at helping the homeless, Bird would be sympathetic to them. Instead, he writes, “The people who are homeless through addiction are feckless, unstable, unreliable, incapable of holding down a job, feeding themselves or cleaning themselves. You take them into a hostel, patch them up and put them in State housing on benefits and they continue to kill themselves… They are ill and should be ‘sectioned’ — lifted from the streets and confined in the care of the mental health system, behind bars if necessary.”

Bird argues that, while not all homelessness can be attributed to addiction, those that are addicts need to be institutionalized and ‘reprogrammed’ in order to live stable, healthy lives. In England, there are a few institutions that deal exclusively in rehabilitating the homeless. Bird reports a 60 to 70% success rate.

Is addiction a mental disorder? Is Bird right in saying the homeless should be committed? What about people who aren’t homeless, but still struggle with addiction? Or is it just the homeless who are mentally unstable? What do you think?

Quote of the Day, 10/17/07

10/17/2007, 7:00 am -- by Bweinh | No Comments

“Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing — after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” — W. Churchill

I’ve Run Out of Names For These Tracts

10/16/2007, 5:00 pm -- by Steve | 1 Comment

{democracy:150}

Maxon’s Folly

10/16/2007, 2:30 pm -- by Job Tate | 10 Comments

Best of Job, September 2006.

A good friend of mine recently spent $75 and got a huge return on his investment. A shockingly good return that increases its value daily and, by all appearances, has no ceiling.

In fact, if Steve had been alive in March 1867, his $75 could have bought him 3,000 acres of Alaskan real estate — and many would have laughed at him. They would have said, most likely, that those funds could’ve been “spent on a fine buggy and horse of reasonable temperament, the right which being the good of the same, and with a full assortment of bits and collars for the beast.”

I’ve been thinking lately about what the best $75 I ever spent was, and I think it was a trip I made to Houston to thaw out once. Sunny, sublime and solitary, I was very enthusiastic for a while upon my return from the desert…

But that passes.

I spent $75 on my digital camera, the display model at Wal*Mart. I enjoy the thing but it is limited by my ineptitude.

I’ve spent the sum of $75 over and over again…and will many more times I am sure.

But I think the next time I have a disposable $75, I’m going to send it to Steve and tell him to go all Seward’s Folly on it for me.

Do it, Steve.

Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

Clash of the Titans LIV: Soccer

10/16/2007, 12:00 pm -- by Bweinh | No Comments

In this corner, a soccer fan, is Djere!

And in this corner, against the game, is Mike!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

GOAL! GOAL! GOAL! GOAL! GOAL!

Hey there, sports fans! Whether you’re the spoiled spawn of a disinterested suburban trophy wife or more useful to your parents tending the cassava fields than at school, everybody loves soccer! Scratch that: everybody loves fÃºtbol!

Here in America, it used to be that we would raise a collective yawn every four years for soccer’s World Cup, knowing full well that nations we could literally wipe off the face of the planet would make our best and brightest look like a high school junior varsity squad.

But things are changing! Soccer in America is the most popular organized children’s sport, and being a soccer mom is hip! Everybody wants to be a soccer mom… even Mike!

With the addition of international footballers like David Beckham and Juan Pablo Angel, new clubs like FC Toronto, and the “Superliga” tournament pitting the best of the MLS against the best of the Mexican fÃºtbol leagues, soccer’s on the rise.

And why shouldn’t it?

Americans are fat and lazy. The cure? Soccer! A soccer field looks familiar to Americans — a wider and longer NFL field, but players on the pitch run for almost 90 straight minutes, not stopping after every play to release a hip hop album.

Americans lust for blood. The cure? Soccer! Hooligans riot for weeks when their teams lose a match to a rival! Players have been shot to death for scoring own goals! And when a player commits a penalty, the ref pulls out a card — he doesn’t toss a froofy kerchief to the four winds of heaven — and books the offending player. There are no coaches challenging the call on the field, no umpires spitting tobacco, and best of all, no John “Turducken” Madden.

Americans want to be entertained. The cure? Soccer! Hands down, the single most aesthetically appealing points in any sport — bar none — are soccer goals. How many times can you see some 11-foot-tall college dropout reach up and place a ball in a basket? How long will you watch 14 400-pound college “graduates” slam into each other so 1 tiny man can dive over the blubbery mess into the end zone? Are you bored with jacked-up, ‘roid-ragers hitting little white balls over a fence with a stick? Soccer goals are quick and amazing at the pro level, the propulsion of a ball 30 or 40 yards with pinpoint precision. The spin, the physics, the drama, the beauty of a well-struck goal can cause entire nations to bless or curse.

Not that Americans would know anything about that. What’s that? NASCAR’s on? YEE HA!

