Kenya safari

I left our house on Tuesday afternoon, January 12th, at about 2:30. I was scheduled to take a 5:20 p.m. flight to London's Heathrow Airport. After landing at 9:05 a.m. GMT Wednesday (2:05 a.m. Mountain Time), I was scheduled to fly on to Nairobi, Kenya, leaving at 10:05 a.m. GMT and arriving in Nairobi at 9:35 p.m. Nairobi time (6:35 p.m. GMT, 11:35 a.m., Mountain Time).

When I checked in at Denver, the ticket agent said the flight was delayed 20 minutes and faced some strong headwinds. She doubted I'd be able to make the connection. So to ensure I would have a replacement flight, she pre-booked me on a Virgin Atlantic flight out of London that would leave Wednesday evening at about 9:30 and arrive in Nairobi Thursday morning.

As it turned out, our flight took off on time and made good time over to London. Except, about an hour from London, the captain came on the intercom: "London is experiencing snow and so we have been placed in a holding pattern that, we expect, may last up to an hour and a half. Happily, we were warned of such a possibility, so we have enough fuel . . ."

Over the course of the next couple of hours, we received updates. We were finally permitted to come in at about 10:15 in the morning. But the inch of snow was so debilitating for Heathrow operations that there were no jetways available for us to park. "While jets coming in have been slowed, almost no jets have been permitted to take off," our captain informed us.

That gave me hope I might actually make my connection.

But an hour later, when we finally got off the plane, I discovered my flight had left long before.

So I was in for an extended stay at Heathrow.

After wading through a number of customer service waiting lines, I finally made my way to one of the Virgin Atlantic business lounges at about 2 in the afternoon and made myself at home for a few hours.

One of my first obligations: to send an email to notify my host in Nairobi that I would not be on my flight that evening, but should be seeing him Thursday morning.

The Virgin Atlantic business lounge is the most pleasant airline lounge I have ever been in. Not only do they offer the standard amenities of any high-end lounge (free snacks, drinks, newspapers and magazines, showers, etc.), but they offer an amazing sit-down restaurant food service at no charge.

I enjoyed my stay.

That evening, we finally took off at about 10:30 and arrived in Nairobi Thursday morning--about 10 o'clock local time, as I recall.

Having only my carry-on luggage, I was one of the first to get to immigration.

Oh! I needed a visa. (I hadn't known.) Charge: US$25.

Okay. I hadn't brought along much in the way of US currency, but I could cover that.

Except the officer scowled: "Where am I supposed to put your visa? I have no space in your passport for a visa!"

"Well, can't you use this page?" I asked, pointing to the very last page in the book.

"I am not permitted to put a visa on that page," he said. And he pointed to the barcodes at the bottom.

"But there is room," I countered.

"I should really send you back," he said. "I am not supposed to let you in."

But then he relented. And I realized I have to get additional pages for my passport before I venture forth on another international trip.

When I emerged from the terminal, I looked for my ride.

I saw no one who looked like he (or she) was looking for me.

I walked up and down the line.

No one.

I need to go to the bathroom. Hopefully they will show up while I'm in there, and then we can leave.

When I emerged, still there was no one.

I walked up and down the line once more.

No one.

"Taxi!? Taxi?!" called several entrepreneurial spirits a little apart from the crowd of greeters.

"No thanks," I replied.

But I was perplexed.

What should I do?

I had no phone number, no way to know what I should do.

"May I help you?" a nicely dressed man asked.

"I need to find the Waine Hotel," I said.

He called information. No Waine Hotel. He brought me to a friend in a booth. We looked it up in the Yellow Pages under Hotels. No Waine Hotel.

"I'm sure that's where I'm supposed to go," I said. . . .

A few minutes later, my new friend said, "Ah! It's not the 'Waine Hotel'; it is 'The House of Waine.'"

"Oh, yes!" I said.

"I can take you there," he offered. And a few minutes later I was on my way to the House of Waine.

I had no idea what I was in for.

Half an hour later, I was dropped off at the most astonishing hotel I could imagine seeing, much less staying at. And I walked in on a meeting of about thirteen fellow travelers who had arrived the night before and were now being briefed on missions work among the Deaf.

An hour later, we were told to gather a few things together for an overnight trip to the Kichwa Tembo tent camp on the border of the Masai Mara Game Reserve in southwest Kenya.

First we took a whirlwind tour of the current DOOR facility in downtown Nairobi, ate lunch, and then boarded a small twin-engine piston propeller plane for what turned out to be a 45-minute airplane ride that ended with what may have been the smoothest landing I have ever experienced . . . on a dirt runway in "the middle of nowhere."

Several 10-passenger Land Rovers were waiting, and before you knew it, we were heading off into the bush to see what we could see.

I figure I'll let some photos help tell the story. [Apologies to photographers: I was using a Canon PowerShot A480 and was pushing its limits at every turn. Sadly, the shutter lag time combined with poor quality batteries militated against shooting dozens of photos when it would have been helpful. And, further, I often pushed my lens into digital telephoto territory . . . which almost always destroys detail. Still, I want to illustrate what I saw!]

So. Let's see. . . .

First thing that caught our eye as we were driving away from the landing strip: a large herd of elephants.

And zebras. . . .

A rhino way too far in the distance . . .

Some of the most beautiful birds . . .

And ugly . . .

(By the way: the ostrich on the right is male: he has black plumage; the females' plumage is merely a dark gray.)

Here he is running away . . .

Ugly ducks?!?

Ahhh! Warthogs . . . Lots of warthogs! (Though I didn't get very many decent photos. The warthogs always seemed to scamper off at high speed whenever we came within 50 yards . . . their tails always high in the air.)

. . . Well. Except for this one . . . and one or two of its brothers or sisters . . .

This one was rooting around on the grounds of our campsite on Friday afternoon. Notice he is kneeling on his front legs so he can get his mouth down close enough to the grass to eat!

. . . Hyenas. This one crossed right in front of our vehicle as the elephant herd we saw right after getting of the plane passed by . . .

My camera wasn't fast enough to capture more than this one shot. . . . Until we found a mother with her pups . . . but then I couldn't get that mother's head, either.

Oh, well! The pups sure are cute!

How about baby Thompson's gazelles hiding in the grass . . .

And an adult Thompson's gazelle (one among thousands we saw, though this was the only photo I took that came out well). . .

Ah! One of my favorites: the elegant, multi-colored topi:

. . . Lots of giraffes!

(See them walking across the field?)

Ah! Here's a better shot! --Notice how rich their colors are! Way deeper and darker than I recall seeing on any of the giraffes I've seen here in the States. . . .

