Even as the global credit collapse of 2008 is still undergoing investigation, with apparent trigger mechanisms (the US mortgage market, among others) separated from merely incidental developments (such as the price of wheat), one factor has repeatedly unnerved me: the sheer complexity of global finance.

I flatter myself to have a citizen’s grasp of several basic issues, from currency rates to free trade issues. But it has become clear that no citizen can possibly have an adequate grasp of the goings-on, by which I mean a grasp sufficient to inform a thinking voter’s opinions. It’s too complicated.

The fact that some of the leaders of the world’s banks hardly understand some of the issues leads Jeremy Harding of the London Review of Books to suggest that the elite financial world is behaving more and more like magic and magicians and less like the economics we learned in 101 classes and textbooks.

Contrasting the major international financiers with sharia-compliant Islamic banking, and it’s the nominally secular banks that appear cultic, and the devout banks that appear coldly rational:

Since the credit crunch not many people trust the sophisticated keepers of the modern money culture; in this sense the rise of sharia-compliant products is also a challenge to the unofficial, polytheist faith of offshore Britannia: the worship of markets in general and financial markets in particular.

One of the central differences between the Islamic and conventional approaches to finance is that our own cults – which may well see a revision before the end of this crisis – ascribe supernatural powers to money. Cult specialists are at great pains to understand and control how it works, but admit that it does so in magical ways that go beyond the effects of human commerce (for the markets, too, have magical attributes, including innate goodness). Whatever we want from money, we suspect, as devotees, that in the end it will always behave as it sees fit.

What’s going on here is a story of performance: Sharia-compliant banks (which vary widely and use differing notions of interest, usury and capital) have plain outperformed conventional banks over the last year. And in a disenchanted world, that's the only banking that matters. But if we are no longer disenchanted – if there's a new mystery cult in charge, it should be less than responsive to a competing ideology.

As someone who has no intention of joining a Muslim bank, I nevertheless see incredible stories—far beyond the drudgery of numbers—in play here. I’m not sure what it all means, and I cannot evaluate Harding’s treatment of HSBC Amanah and others, but his suggestion that cult-like superstition is in operation in the global centers of commerce rings plausible.

As the swine flu story continues to grow, I felt the need to look up the main reference point: the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. This for two reasons: people keep saying “this one could be as bad as the Spanish Flu—while I know nearly nothing about it.

As it turns out, the US Government has a great site on the "Great Pandemic", put together by the Office of the Public Health Service Historian, itself a really neat service I just discovered.

There are debates about its origins, but it struck at the end of WW1, and killed far more people than that war. Globally, the Public Health Service Historian reports, 20 million people died; in the United States alone, about 675,000 people in a population of 105 million would die from the disease. 15 Million people died in World War 1.

There is a family story for me in the Spanish Flu: My wife’s grandmother, a farm girl in rural North Dakota at the time, lost both parents to the pandemic. In a scene reminiscent of today’s African AIDS stories, my wife’s grandmother and her sisters were brought in by an adolescent girl and cared for.

[Photo Credit: Office of the Public Health Service Historian]

Just in case you’re ever tempted to think you’ve got it hard (as I do when, for example, a child won’t go to sleep at night, or when I miss the bus): these kids have an incredible story to tell.

I just finished reading They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan

It’s a first-hand account of refugees from the civil wars in Sudan, and it pulls no punches, points no fingers, and does not take sides. It merely gives a voice to three young men who walked thousands of miles, from parched deserts to deadly jungles, through lion-infested savannahs and crocodile-infested swamps, dodging AK-47-wielding enemies and more.

I was looking for something else, as I was working on something related to boy soldiers. After a few pages it became clear that this wasn’t my book. These kids are only refugees, after all.

But even with my very limited time, I kept reading. I was never sure just how much I could trust their accounts, but in the end, I had to. They were, after all, in many cases the only survivors.

Now: I do have a gripe here: the editors’ unbending choice to cut our editorializing. I realize that these three boys are not experts. They experienced the hellish conditions, but they didn’t necessarily understand the context of the war. Still, I wish at times I’d heard opinions, rather than merely stories about why they had to flee, why they were driven from camp to camp, etc.

But, on the other hand, sometimes it’s nice—if a little stomach-turning—to hear first-person testimonies. And this book is certainly that.

Why do you hate; why do you love baseball? What do you feel about it?

I had coffee with Urbana director Jim Tebbe the other day, and had a great time as usual.

Jim is one of the best storytellers around, and may at any time switch into verse—possibly a reflection of his origins as an American MK in the nascent country of Pakistan. I’ve often thought Jim ought to have been born a few centuries ago, into a horse-trading family in Uzbekistan: you’ll always get more than you bargained for, but you might get there in a roundabout fashion, because the journey is the best part of the destination.