I know that saying this will make me sound like a jingoistic pig, but would someone please explain what is so beautiful about the beautiful game?

Three things that are not so beautiful:

1. Red cards. In my mind, if a team has to play a man down for the entire remainder of the game, there ought to be dismemberment of some sort involved. But because some guy, in the heat of the moment, tackles another in a particularly egregious fashion, all of the sudden he’s out of the game and his team is now forced essentially to hope for a tie? Really?

When Paul Lo Duca whined and moaned through the Mets’ epic collapse, getting ejected from games, were the Mets prevented from using a catcher? No? Why? Because it’s ridiculous, that’s why. Oh, and by the way, that red card–all a judgment call. Not that the refs having all that power has ever led to corrupt officials.

2. Offsides. Okay, I’m snoozing my way through a game–oh, pardon me, a match — when finally — finally! — someone manages to break through all alone to face the goalie.

For the first time, I raise my eyelids slightly, only to have the ref blow the whistle and inform everybody in attendance that the previous moment of heart-pounding excitement was an infraction of the rules. Oh good. Now I can go back to my sleeping, and the crowd can go back to their drinking, unconcerned that any substantive action may take place on the field–er, pitch–to distract us from those worthy pursuits.

3. Soccer parents. Something must be done about these people. I’m at a JV soccer match today at the local high school watching a girl from our youth group. A girl goes down on a somewhat hard tackle. The ref lets it slide and continues play.

Behind me, a man, entitlement dripping from his lips, says, “Hey ref–what’re you looking at?” and proceeds to carry on an argument with the ref. In a crowd of 50 people max, this man, unencumbered by any sense of shame, barks at the ref at a girls’ JV game.

Don’t tell me this happens to this extent in other sports. Soccer’s big here in the ‘burbs, where people have it all, but are in constant fear of losing it all. The incredibly dull nature of the game gives these people time to ponder the emptiness at the core of their lives and makes them even more agitated about it. Suddenly, a ref’s judgment call turns into a personal attack on my precious little Fiona! Hell hath no fury like a tight-lipped nervous suburbanite scorned.

A vote for soccer merely perpetuates this insanity. Don’t do it!

{democracy:137}

101-Year-Old Woman Demands to Speak to President Roosevelt About Son’s WWII Death

10/16/2007, 10:30 am -- by Job Tate | No Comments

Best of Job, August 2006.

Vera Carter renewed her request Friday to speak to President Roosevelt about the death of her son, Private Hank Carter, a paratrooper who died on D-Day: June 6th, 1944.

“I want to speak to Mr. Roosevelt directly about Harold’s death fighting a rapidly-spreading fascist ideology that demands the violent annihilation of certain races and religions from the face of the planet,” Carter told reporters from her campsite across from Roosevelt’s Hyde Park home, where our 32nd President has been buried since 1945.

“I will not rest until I can tell him how annoyed I am that he had the guts to stand up to much of the world when it suggested that the mass ignorance that fueled Nazism should be left unchallenged and unchecked — and that he actually went ahead and did something about it.”

Vera went on to say that she thinks FDR probably knew about the Pearl Harbor bombing in advance, but allowed it to happen anyway, to give him an excuse to draft 16 million American men and fling them into a pan-global war to fill the pockets of his ~~oil~~ lawyer cronies.

Out-of-Context Chick Tract Answer!

10/16/2007, 9:00 am -- by Steve | No Comments

What was behind Juan’s door??

If you picked “Juan, praying,” you’re a winner!!

OOPS! There’s Baphomet again!

Joke of the Day, 10/16/07

10/16/2007, 7:00 am -- by Bweinh | No Comments

A young boy was in the garden, filling in a hole, when his neighbor peered over the fence. “What are you up to there?,” he asked.

“My goldfish died,” replied the boy tearfully, “and I’ve just buried him.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” The man looked again. “But that’s an awfully big hole for a goldfish, isn’t it?”

Tim patted down the last heap of earth and replied, “That’s ’cause he’s inside your cat!”

The Council’s Ruling — Best TV Show

10/15/2007, 12:00 pm -- by Bweinh | 10 Comments

This and every Monday, the Bweinh!tributors, having convened in secret for hours of reasoned debate and consideration, will issue a brief and binding ruling on an issue of great societal import.

This week’s question — What is the best television series of our lifetime?

The Council was unable to issue a majority ruling on this issue.

Continued here!

Ask Bweinh! Poll — Holidays

10/15/2007, 10:00 am -- by Bweinh | No Comments

This edition of the Ask Bweinh! poll is sponsored by the Game Genie! From Galoob!

What are the best holidays?