See the bird riding on the base of his neck? . . . Here's a better shot:

And . . . take a look at this guy: one horn shorter than the other!

Cape buffaloes . . .

. . . When he began to get up . . .

. . . our driver said we had best be going. --The Cape buffalo is, we were told, the fiercest of all the animals in that part of Africa.

. . . Oh. How about lions?

Early Friday morning, I was afraid this was going to be about all we would get to see of them: four cubs hiding in the grass on top of a mound:

Can you see their heads just barely popping above the top of the grass? (The fourth one is about a fifth of the way in from the left edge of the photo, slightly in front of his "brother" (or is it sister?) at the top of the mound.)

. . . But later in the morning we came across a couple of lions just lying beside the road. . . .

Our driver suggested that, considering how inactive they were, they must be on the tail end of their "honeymoon."

After about five minutes, the male woke up and took a gander at the humans looking at them . . .

The female kept sleeping. . . .

We continued to sit quietly for quite some time just watching.

I was astonished to notice how rapidly the female was breathing. (Our driver said they pant at a rate of about 200 breaths per minute. And that sounded about right.) But what was most amazing was how hard she seemed to work for each breath. Her entire body, including her head, bobbled about on each breath!

Eventually she roused herself . . .

And a giraffe decided to walk on by . . .

. . . and the female decided to go for a walk herself . . .

"Hey! Don't leave without me!" said the male . . .

"Just thirsty, Honey. . . ."

"Good idea!"

Let's see. What else?

Hippopotami . . .

. . . and crocodiles!

Dung beetles . . . rolling their ball of . . . dung . . .

Notice that the one on the right has his hind legs up in the air on top of the ball; the beetle on the left has his front legs up on top of the ball. . . . They were rolling the ball from right to left across the field of view in this photo. . . .

Oops! The guy on the right shoved just a bit too strenuously . . . and toppled his mate!

Probably the nicest photo I got in my entire trip: an impala! --What gorgeous horns!

. . . Well, that's about all of my decent animal photos.

While we're out in the "bush," however, I'd like to point out a few items I noticed about the environment in Masai Mara.

1) Our camp in Masai Mar was at 5,360 feet elevation--very close to our elevation here in the Denver metro area . . . which means the air was pleasantly warm, neither hot nor cold (though we were only a couple of degrees south of the equator).

2) We were told that if we had come just a few weeks earlier, the landscape would have been a dry and dusty brown. They had suffered a lengthy drought that was broken in just the preceding three weeks or so by massive rain. --You can see what a great difference that rain made!

3) We think of Colorada as "Big Sky Country" (though if I remember accurately, Montana claims that verbiage as its state motto). Sarita and I have never lived in a place that has such "big sky"--unimpeded views that extend "forever." . . . Well, if you noticed, the sky in Masai Mara was huge. It beats Colorado for enormity. The landscape seemed to extend at least twice as far as anything I've seen here in Colorado.

And then, finally,

4) I was taken by the trees. Such a strange appearance: flat across the top and "naked" until just the last couple of feet of canopy:

The trees' shape is so regular, from a distance, it can almost create the appearance of a river of light beneath the canopy and above the shrubbery beneath:

I discussed this phenomenon with our guide. Obviously, the reason the trees are denuded up to a certain height is because of the giraffes.

"But considering how thoroughly the giraffes strip the leaves below that particular height,"I asked, "how can young trees survive so as to get to the height where they can grow a foot or two of canopy?"

"That's very interesting," she replied. "Actually, if the giraffes eat enough of their leaves to begin to threaten the trees' survival, the trees change their chemistry and produce tannins . . . which are very bitter chemicals and make the leaves completely unattractive to the giraffes."
*******
Okay. I'm stopping here.

Hope you found the photo tour interesting!

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook and can't use links or don't see photos, please realize it originally appeared and is still available on my personal blog.]

Ministry among Deaf

I'm back from Kenya. (I got back Monday evening.) A whirlwind tour.

Maybe someday I will talk about the transportation. (It took from Tuesday afternoon Denver time till Thursday mid-morning Nairobi time [about 33 hours] for me to get there; and then from Sunday evening Nairobi time till Monday evening Denver time [about 32 hours] to get home.)

But I'd like to talk about what I saw and learned among the deaf people in Nairobi. But/and before I do that, I want you to understand some of what I was told about where the worldwide deaf community was just 13 years ago, when DOOR (Deaf Opportunity OutReach; www.doorinternational.com) first came into being. You need to understand these things in order to appreciate how dramatic the things were that I observed last Saturday and Sunday.

Thirteen years ago, if I understood what I was told (and if DOOR is to be believed),

• There was no Bible in any Deaf (i.e., sign) language.
   
• There was no Deaf fellowship anywhere in the world in which Deaf community members led their own worship, preached their own sermons, and/or taught their own Bible lessons.
   
• There were no Deaf worship songs.

Please don't misunderstand what I am (or DOOR is) saying.

• Historically, there have been quite a number of Christian churches with Deaf ministries. . . . But think how they have been organized.
   
  • They have been led by hearing people, not by any Deaf people themselves.
     
  • The (hearing) leaders generally view the people to whom they seek to minister—i.e., Deaf people—as handicapped.
     
  • The (hearing) leaders rarely (if ever?) enjoyed any kind of deep understanding of or knowledge about Deaf culture.
     
  • Deaf churchgoers themselves had little opportunity to develop forms of worship that reflected their own culture and experience.
     
  • Moreover Deaf churchgoers have been frustrated by
     
    • poor interpreting,
       
    • lack of access to the Bible in sign language,
       
    • lack of support services, and
       
    • a severe lack of Deaf people with whom to fellowship.

Now, if you're like me, you may feel that some of these “charges” are rather unfair—almost “fighting words.” I mean, they are so harsh, aren't they, against so many well-meaning and hard-working people who have tried to reach out to the (relatively very few) Deaf people around them. Wouldn't you say?

The whole notion of Deafness, for example, not being a handicap: Isn't that crazy? It’s like blindness, isn't it? It limits a person’s opportunities. It’s a limitation—and handicap upon the person’s abilities.

Look at the statistics. (Again, I'm relying on some of the things I heard while in Nairobi.) Deaf people are overwhelmingly un- or, at least, underemployed. How about numbers like 50% unemployed (minimum) to (more realistic/likely/common) numbers like 80% to 90% unemployed (generally "three times higher than the national average in the developing world" according to the book A Journey into the Deaf-World by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister and Ben Bahan)?

If that kind of unemployment doesn't indicate handicap, I don't know what does!