One of Jim’s specialties is embedding great insights into outrageous stories, like “the time I was trying to escape Afghanistan by bus” or “the time my kids started prank calling random Cypriots” or “the time we stole the Purdue marching band drumstick”.

But I digress.

Speaking of the need for a Biblically sound theology to underlie all Christian work, he said:

Having a missiology won’t guarantee you won’t make terrible mistakes, but not having one will guarantee you will.

I guess a lot of us—especially the action-minded ones—are so eager to go save the world from certain destruction, that we fail to consider our actions, and we end up hurting a lot of people.

Not an excuse for inaction, of course, but a plea for thoughtfulness.

I’ve heard some great advice in the last few days from an emeritus professor in the department I’m joining this fall. Speaking of the endless political, territorial and cultural wars in academia—the wars in which unsuspecting graduate students can be wielded as pawns—he said, and I paraphrase: You have a defensive tool and an offensive tool.

Rule #1.

Your defense is charity, in the old-fashioned sense. Treat everyone at all times with respect and genuine concern for their hopes and fears. Be affable and never, ever say a negative word about anyone, because everything you say, oral, email or otherwise, is on the permanent record.

This is a common sense value for survival, but also a particularly Christian value, one that very few Christians actually put in practice to the degree we ought to.

Rule #2.

Your offensive weapon, he continued,

is academic excellence. No matter how belligerent or activist a department, this is, after all, an academy. You’re there to perform academically. If you treat every assignment professionally, and work hard to publish, publish, publish, no one will lay a finger on you (provided you also heed rule number 1).

Now. This sounds reasonable. But does it work in practice? What do you think? Is charity possible? And if so, does it work? And if so, how does excellence play out in real life?

I was really excited about Earth Day 1993. I was seventeen and ready to do something about the environment—clean up some litter, wear an Earth Day t-shirt, and take a stand.

Now, with the awesome wisdom that comes at the broad age of (you do the math), I’ve come to feel that the best way to mark Earth Day is to actually enjoy the earth.

Writing in Orion Magazine a few years ago, educator Richard Louv said:

While public-health experts have traditionally associated environmental health with the absence of toxic pollution, the definition fails to account for an equally valid consideration: how the environment can improve human health. Seen through that doorway, nature isn’t a problem, it’s the solution: environmentalism is essential to our own well-being.

Today’s environmental problems are so abstract, that we can find ourselves more alienated from nature as we think about them. Children, say the activists behind the No Child Left Inside movement, cannot possibly understand Global Warming, when they can barely understand the concept of a world beyond their own horizons.

When we tell children about replacing that light bulb so that polar bears don’t die, it doesn’t compute for them; it may in fact make them withdraw altogether.

What they—and we adults—need instead is a good walk in the woods. Smell last fall’s rotting leaves. Look at migratory birds. Try to re-discover delight in the spring of life.

Then go protest some other day.

[photo credit: me]

Chelsea, Barcelona, Arsenal, and Manchester United.

It’s down to four teams in the European Champions League, and, as with the NCAA Basketball tournament, and despite early Cinderella stories, in the end, it’s always the perennially strong teams and leagues at the top.

In the case of Europe, consider: the tournament has been going on since 1956.

That’s 53 final games, contested by 106 teams. But of those 106 slots, 62 were taken by the same ten teams, over and over again. Furthermore, when broken down by country, 74 of the 106 slots (70%) have been filled by representatives of just four national leagues: Italy, Spain, England and Germany. This year of course, the semis are contested by Spanish and English teams.

So despite a fairly open enrollment (every national league in Europe, plus a few others may send at least one team), it’s always the same guys who win: the teams with money, the teams with tradition, the teams whose leagues have built a reservoir of coefficient points.

Competitive leagues generate spectator interest, and the appearance of a cartel will lead to less spectator interest. But maybe the cartel is broad enough to trim that problem.

A few years ago, UEFA head Michel Platini began trying to reform the system to make it a little more open, and has repeatedly run into opposition from the elite teams, who were on the verge of separating from their national leagues to form a lucrative continental league, the G-14.

So the same teams win over and over again. It that even a problem in need of a solution?

My team, by the way, is FC Basel, the big fish in the small pond that is Switzerland. And to my credit, I began supporting them in the mid eighties, when they were division two in that small pond.

The world's second-biggest country has begun its elections. And India will be attempting to show the world how democracy is done.

In fact, giving hundreds of millions of citizens the chance to vote, in 17 languages, may be the most  sophisticated logistical operation in the world. Anyway, here's a clip from Al Jazeera English, which emphasizes the security logistics. I'd love to see one of those multilingual ballots I've always heard about, though.

From rural India, a stack of manure patties for sale for cooking fuel. The photographer, sxc.hu user vasantdave, titled this image "Poor Man's Fuel".

My question: what is the rich man's fuel?