Rank	Name	Points
1.	Christmas	47
2.	Easter	29
3.	Thanksgiving	28
4-5 (tie)	Independence Day; Talk Like A Pirate Day	6
6.	Memorial Day	5
7-8 (tie)	Canadian Thanksgiving; Christmas Eve	4
9-12 (tie)	National Pause the World Day; V-J Day; Guy Fawkes Day; New Year’s Day	3
Other	Birthdays; Opening Day of Baseball; Halloween; Columbus Day; New Year’s Eve; Kwanzaa	1-2

Football Results (Week Six)

10/15/2007, 8:30 am -- by Bweinh | 2 Comments

This year, the Bweinh!tributors shall compete each week by proxy on the mighty gridiron!

The sixth week’s results
New England def. Dallas; Carolina def. Arizona; Cleveland def. Miami
Green Bay def. Washington; Baltimore def. St. Louis

Bweinh!tributor	This Week	Overall	GB
Tom	5-0	22-8	—
Djere; Josh	4-1	21-9	1
Steve	3-2	21-9	1
Erin	4-1	13-2	1.5
Mike	3-2	20-10	2
Connie	2-3	19-11	3
MC-B	5-0	18-12	4
David	2-3	18-12	4
Job	0-0	10-5	4.5
Chloe	3-2	9-16	10.5

By category
Avid fans: 72-33 (.686)
Slight fans: 39-21 (.650)
Uninterested: 81-49 (.623)

Quote of the Day, 10/15/07

10/15/2007, 7:00 am -- by Bweinh | No Comments

“There are two kinds of people in the world: Those that divide everybody into groups, and those that overgeneralize.” — B. Pershing

Why We Believe, Vol. 2

10/13/2007, 1:00 pm -- by Steve | 6 Comments

This and following weekends, we will share the brief salvation testimony of each Bweinh!tributor. Next in line is Steve.

I became a Christian at age 5, having discovered the appendix to my Billy Graham-sponsored children’s Bible, wherein the good pastor laid out the plan of salvation in what must have been a simple yet compelling way. I prayed the prayer he suggested, and then followed its further instruction to go tell my parents. I think Mom was cleaning the kitchen or taking care of baby Thomas at the time, but she was more than happy to go through everything with me again to make sure I understood.

But being intellectually more mature than I was spiritually, my early childhood was plagued by doubt. Was my experience real? Did the name I called my brother, even when he deserved it, place me back in danger of the fires of hell? I don’t know how many times I re-committed my life with a furtive midnight prayer, but it may top 100. I remember reading a devotion that said salvation was so much more than escaping hell; to me, it still seemed the most compelling and effective reason.

Soon I was old enough to deal with other concerns, the rocks that so frequently ruin the soil. For several years, Christian summer camp provided more persecution than edification. There and elsewhere, I closely observed hypocrisy, how man often rewards the godly appearance of evil hearts. So many things people said and did in church were lies, meant to gain praise or attention. People I respected abandoned their families, slipped into debauchery and drugs. What was left to trust?

Intellectually, I knew the answer, and I knew deep inside that man’s fall does not diminish God’s power.

And so I carried on. I found myself adrift after college, with no idea what to do next, flagging confidence that I was in His will, and decreasing faith of any type. One desperate night, I actually wrote a letter, to God, to myself, explaining my doubts, my concerns about the vagueness of prophecy, the insufficiency of personal experience, how most Christians rely on other men to hear and explain the voice of God.

Yet even at this lowest point, I held onto unshakable belief, in divine Creation and the Resurrection. I cannot look at this world and its intricacies, and believe it was the result of mere chance. I cannot consider the history of the early church and the power of Jesus’ teaching, and conclude that so many would forfeit everything for what they knew to be a lie.

I had no instant, miraculous response. I went to sleep and woke up the next day with the same thoughts on my mind. Since then, I have again come to feel much closer to God, but even if I hadn’t, He would be no less true.

We must know that faith is so much more than how we feel; we must be able to explain what we believe, why we believe, in terms more substantive than “I just know it’s right.” In a world with so many competing beliefs and religions, how Jesus makes us feel is not what makes us — or Him — unique.

It’s what He did, and even more, what He’s still doing.

Say Cheese

10/12/2007, 5:00 pm -- by Josh J | No Comments

Those who know me well will know that I don’t curse. Even those who know me only a bit will notice this about me fairly early on. In high school, I found this simple fact spoke volumes to classmates and furthered my witness.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t have substitute words that I’m all too happy to voice in moments of frustration, words that my mother’s delicate sensibilities would still deem a bit coarse.

Crap!

Dang!

Shoot!

The other day I was playing basketball with a young man who knew me not at all. My first clue came when he asked me without a trace of irony if I was really Tom, creator of MySpace (some in this neighborhood think I look like him). My second clue came when I missed a lay-up.

Cheese!

“‘Cheese’? What’s ‘cheese’?”