But, as one of the leaders of the 1988 Gallaudet Revolution told a reporter for USA Today, "Hearing people sometimes call us handicapped. But most—maybe all Deaf people—feel that we're more of an ethnic group because we speak a different language. . . We also have our own culture. . . There's more of an ethnic difference than a handicap difference between us and hearing people."

And so, as one DOOR publication explains, "The members of the Deaf-World see themselves not as people with a disability, but as members of a language minority whose native language happens to be a signed language."

Really? Can such a thing be?

Well, consider. According to A Journey into the Deaf-World:

• Unlike expectant mothers with disabilities, expectant Deaf parents, like those of any other language minority, commonly hope to have children just like themselves, with whom they can share their language, culture and unique experiences. That is why they hope to have Deaf children. (!!! –Emphasis added. –JAH)
   
• Whenever two Deaf people meet, it seems that Sign Language develops naturally . . . which is one reason most observers believe that the Deaf culture is one that can never be totally assimilated or eradicated. Sign Language will never die out.
   
• Members of the Deaf-World commonly refer to themselves as the Deaf, in conversation and in the names of their organizations. It seems right to speak of the Deaf as we speak of the French or the British. Notice that by speaking in this manner, we are not implying that all culturally Deaf people or French people are alike. Rather, we are merely noting that they have certain defining characteristic in common.

Okay. Enough propagandizing!

What I have just told you gives you some idea of "how things were" not that many years ago. --And due to some conversations with my host and as a result of some reading he had me do before I arrived in Nairobi, I was relatively aware of much of what I have just said as I walked into the Bethel Sanctuary of the Nairobi Baptist Church last Saturday afternoon for the dedication of the first 32 Bible stories translated into Kenyan Sign Language and reproduced on DVD. (NOTE: Next Saturday, January 30, DOOR is planning to celebrate the translation of the same first 32 stories in the Kerala (India) Sign Language Bible.) [2/10/10 UPDATE: I've now added a brief post about that celebration.]

First thing that "blew me away": There had to be 300 or more Deaf people in the congregation. I had never seen so many Deaf in one place before!

And the service was led by a number of Deaf people.

 

Rather than being the recipients of hearing people's "ministry," we, the hearing, became the recipients of spoken translations of what the Deaf were saying and singing.

And while we're on that subject, I should probably note: I was told that the wide variety and large number of speakers and singers who led in this service was actually far less than what the Deaf themselves would have enjoyed had they not had so many hearing guests. Only seven dancer/singers leading in worship? Why, that's nothing compared to a normal Deaf service! Normally you might see even 50 people up front!

Something else that blew me away (and, I will confess, not very positively . . . until I had someone explain some of the reason why things were/are the way they are): During the Saturday service, they repeated the same story--the story of Jesus healing the paralytic who was let down through the roof of the house by his four friends-- . . . They repeated that story five times over without a break . . . except to get a different person or group to come up front and re-tell it.

Oh, there was some slight variation in the telling. One time it was told straight by one person. The next telling involved a group more re-enacting it. I don't remember how the telling may have differed the other three times. I just remember thinking, at the time, "How boring! How can they stand this?"

But then, when I asked about it, my sources explained:

• Remember that the only way the Deaf can master their Bible stories is if they memorize them. Repetition helps solidify their memories.
   
• Remember that most hearing people have heard these stories over and over throughout their lives. For many Deaf, this is the first time they have ever heard the story.
   
• The details of a story are very important for the Deaf—more important than for hearing people.
   
• Normally, in a Deaf service, there is actually much more interaction. Members of the "audience" or "congregation" will ask questions. The leader may say, "The men came to the house." And someone in the audience will ask, "Why?" And there will be a great give-and-take between story-teller and story-listeners.
   
• The Deaf "talk" (i.e., "sign") for hours on end. Since so few have employment, it is very common to find them staying up all night telling stories and sucking the marrow out of each narrative. They find significance in tiny details that [hearing people] would never think to talk about.

. . . And so forth.

So they repeated the same story five times over.

And their worship songs, by and large, consisted of just a few words repeated endlessly--fifteen times or more per phrase, sometimes, before moving on. And while the monotone interpretation and virtually identical expression drove me to distraction, the Deaf themselves appeared in ecstacy:

Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Praise the Lord.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Hallelujah. Jesus.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord. . . .

I will confess, there was one song they sang--and I attempted to join in singing/signing--on Sunday that I really enjoyed. I think it had to do not only with the meaning, but with the motions:

Higher, higher, higher, higher.
Jesus higher.
Lower lower, lower, lower.
Satan lower. . . .

And on the "highers," we raised our hands progressively higher over our heads, and on the "lowers," we brought our hands down until they almost touched the ground, and then stomped our feet as if smashing Satan into the ground.

I look forward to the day when someone in the Deaf community begins to write significantly more complex and spiritually and intellectually deeper songs.

One note, however: As I tried to debrief on this subject as well, my sources noted that until a few years ago, there were no Deaf songs of any type. And when Mike Buus, president of DOOR, urged the Deaf to write their own songs (rather than attempt to translate standard "hearing" songs into sign language), the Deaf protested: "We can't do that! God can't hear us! He doesn't know our language!"

--It was (and is) the same story missionaries and Bible translators have told many times before: Until the Scriptures are translated into a people's heart language, they figure it is impossible for God to talk with them and impossible for them to talk with God.

But today the Deaf are beginning to enjoy their own hymnody, despite whatever limitations there may be in complexity and depth of understanding or expression.

Some more observations:

"Funny": The fundamental Deaf worship experience involves two things that any upstanding conservative Baptist or fundamentalist Christian church in the United States would likely find appalling. The one and only musical instrument (used for every song): Drums.

(This photo is from the Sunday morning worship at the new DOOR ministry center being constructed on the far outskirts of Nairobi in the Ongata Rongai District, a few hundred yards from the Africa Nazarene University. If you look above, at the second photo in the series illustrating the diversity of deaf leaders, toward the left of the photo, in the background, you'll see the drum set used on Saturday.)

The drum is the only instrument that creates such a sharp physical sensation that the Deaf can feel the vibration through their bodies. I was impressed with how the drum could keep the entire multi-hundred-person congregation in perfect time.

Besides feeling the drumbeat, the members of the congregation themselves often clapped vigorously in time with one another.

But then, secondly, song leaders and congregants, both, could hardly sit still while singing! No sounds emanated from most of their mouths. But their hands and arms and legs and bodies moved in beautiful movement to the beat. Or, to put it succinctly: they danced.

So two fundamental aspects of Deaf worship are drums and dance.

