Jason Coleman

Quotes from an article by Robert Kuttner.

What most differentiates America from the Islamist nations that we are trying to convert to Western-style democracy is that they are theocracies while we respect civil rights and religious pluralism. And if there is to be a clash of civilizations, let it be our pluralism versus their dogmatism, not a clash of dogmas. The last thing America needs, either in its domestic civic life or in its foreign policy, is a new Crusade.

“The state should be the beneficiary of prior moral convictions, not their benefactor or their origin.” (David Novak)

The treacly phrase “faith-based” diverts attention from the real debate about the proper nexus between government and religion, and evokes instead the faithful individual congregant.

But their’s an iron law of religious zealotry: Breach the church-state wall and a zealot whose beliefs are more dogmatic and dangerous than yours will seize the opening.

I’m a stay-at-home dad.

Even though I used it myself just now, I don’t like the term “stay-at-home” dad. It’s too many syllables and the stay-at-home part is not really accurate. Stay-at-home moms and dads are always dragging kids and cups and bottles and extra diapers into the van to visit the grocery store, doctors office, or gym. (When’s the last time you administered your toddler’s tetanus shot from the comfort of your own home? Do you know how many innoculations a kid gets by the time she’s 3 years old?)

A stay-at-home mom has the option of calling herself a housewife. If she does then everyone knows what she means. It’s also a crisp two syllables, though for some the term still carries too much baggage from the days when the words woman and housewife were almost synonymous.

The stay-at-home dad can try using the term househusband but it’s not so crisp as housewife due to the extra syllable and double exhale needed for the repeated ‘h’ sound.

So the term “stay-at-home” dad persists in colloquial usage and I persist in not liking the term. But when someone asks what I do for a living I have to tell them something, and so I had to settle on a moniker I’d use for my household-running, care-giving occupation. Which did I like best? Stay-at-home Dad, House Dad, House Husband? I decided that Rebel Dad has it right:

One of my early problems had to do with nomenclature. There is no good way to refer to a father who serves as primary caregiver.

So I decided to do what he did: make something up. The term rebel dad is much better than stay-at-home dad. It’s descriptive: a rebel is someone who isn’t doing something in the typical way, just like Rebel Dad isn’t fathering in the typical father role.

But I prefer the term radical over rebel to describe what I’m doing. Rebel makes me think of someone trying to overthrow the current system. Radical makes me think of someone doing their own thing, even pushing the bounds of tradition if necessary.

According to Merriam-Webster radical means:

something “marked by a considerable departure from the … traditional.”

That’s what I’m doing at home with my kids. Daddy doesn’t just come home after work to spank whoever has been bad that day: daddy potty trains the kids all day long and then makes dinner before tucking them into bed.

But for the sake of pith I take the abbreviating one step further and turn Radical Dad into Rad Dad.

Recently we went to see The Wiggles at an afternoon concert in the middle of DC. That means a forty minute drive to the city, navigating through crowded city streets that I’m not familiar with, finding the concert venue, and finding a parking garage near our concert venue. Then we watch the show and, afterward, return to our parking garage to discover it’s jam-packed with other families trying to leave at the same time. So, thinking on our feet, we drag everyone back out of the garage to find a toddler-friendly restaurant and supper before returning to our now-empty parking garage just in time to enter DC evening rush hour traffic. It took us 2.5 times as long to get home as it took us to enter the city.

The day after the concert I was hoping Cora would bubble over with excitement about how she loved seeing The Wiggles. Fishing for one of those smiles that would make almost anything worth the cost, I asked her what she remembered about the concert. Her answer was, “We parked in a building.”

Kimchi is a Korean vegetable dish that I make from cabbage. It’s spicey and salty and crunchy, and I think it’s totally delicious. But the thing that makes kimchi a walk on the wild side for me is how it’s prepared: kimchi is made from rotten vegetables.

Okay, they’re not rotten when I start, but they’ve definitely begun fermenting by the time I’m finished.

Kimchi is made by soaking cabbage (and any other fruits or vegetables I might care to add) in salt water for 8 hours. Then I add spices, pack it all into a jar with a lid, and leave it sit out—unrefrigerated—for a day or so. This is the part that makes me feel brave. Do you know what a bacterium can do with 24 hours?

Once it’s done rotting on the countertop it goes into the fridge, possibly for days but at least until cold. Mmm…cold, crisp, salty, kimchi.

Yep…cold, crisp, salty, bacteria-infested kimchi. That makes this Milquetoast a wild man. Yum.