Huh?

“What does ‘cheese’ mean?”

“It means I lost the ball,” I told him.

He seemed a bit confused and dissatisfied with this explanation, until a short while later another errant shot brought the same exclamation. Turning to his friend he said, “Oh, I think ‘cheese’ means ‘Oh, #%@&.'”

Close enough.

Clash of the Titans XXVII: Legalizing Marijuana

10/12/2007, 1:00 pm -- by Bweinh | 4 Comments

In this corner, supporting the legalization of pot, is Mike!

And in this corner, opposing marijuana legalization, is MC-B!

Those of you who know me as being perhaps on the theologically liberal end of the spectrum of Bweinh!tributors may be surprised to find out that I am essentially politically conservative.

This is something that has developed in recent years, probably as I have grown older and responsible for running a household with my wife Jill. During our first year of marriage especially, we were not making much money. “How are we going to pay for it?” became a consistent refrain — when thinking of buying a car, new furniture or even a pizza for dinner.

So while I hear and am genuinely moved by pleas for universal health care or raising the minimum wage, the question still pops up: “How are we going to pay for it?” Eventually, the answer comes to me: “You are . . . you and the rest of the tax base.” And while I ought to be ready and generous to give to worthy causes, I would just as soon not take the US government’s word for it in deciding what a worthy cause is.

Just on the off chance that the US government decided something immoral was a worthy cause (perish the thought!), I would rather not have the mechanism already in place to force me to pay for it. We need the government to protect citizens from trampling each others’ rights; we don’t need a government determining right and wrong for individuals when that behavior has no impact on the lives of others.

It is the same sort of logic that informs my position that marijuana should be legalized. I’ve never used marijuana; and not like Bill Clinton never used marijuana either. I’ve never used it, period. And I can’t imagine why someone would. But you know what? The threat posed to society at large by marijuana usage is minimal at most. It poses no undue risk to the general populace; it does not rob anyone else of their rights. Marijuana does not threaten to kill or injure anyone besides the user. And if people want to do things harmful to themselves, tobacco is already legal and shows no signs of becoming illegal.

As far as I can see, the main reason for keeping marijuana illegal is that our government wants to send a message that it is abhorrent and dangerous behavior. I don’t condone marijuana usage. But neither do I want our government exploiting its power to determine what is abhorrent and dangerous. Remember, orthodox Christianity isn’t always pretty in the eyes of our government either, but it’s protected belief and behavior . . . for now.

I guess I’m counted among the social conservatives of the world. Jonah Goldberg once described social conservatism (to me and my peers at SLU) as erring on the side of keeping things the same when change is proposed. He illustrated his point vividly — during the 1960’s, a significant number of hippie communes began suffering from terrible diseases no American doctor had ever seen. To make a long story short, it turns out the age-old traditions of bathing and personal hygiene were not just “the man’s” hang-ups after all.

People are good judges of what is beneficial for them often enough that most decisions are safe in their hands; personal choice is one of the greatest tenets underlying philosophical liberalism and democracy. However, these also generally assume people are self-interested, and what’s good for me is not always good for you. Sometimes I can even be fooled into making a decision that’s good for me in the short run, but hurts in the long run. It’s a real shame that we don’t have a natural experiment to show what happens if otherwise responsible adults spend too much on expensive, addictive habits and not enough on their health, family, education, etc.

But of course, we do. We could examine the effects of cigarettes, which cause cancer and eat up resources that could be used more productively. However, aside from addictiveness, tobacco does not have many of marijuana’s characteristics (no mind- altering experience, man!), so it’s probably better to compare marijuana to alcohol, a much more sobering comparison (pardon the pun). Both drugs produce an altered state of mind and can transform you into someone that you are not. Legalizing marijuana doesn’t just put it into the hands of homesick Europeans and responsible folks like you and me. It could also put psychoactive drugs into the hands of a welfare recipient who should be out looking for work or caring for his/her children, or a person getting behind the wheel of a car. Granted, there are still DUI/DWI laws, but think about what an unbridled success those have been and you’ll understand my desire to keep pot illegal. Such regulations barely deter anyway; few believe the risk of getting caught is significant.

Finally, though I may be guilty of employing the slippery slope fallacy, it’s not a particularly good argument for legalizing marijuana. Why make anything illegal at all if the government cannot make moral judgments? Even protecting me from my neighbor implies my life is worth more than what’s spent on protection. Like most arguments, the argument about legalizing marijuana comes down to a matter of degree — to what degree will we let the government determine what Americans shouldn’t put into their bodies? I have no disdain for people who draw the line elsewhere, nor do they lack in morals, but I sincerely believe some people are not responsible enough to limit their detrimental behavior, so marijuana should remain illegal.

{democracy:54}

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