I wonder what kind of reception those behaviors would receive in the average fundamental Baptist church in America! ;-)

Well. I need to bring this post to a close!

Here are a few more, final pictures.

We were in Africa primarily to witness and participate in the dedication of the first 32 stories of the Kenya Sign Language Bible.

During the Saturday service, we were shown some short clips of how the Bible "works": a person signs the story while helpful graphics are displayed in the background (as shown below), or someone explains background information or provides additional explanatory material.

This photo was shot from one of the monitors in the sanctuary on Saturday afternoon.

After listening to explanations and watching samples, it finally came time to pray for, thank God for, and reveal the new translation.

Here Mike Buus (on far right) prays while the translation team and other key support personnel lay their hands on the materials about to be revealed.

The joyful reveal:

Mike explaining why there are not only DVDs, but printed storyboard books, too (to enable users to remind themselves how to retell each story accurately).

One of the deaf members of the translation team leading in a prayer of thanks to God for giving Deaf Kenyans the first Bible in their own heart language:

I'll stop here.

More later.

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook and can't use links or don't see photos, please realize it originally appeared and is still available on my personal blog.]

Woo-hoo! Sonlight/InquisiCorp goes (partially) solar . . .

It's been close to nine months since I first pushed to have Sonlight/InquisiCorp look into installing solar power. As of noon today, my dream became reality.

We are supposed to generate close to a third of our electricity using solar panels on our warehouse roof:

The monitoring system isn't fully up to snuff. ("Environmentals," for example, in the upper right-hand corner, is completely wacked-out at the moment.) But the reality is, we are generating power. And, though just about everything else still has to be tweaked to make it correct, I am told the RG PV numbers on the detail view page are accurate.

The way it was all explained to me is this:

There is some malfunction with the weather monitoring station, so the displays under “Environmentals” (on the top right) are not correct. Also, under “detail view” PV devices (on the left) showing the production directly from the inverter is not displaying either. RG PV (right below PV) is the revenue grade monitor which is an auditing device that is actually more precise than the PV/Inverter is working. The PV/Inverter numbers only need to be within plus/minus 5% while the RG PV is accurate to within .5%. Stephen and Matthew will be back within the next week to finetune these issues.

Under “Detail”, you can check power, voltage or current on the chart below those tabs. DC Input is tied to the PV/Inverter, so won’t display until they correct whatever is malfunctioning with that monitor. Mousing over each data point shows the readings for every 15 minute interval. The “Custom” tab on the far right of the chart enables us to define a date range, which should be helpful to compare to our billing cycle.

Stephen, our service rep, will forward a link that we can imbed on our website that will offer displays similar to the one at Boulder Valley Credit Union.

I look forward to having all the data available for view!
[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook, it originally appeared on my personal blog.]

The Missional Church

I'm headed over to Nairobi, Kenya, this evening (scheduled to arrive tomorrow evening, Nairobi time) to join with a group of men at DOOR (Deaf Opportunity OutReach) International's Deaf Bible Translation and Training Center. We are planning to participate in the dedication of the first 32 stories in DOOR's Deaf Bible Translation project.

In preparation for this trip, our group leader asked us to read Tim Keller's The Missional Church.

I am blown away. It expresses so much of what I have felt over the years but have been unable to express. So many great insights!

It also offers some historical and cultural perspectives that help explain to my satisfaction a lot of "why things are the way they are."

Here, for example, is some of the explanation:

• "In the West for nearly 1,000 years, the relationship of (Anglo-European) Christian churches to the broader culture was a relationship known as 'Christendom.'"

Okay. And what does that mean?

• "The institutions of society 'Christianized' people," i.e.,
  
  
  • They taught members of the culture what was "good" in terms both of belief and behavior.
     
  • They also stigmatized non-Christian belief and behavior.
   
• However, as Keller notes,
  
  
  • "Christian morality without gospel-changed hearts often led to cruelty and hypocrisy. Think of how the small town in 'Christendom' treated the unwed mother or the gay person. Also, under 'Christendom' the church often was silent against abuses of power of the ruling classes over the weak."
  
  And, therefore,
   
• "For these reasons and others, the church in Europe and North America has been losing its privileged place as the arbiter of public morality since at least the mid 19th century. The decline of Christendom has accelerated greatly since the end of WWII."

These observations, alone, I thought, were well worth the reading of the paper. But Keller was barely warmed up.

• "British missionary Lesslie Newbigin went to India around 1950. There he was involved with a church living 'in mission' in a very non-Christian culture. When he returned to England some 30 years later, he discovered that now the Western church too existed in a non-Christian society, but it had not adapted to its new situation."
  

What does that mean?

• "Though public institutions and popular culture of Europe and North America no longer 'Christianized' people, the church still ran its ministries assuming that a stream of 'Christianized', traditional/moral people would simply show up in services."

And that means . . . ????

• "[T]he church in the West had not become . . . 'missional'--adapting and reformulating [what] it did in worship, discipleship, community, and service--so as to be engaged with the non-Christian society around it."

Therefore . . .

• It continued to use "stylized prayer language, unnecessary evangelical pious 'jargon', and archaic language that seeks to set a 'spritual tone.'"
   
• It engaged in "sentimental, pompous, 'inspirational' talk" that set it apart from the culture round about.
   
• It permitted itself to speak in "'we-them' language," to tell "jokes that mock[ed] people of different politics and beliefs, and [to make] dismissive, disrespectful comments about those who differ[ed] with" those on the "inside."
   
• It spoke "as if non-believing people [were] not present" in its meetings.
   
• Interaction with non-believers consisted "more . . . of exhortation (and, often, heavy reliance on guilt)" than "real engagement [with], listening [to], or persuasion" of those who might believe differently than those on the "inside."
   
• Teaching and training focused, too often, solely on such "private world" skills as "prayer, Bible study, [and] evangelism" rather than how to interface with and respond effectively to "radically non-Christian values in . . . public life--where [church members] work, in their neighborhood, etc."
   
• Churches and church members continued "to define [themselves] over against other churches" rather than seeking to exhibit primary solidarity with other Christians over against the non-Christian culture that surrounded them.

So what should the church become and do?

You can get a good idea by almost turning each one of the points above inside out . . . or reading Keller's article yourself to hear him state these and other points in a more positive manner.