I do the grocery shopping in our house, and the grocery store we use most often has a discount card program where you get special sale prices only if you let the cashier scan your discount card each time you buy food. So, basically, the store knows what you’ve bought because it’s all indexed to your discount card number. Since they’re collecting this information, I’d like it if they’d provide it to me via a web service so that my grocery list program could access it.

Quicken can access my bank account to tell me what checks have cleared. Why can’t my recipe software tell me that, based on what the grocery store says, I have plenty of cumin but will need to buy corriander before I can make the chicken masala recipe I’m looking at?

Christians believe in right and wrong, and that God determines which is which. If you are at variance with what God says, you are wrong. I have no problem with this thinking. Murder? Wrong. (Exodus 20:13) Stealing? Wrong. (Exodus 20:15) Lusting? Wrong. (Matthew 5:27-28

In an attempt to try find the right and wrong in situations where that the Bible does not specifically address, some Christians have suggested we try to clarify the matter by asking WWJD? — What Would Jesus Do? I respect this attempt at finding an answer. If the Bible doesn’t directly address a situation, then let’s try to imagine what Jesus might have done in this situation. This question is worth while in as far as it gets us thinking about what God might want us to do.

The problem, of course, is that we may come up with as many different ideas for what Jesus might have done as we have people trying to imagine them. Further, a better phrasing of the question might be WWJWMTD: What Would Jesus Want Me To Do? If I saw a fire in my kitchen I might grab a fire extinguisher and fight, but that is not what I’d want my daughter to do. If my expectation is different for myself and my child then I can easily imagine a difference in expectation between what God Almight might do in a situation vs. what He’d expect from me. (I’ve also seen WTFWJD — by far the funniest collision of pop culture from within and without the church that I’ve seen in a while.)

In cases where there is no clear teaching on what God says about an issue — that is, where variance from God’s will is impossible to determine — then variance from the opinions of others in the church seems to take its place as the test for right and wrong. That is, when Christians start asking the question “What would Jesus do,” they seem to start looking for an answer in what other Christians are doing. The positions of Christian church people on many political and moral issues are very cohesive. This is why the news media can report the “fundamentalist Christian reaction” to stories about same-sex marriage or taking the words “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Whole wings of the Christian church resonate together, claiming the rightness of a particular side of each issue.

For example, many Christians support the death penalty. That is, many Christians support the use of the death penalty in the criminal justice system because the Bible gives authority of life and death to human governments which, ultimately, have been established by God. However, I think the test of whether a Christian can support a death penalty is not whether or not the state kills someone, but what the stated motives are. While God gives the power of life and death to the state, He also reserves vengence for Himself. If the only motive behind the state’s death penalty is to disuade murderous crime then it does not conflict with God’s command. However, if any of the support behind the death penalty is there to satisfy a need for vengence on the part of the victim’s family or the public in general, then the death penalty law is in conflict with God’s command.

That’s kind of abstact so let’s personalize it. If you support the death penalty because you want to see the criminal get what’s coming to him then you are not reserving vengence for God alone. Dare I say, you are not doing what Jesus would do.

There is perhaps more love in the acts of a woman who can’t stand to think of her child growing up in deprivation and so remorsefully terminates her pregnancy than in a Christian who looks at the difficult situation of this woman and responds only with loud protesting instead of compassion for her.

According to this page, binge drinking is defined as an episode of heavy drinking in which young people consume five or more alcoholic beverages in a row.

So see? I’m not a binge drinker! Thirty years old can hardly be considered young!

I’ve been a fan of the comic strip Bob the Angry Flower for several years now. The strip incorporates theoretical science, philosophical conundrum, and outrageous personalities in a way that just does it for a guy with a background in math and philosophy. (That’s me!)

The Time Looker-Forward Tube is a good example of a philosophical conundrum, but don’t read it if coarse language makes you break out in hives.

Another of my favorites (because of my interest in both beer and quantum physics) is Schrödinger’s Fridge.

Well, my wife managed to get a gift for my 30th birthday that not only provided me with something neat but also shows that she knows something neat about me. She managed to have BTAF creator Stephen Notley draw me into a BTAF cartoon, and the cartoon deals with beer and quantum physics!

Before I give you a link to my cartoon, let me send you to one more BTAF cartoon that will provide a little more background: Or Anything.

Okay, now you have enough experience in Bob-world to maybe get what this cartoon is talking about. You can follow the adventures of Jason the Angry Barfly in the cartoon Overhearing.