Interesting to me: Keller's message almost directly parallels something I've been writing about recently as a result of a request I've been given to help start a university--a university to achieve Kingdom purposes but in a manner that reaches across cultural barriers. It also parallels a project I sought to begin six and a half years ago with Sonlight Curriculum. Here's how I recently told that story:

In August of 2003, a friend of ours who is deeply involved in outreach to Muslims in a certain limited-access country preached a sermon at our church. In it, he quoted Robert Bruce, an Irish missionary of the 19th century who ministered in Persia. It seems that, at one point during Bruce’s ministry, he wrote to his supporters back home: "I am not reaping the harvest; I can scarcely claim to be sowing the seed; I am hardly plowing the soil; but I am gathering out the stones."

When I heard this statement, it electrified me. It particularly grabbed my attention because just a few days before I had read an article in World magazine (August 2, 2003 issue) in which Marvin Olasky, one of the magazine's editors, noted that most Americans—even the "well-educated," even those who have grown up in nominally Christian homes and in highly churched areas of the country—are totally out-of-touch with a biblical or evangelical Christian point-of-view.

"What's to be done?" Olasky asked. "Biblical Christians (and orthodox believers in Judaism and other faiths) need to remember that to most leaders in media and academia we are speaking a foreign language; we need to be bilingual and to offer translation services. Media and academic monolingualists need to realize that understanding evangelical language and culture requires at least as much work as understanding a foreign language and culture. They need interpreters and guides." (From Waiting for the translation: Religious Americans will not be understood without cross-cultural training.)

What he said jibed with what I had observed among non-evangelical Sonlighters. So I was thinking about these things when my friend preached his sermon.

And as I thought about these cultural and communicative realities in the context of Bruce's statement about gathering out stones, I realized I had never thought of removing stones as a form of legitimate evangelistic or missional activity! Extending the analogy: I had never thought of soil preparation (as in: adding soil amendments or compost) as a legitimate evangelistic or missional activity, either. I had only thought about sowing and reaping . . . as per Jesus’ parable in which He talks about the seed falling on different types of soil. Jesus didn’t talk about PREPARING the soil—and so I didn't think of such activities, either!

But in normal farming and gardening, soil preparation is key.

Shortly after hearing my friend’s sermon, I was talking with our daughter when she noted that in the Sunset Garden Masters Reveal their Secrets book, one of the contributors says, "If you have a garden and a dollar, spend 90 cents on soil and 10 cents on plants."

So in that context, I began thinking: While our homeschool program, Sonlight Curriculum^®, the brand, is not well-suited to audiences other than evangelicals, perhaps Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd., the company, could create a new brand focused on a non-evangelical audience.

And so I suggested to our management team that we use most of the same materials we had put together for Sonlight Curriculum^® but modify our assumptions about the audience. For the new brand, instead of assuming our customers would be evangelical Christians (as we have for Sonlight, even though we know quite a few are not), what if we were to assume that our audience was NOT evangelical (even though some probably would be)? We could still use 80 or 90 percent of the books we had chosen for Sonlight^®. We could also use 80 or 90 percent of the work we had done developing the Sonlight^® instructor’s guides.

The main thing we would need to do is change the tone of many of our notes, questions and answers. Ask much the SAME questions, but change our assumptions about our audience. Don't use Christian language; don't assume that students will have any inkling what certain words or concepts [familiar to evangelicals, but unfamiliar to others] may mean. . . .

Even with all of these changes, WE COULD STILL BRING THE EVANGELICAL WORLDVIEW TO BEAR in the larger marketplace of ideas. . . .

To modify Bruce somewhat: "We could scarcely claim to be sowing seeds; we would hardly be plowing the soil; but [I thought] we could be gathering out the stones" of this new generation of Americans who know very little else about evangelical Christianity other than that, they believe, they should despise or reject it.

By RAISING THE QUESTIONS, and by INCLUDING evangelical answers AMONG OTHERS, we could "bring evangelicalism to the table."

Sonlight Curriculum, Ltd., has never been able to achieve that goal. InquisiCorp Corporation, the holding company we created in hopes that it might transfer some of the intellectual property from Sonlight^® to the new brand-- . . . InquisiCorp Corporation has, so far, never been able to achieve that goal.

But now, with the new university before me, and with the further encouragement of Tim Keller's article, I am hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we may be able to achieve this goal of helping to create an institution that can cross the barriers and speak into the culture in which we now find ourselves.

I pray that may be the case.

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook, it originally appeared on my personal blog.]

Global warming? . . . Or cooling?

Interesting: Shortly after hearing of the supposed "failure" of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, I happened to come across an article in the Economist's special The World in 2010 called "Where have all the sunspots gone?"

"In the past, sunspots have disappeared for decades," writes the author.

Between 1645 and 1715, they were rare. There were several years in which none at all was sighted and others in which fewer than ten were spotted. Giovanni Cassini, an Italian astronomer, described a sunspot that appeared in 1671 as the first he had seen for many years. John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, observed one in 1684, after a gap of ten years. This 70-year period of low solar activity has since been dubbed the Maunder Minimum (after an astronomer called Edward Maunder, a sunspot specialist).

And so? . . .

Well, it appears we may be entering into a new "Maunder Minimum."

Four centuries after sunspots were first seen—by Galileo—they have disappeared almost entirely. In 2009 weeks and sometimes months went by without a single sunspot being discerned. In 2010 they will return, or so say most solar scientists. Others wonder whether the sun may be going through an extended period of inactivity. . . .

Normally the number of sunspots peaks every 11 years, coinciding with the times when the sun’s magnetic field is at its strongest. As the field wanes, the number of sunspots falls to a trough or minimum, at which point the sun’s magnetic field reverses direction and starts to regain its strength. As it does so, sunspots begin to appear close to the poles of the sun. When the magnetic field is at its strongest, and sunspots at their most plentiful, they cluster close to the equator.

Back in 2008 solar scientists saw a high-latitude, reversed-polarity sunspot, suggesting the start of a new solar cycle. Since then, however, there has been little activity. . . .

Scientists from America’s space agency, NASA, reckon that the next peak will come in March or April 2013. However, their colleagues at the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, have found that the magnetism of sunspots (the strength of the knot that they form) has been declining over the past couple of decades. If this carries on, solar magnetic fields will become too weak to form sunspots, which will vanish completely in 2015.

So are we headed for a new "Maunder Minimum"? We may find out in 2010.
"Reliable predictions of sunspot numbers are impossible to make until the solar cycle is well established, usually three years after the minimum"--i.e., this year, 2010.

But so what? And why did I title this post with words about global warming or cooling?

Well . . .

"The Maunder Minimum coincided with a period of exceptionally cold winters in Europe and North America and, perhaps, elsewhere," writes the author.

"Oh, yes!" I thought when I read that sentence. "Wasn't that called the Little Ice Age?" (Yes, it was.)

Frankly, I have been a skeptic not so much about global warming, per se, but about the supposed link between human action and global warming. Considering the temperature increases that occurred long before the build-up in atmospheric carbon dioxide; and considering the much higher temperatures the earth seems to have experienced in millennia past: I just don't find the "arguments" for human causation particularly compelling.

So then comes this article about sunspots.

"What happens if global warming meets solar cooling?" asks the author. "Expect a hot debate."

Yes. I can imagine.

But I just hope the cooling, if it is to come, comes quickly and decisively so that our governments will not have made it impossible for those of us who will need fuel just to stay warm and survive to get the fuel we need.

******
While we're on the subject, let me encourage you to read physicist Howard Hayden's "one-letter proof" that the science is not settled on the issue of CO2 and climate change.

Nice job, Professor Hayden (and Stephan Kinsella, who quoted him).

******
Oh. And then yesterday I happened upon this article, from yesterday's Daily Mail (UK), in which "some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists" claim that "a global trend towards cooler weather . . . is likely to last for 20 or 30 years."

Interesting: These scientists don't mention sunspots. They refer to certain "oceanic cycles, . . . known as the Pacific and Atlantic ‘multi-decadal oscillations’ (MDOs)."

Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronised way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world’s climate from a ‘warm mode’ to a ‘cold mode’ and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles.

‘They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather,’ he said yesterday, ‘and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st Centuries.

'We have such a change now and can therefore expect 20 or 30 years of cooler temperatures.’

Prof Tsonis said that the period from 1915 to 1940 saw a strong warm mode, reflected in rising temperatures.

But from 1940 until the late Seventies, the last MDO cold-mode era, the world cooled, despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise.

Many of the consequences of the recent warm mode were also observed 90 years ago.

For example, in 1922, the Washington Post reported that Greenland’s glaciers were fast disappearing, while Arctic seals were ‘finding the water too hot’.

It interviewed a Captain Martin Ingebrigsten, who had been sailing the eastern Arctic for 54 years: ‘He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, and since that time it has gotten steadily warmer.

'Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended into the sea they have entirely disappeared.’

As a result, the shoals of fish that used to live in these waters had vanished, while the sea ice beyond the north coast of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean had melted.

Warm Gulf Stream water was still detectable within a few hundred miles of the Pole.
In contrast, Prof Tsonis said, last week 56 per cent of the surface of the United States was covered by snow.

‘That hasn’t happened for several decades,’ he pointed out. ‘It just isn’t true to say this is a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while.’

Of course, the "orthodox" global warming advocates claim all of this is preposterous.

In March 2000, Dr David Viner, then a member of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the body now being investigated over the notorious ‘Warmergate’ leaked emails, said that within a few years snowfall would become ‘a very rare and exciting event’ in Britain, and that ‘children just aren’t going to know what snow is’.

Now the head of a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: ‘We’ve had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn’t change anything.

'This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event.’

Will the die-hard believers allow us to wait two or three years to see?

Somehow, I think not. They will attempt, with all their might, to push the rest of us into their orthodoxy.

And I? I would prefer to advocate for a little room to let global warming "heretics" have their say without persecution.

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook, it originally appeared on my personal blog.]

"A bowl of M&M's . . . with all brown ones removed"

I had heard the stories. Perhaps you did, too.

Van Halen included a notorious clause in all of its contracts: Concert promoters had to provide a bowl of M&M's backstage, but every single brown candy had to be removed. I had heard that. I hadn't heard that if the band found any brown candies the show would be forfeit and the band was to be paid anyway.

But, it turns out, the contract was, indeed, "that bad"!

Indeed, the "no brown candies" clause was toward the end of an astonishingly detailed 40- or 50-page contract. (Here is a copy of the page with the M&M's clause: page 9 in an 11-page rider to the main contract.)

No question, the clause existed. But why? It's part of the "spoiled brat" culture of celebrity, isn't it?

I was surprised this morning to find a different suggestion in The last word article at the back of this week's The Week magazine--a condensed portion of a new book by surgeon Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto:

Listening to the radio one day, I heard the story behind rocker David Lee Roth’s notorious insistence that Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters contain a clause specifying that a bowl of M&M’s has to be provided backstage, but with every single brown candy removed. . . . At least once, Van Halen actually followed through, peremptorily canceling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&M’s in his dressing room.

This turned out to be, however, not another example of the insane demands of power-mad celebrities but of an ingenious ruse.

As Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy From the Heat, “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine 18-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.”

So just as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider, would be Article 126, the no-brown-M&M’s clause.

“When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl,” he wrote, “well, we’d line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.”

The mistakes could be life-threatening, the radio story pointed out. In Colorado, the band found that the local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and that the staging would have fallen through the arena floor.

Sounds reasonable.

Not sure why I decided to dig deeper, but as I read up on this story I found enough inconsistencies that, though I think the story makes a worthy object lesson as told, I don't think it's "the truth." It's part urban legend.

First, if Roth is to be believed, the band did not immediately cancel its engagement. And it's not that the staging "would have" fallen through the arena floor, but, according to Roth, it actually did fall through:

The folks in Pueblo, Colorado, at the university, took the contract rather kinda casual. They had one of these new rubberized bouncy basketball floorings in their arena. They hadn’t read the contract, and weren’t sure, really, about the weight of this production; this thing weighed like the business end of a 747.

I came backstage. I found some brown M&M’s, I went into full Shakespearean “What is this before me?” . . . you know, with the skull in one hand . . . and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of fun.

The staging sank through their floor. They didn’t bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M’s and did eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the backstage area.

Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?

But there's at least one more problem with the story--at least as I read it in light of the actual contract rider as presented. The problem: At least according to the one copy of the contract that we can see, the M&M's didn't have to be provided until one hour before the show--long, long after equipment would have been off-loaded from the trucks and set up on the stage. Moreover--and this, I think, too, speaks against the idea that the M&M's were some kind of unique "test": There were plenty of other minute details in the contract, any one of which could have served as a "test" of the producers' attention to detail.

No. In the end, I think the brown M&M's clause was the result, simply, of one of the band member's personal preference. And as long as he could ask for it, he might as well get it.

Again: I like the parable. I think Gawande's larger message is still valid. It's just too bad that this particular story--my impression--cannot possibly be true as told.

Amazon expands competition in sales of college textbooks . . .

Officially, I'm an Amazon affiliate. (I think I've gotten maybe $50 worth of commissions over the last five years. Obviously, I'm not a major player in the market! :-)) But having a son in college, and being aware of how much college textbooks can cost, I was pleased to receive notification yesterday, first, that Amazon actually sells textbooks, and, second, that they are holding a textbook promotion:

Our Textbooks Store features savings of up to 30% on new titles shipped from and sold by Amazon.com, and up to 90% on millions of used textbooks.

This season, you can take advantage of FREE two-day shipping for three months with a free trial of Amazon Prime when you purchase any eligible textbook. You can also receive a $5 credit good for individual songs or full albums at the Amazon MP3 store when you purchase $50 or more in textbooks.

I should probably note concerning Amazon Prime: I signed up for the service back in February 2005, very shortly after they announced the program. I mean, what a deal! You pay $79 once a year and then get free two-day shipping on virtually everything Amazon sells: not only books, but everything. (One of the reasons I do about 80% or more of my Christmas shopping at Amazon.)

If you are a printed book lover (as Sarita and I are), and you buy a few books every month or so--sometimes a book or two a week--how can you beat that kind of deal? Every time you want a book (or almost anything else you want to purchase): Order it from Amazon and you get free shipping . . . and the book will arrive the day after tomorrow (if you order before about 2 o'clock in the afternoon). What a deal!

On the other hand, I have to confess, as a competitive bookseller, I hate the program. I mean, for the onesie-twosie book purchaser, how can you possibly compete? There's nowhere near enough profit in the small sales to cover the cost of premium shipping. . . .

Oh. One more aspect of Prime that I just discovered this morning: when you become a member, you can invite four other members of your household to enjoy your benefits as well at no additional cost!

"Household" members seem to include every relation from grandparents to grandchildren, aunts and uncles to nieces and nephews . . . and everyone in between . . . plus "unmarried partner[s]" (business partners? --Why not?!).

Anyway. FWIW.

Whither the US dollar?

I just ran across this interview between Martin Weiss and Larry Edelson. I think it is well worth your consideration.

Conducted in late October last year, it is titled "Washington's Secret War on the Dollar"--but it actually begins by noting that the U.S. government is only one among many entities that have declared war on the dollar.

Caveat Emptor! (Buyer[s of dollar] Beware!)

. . . Besides laying out the true risks associated with being invested in dollar-denominated assets, Weiss and Edelson also recommend some general--though relatively specific--guidelines for avoiding problems with dollar-denominated assets.

Follow-up to DCA post

You may recall my post on a potential semi-universal cure for cancer.

One of my readers contacted a professional cancer researcher, a friend-of-a-friend, who offered the following input:

• A quick literature search indicates that there have been promising in vitro studies (using cells grown on plates) which show cancer cells dying after treatment. However,
   
• In vivo there has only been one animal study using rats to show a decrease in tumor size (one lab did it with Michelakis as first author on the paper).
   
• Keep in mind that nothing is really believable until it can be replicated in other labs.
   
• Many other papers indicate that ingestion of DCA in mice caused liver cancer and another showed damage to peripheral nerves.
   
• Basically, there are no human or even monkey studies to support the claims of DCA being a safe and effective drug for cancer treatment.

The same researcher then forwarded original versions of two articles:

1. A popular article from Nature magazine, written in March 2007 (almost three years ago, and just a month after the DCA story first came out in the scientific press: Cancer patients opt for unapproved drug

and,

2. An academic (but relatively readable) article by Dr. Michelakis, the researcher who first brought DCA to the attention of cancer researchers: Dichloroacetate (DCA) as a potential metabolic-targeting therapy for cancer. (This article was published in September 2008, but was first received for publication in December 2007.)

The first article takes a generally antagonistic stance toward patients who would ingest "unapproved" drugs:

Jim Tassano, who owns a pest-control and marketing company in Sonora, California, came across DCA when researching alternative cancer therapies to help his dying ballroom-dance instructor. He wanted something that was effective, safe and that he could lay his hands on: DCA fit the bill. He ordered some from chemical supply companies, teamed up with a chemist friend and they worked out a way to synthesize the compound themselves. “I couldn’t walk away from it,” Tassano says. “It could do so much good for so many people.”

Tassano set up two websites. The first of these (thedcasite.com) hosts information on DCA and a patient chatroom. On the second (buydca.com) Tassano is selling his homemade DCA. . . . Many patients taking DCA — acquired from Tassano, chemical companies or other sources — are reporting their progress on thedcasite.com.

And the problem with this, according to Dr. Michelakis and others?

Although DCA seems safe overall, they point to a clinical trial that was stopped early because those taking the drug developed damage to their peripheral nerves (P. Kaufmann et al. Neurology 66, 324–330; 2006). Without a control group, they point out, it will be impossible to tell whether any improvement in the patients’ condition is caused by the drug. Patients could also be taking DCA that is not of pharmaceutical grade and might contain harmful impurities.

Michelakis says the patients could end up undermining efforts to do a controlled clinical trial if, for example, some develop harmful side effects and the drug earns a bad reputation. “It’s destroying efforts to do this right,” he says. “Any way you look at this, it’s a negative development.”

"Any way you look at it," it's a negative development? From the perspective of the patients who have, otherwise, been given no hope?

The article's author continues:

The battle between dying patients who want immediate access to unapproved drugs and doctors who urge trials and caution is a perennial one. Some patients argue that they cannot wait for trials and should have the right to take unapproved drugs, regardless of the risks.

But there are arguments against this. An estimated 95% of cancer drugs that enter clinical trials do not get approval, many because they are ineffective or unsafe, so patients risk shortening their life or making their last days more uncomfortable.

Okay. But shouldn't it be up to the patients themselves to determine whether they are willing to take the risks? On what grounds should that decision be left to the government or the "powers that be" who get to "approve" drugs for trial?

Oh. And then there's another argument "against" permitting patients to make their own decisions about whether to use "unapproved" drugs:

[I]f patients can access DCA — or other unapproved drugs — there is no incentive for them to enter a clinical trial. So in terms of public health, ethicists argue, more people will be helped if access to unapproved drugs is restricted and proper trials performed.

So, apparently, selflessness is to be mandated by law. You must, by law, sacrifice yourself for the potential of helping others--"one day, maybe, long after you're dead, if we can just get the funding."

Peter Jacobsen, an expert in ethics, health and law at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, doubts whether any good can come of the patients’ efforts. They are so desperate to see results, he says, that there is no way they can report unbiased results and no mechanism to ensure the reports are accurate. “I don’t trust the data,” he says. “It’s hard enough to rely on them in clinical trials, let alone this.”

Okay. I'll buy that. I'll buy the need for caution and the need for skepticism. But . . .

Then I read Michelakis' article.

Remember that clinical trial that was "stopped early because those taking the drug developed damage to their peripheral nerves"? Michelakis notes,

[T]he first two randomised control trials of chronic oral therapy with DCA in congenital mitochondrial diseases were reported in 2006. In the first, a blinded placebo-controlled study was performed with oral DCA administered at 25 mg kg^-1 day^-1 in 30 patients with MELAS syndrome (mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes) (Kaufmann et al, 2006). Most patients enrolled in the DCA arm developed symptomatic peripheral neuropathy, compared with 4 out of 15 in the placebo arm, leading to the termination of the study.

Whoa! Sounds bad!

But he continues:

Seventeen out of 19 patients had at least partial resolution of peripheral neurological symptoms by 9 months after discontinuation of DCA. . . . No other toxicities were reported.

Beyond this,

It is important to note that peripheral neuropathy often complicates MELAS because of primary or secondary effects on peripheral nerves; for example these patients also have diabetes and diabetes-related peripheral neuropathy.

And then,

In contrast [to the negative results of this one study that was terminated], another randomised placebo-controlled double-blinded study failed to show any significant toxicity of DCA, including peripheral neuropathy. In this study only one of 21 children with congenital lactic acidosis treated with DCA orally at 25 mg kg^-1 day^-1 for 6 months demonstrated mild peripheral neuropathy. Serial nerve conduction studies failed to demonstrate any difference in incidence of neuropathy in the 2 arms (placebo vs DCA). Sleepiness and lethargy, muscular rigidity of the upper extremity and hand tremor were reported in one patient in each group (Stacpoole et al, 2006).

So what is Michelakis' view of the divergent results with respect to neuropathy?

The higher incidence of peripheral neuropathy in adult MELAS patients may represent an intrinsic predisposition to this complication in MELAS or its associated conditions, that is, diabetes mellitus; this toxicity might also be age-dependent. . . . [Moreover, a]s peripheral neuropathy is a frequent complication of taxane, platinum and vinca-alkaloid chemotherapies, the risk for DCA-associated peripheral neuropathy may depend on whether cancer patients have prior or concurrent neurotoxic therapy. . . . [But i]n summary, peripheral neuropathy is a potential side effect of DCA that appears to be largely reversible.

I want to quote one more section from Michelakis' article. Before I do, however, I would like to add some weight to what he said in the section I have just quoted. One of the moderators on thedcasite.com, Jay C, comments,

Researchers at the University of Alberta have reported that DCA is relatively non-toxic, since it has already been used as a medicine on adults and children to treat metabolic disease, and for hypertension. It has been known to have some mild side effects in a minority of patients and they include a change in gait [and] some nerve problems, but both of these symptoms appear to be reversible upon cessation of DCA. This is certainly in positive contract to most of the poisons being administered today as "chemo", including IL-2 (requires on[e] week in ICU), Interferon, and DTIC.

So why the apparently special concern over possible complications from DCA? Is it really scientific objectivity at work here? Or, possibly, something else? [Fear of losing power on the part of gatekeepers like the FDA? Fear of lost profits on the part of major pharmaceutical companies? "The preclinical work on DCA (showing effectiveness in a variety of tumours and relatively low toxicity) (Bonnet et al, 2007), its structure (a very small molecule), [and] the low price (it is a generic drug) . . ., provide a strong rationale for rapid clinical translation," Michelakis says early in his article. Oh. I should probably include the last comment that I elided from the immediately preceding quote. One other factor that ought to provide a rationale for rapid clinical translatioin? " . . . and the fact that DCA has already been used in humans for more than 30 years" (presumably without notable safety concerns).]
The concluding paragraph in Michelakis' article adds another note of interest to this reader:

[E]ven if DCA does not prove to be the ‘dawn of a new era’ (Pan and Mak, 2007), initiation and completion of clinical trials with a generic compound will be a task of tremendous symbolic and practical significance. At this point the ‘dogma’ that trials of systemic anticancer therapy cannot happen without industry support, suppresses the potential of many promising drugs that might not be financially attractive for pharmaceutical manufacturers. In that sense, the clinical evaluation of DCA . . . will be . . . [a] paradigm shift.

While I'm at it, I ought to include one last note. A "Note to Proof" appended by the editors of the British Journal of Cancer at the end of Michelakis' article:

Since the acceptance of this review two important papers have confirmed the novel anticancer effects of DCA in prostate and endometrial cancers: Wong JY et al, Dichloroacetate induces apoptosis in endometrial cancer cells. Gynecol Oncol June 2008; 109(3): 394–402 and Gao et al, Dichloroacetate (DCA) sensitizes both wild-type and over expressing Bcl-2 prostate cancer cells in vitro to radiation. Prostate 1 August 2008; 68 (11):1223–1231.

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook, it originally appeared on my personal blog.]

Whoa! I can't imagine driving like this!

Best I can make out, this occurred in Southern California back in April.

A driver tried to ram a Long Beach car, prompting an hour-long, high-speed chase in which the woman drove the car in circles, went the wrong way on a tollway and even got out of the car to gesture at officers.

The woman was arrested after about a 40-mile pursuit. No injuries were reported, but the woman endangered motorists on four freeways, California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers said.

The chase began when Long Beach officers went to an intersection shortly after 6 a.m. in response to a report of a woman screaming. A car tried to ram their police cruiser three times and then fled, Long Beach police Officer Jackie Bezart said.

After an eight-minute chase through Long Beach, the driver got onto a freeway and the CHP was notified. Officers chased the silver Scion into Orange County at speeds that sometimes topped 100 mph, authorities said. Television news helicopters carried the chase live.

On the SR 241 tollway in Rancho Santa Margarita--where the video clips below were shot--the woman made "doughnuts" while driving on both shoulders of the road, briefly drove the wrong way then got out of the car and gestured with both hands at officers before returning to the slowly rolling vehicle and driving off.

Shortly thereafter, a patrol car rammed the back of the Scion, spinning it around in an attempt to stop it, but the driver managed to flee once more.

The car finally was stopped at the end of the tollway in an unincorporated area near Rancho Santa Margarita after being bumped a second time. The Scion was boxed in and swarmed by officers, including one who jumped onto the roof. The woman was pulled through the car's window, forced to the ground and handcuffed.

First video, covering the end of the chase played at a slightly faster-than-normal pace (maybe 120% of real life) and set to humorous music (0:54):



Second video, a more sober summary of the story with the same basic video but shot from a different angle (1:56):



Glad I have not found myself confronted by drivers like this!

. . . And if they aren't enough, and you really want to get your blood pumping . . .

How about this a police chase of a stretch limo going upwards of 150 mph--with a goodly portion of the chase conducted while the limo driver is driving his vehicle in reverse (3:42)?!?