Yes

Snippets of this article by Gabriel Kahn, from today’s Wall Street Journal, bring to mind my brother Abraham’s scrumptious, sumptuous, and altogether triumphant creation of real, soft, succulent mozzarella cheese, now 3 years past.

In the kitchen at Obika, a mozzarella bar in the heart of Rome, restaurateur Mattia Pierantoni Cerquozzi is dressing up a hunk of raw mozzarella di bufala. Placing the cheese gently on a bed of baby spinach ringed by cherry tomatoes, he gushes about its pedigree. “See that porcelain hue? And the seam here? That’s where it was squeezed off between someone’s thumb and forefinger. That’s how you know it’s real”. . . .

True believers insist that “when you cut mozzarella, it should fold under the knife,” says Vincenzo Oliviero, the head of the producers’ consortium in Campania. “White liquid should ooze forth and should give off an odor of fermenting milk that makes your nose itch. The taste should leave a residue of hazelnut, chocolate, an almost earthy taste as it goes down your throat.”

Here’s a quite remarkable, real-life exchange between a kidnapper and a negotiator (who is the uncle of the victim). Taken from The Wall Street Journal’s “Iraqi Abductors Find Deep Pockets in U.S. — Militants and criminals, seeking ransom, target Iraqi Christians with family overseas.“

Anatomy of a Ransom
After grabbing 21-year-old Sandy Gbou from his home in Baghdad, the kidnappers call his family and demand a $130,000 ransom. The family balks and turns to Amir Gbou, Sandy’s uncle, to negotiate. He pretends to be Sandy’s father. The following are excerpts of the calls from the kidnappers which the Gbou family recorded.

Kidnapper: What about the price that we have agreed on?
Amir Gbou: By Almighty God I do not know, brother, where to start and where to end in my talk. Would you like me to beg you until the morning, to swear to you until the morning, pray for you until the morning? Trust me, I swear I do not have much money. The people who told you stories about me exaggerated it very much.
Kidnapper: I have nothing to do with other people. It’s just between me and you. What people, what stories?
Amir Gbou: Let me tell you one thing that I told you about two hours ago. Anyone who has such amount of money, will he rent a house or own it?
Kidnapper: If you sell one of your trucks or your house, you will get $15,000. So how much will be the price of your four trucks?
Amir Gbou: I swear by God Almighty there isn’t such a thing. If I have four trucks, take them all.
Kidnapper: I do not want to be your partner. Just give me my money.
Amir Gbou: I swear by God Almighty, by my honor, by my sacred beliefs. What do you want me swear by? What do you believe in? Would you like me to beg you until the morning? My car was hit, and they want to kick me out of the house.
Kidnapper: Do you want your son or . . . ?
Amir Gbou: Yes I want my son.
—————————
After four days, the family agrees to pay $13,000, part of which it raises from American relatives living in the Detroit area. The kidnappers then set up a rendezvous where a driver will drop off the money. Amir Gbou resumes negotiations with a different kidnapper who identifies himself as Abu Tariq.
Amir Gbou: OK. Abu Tariq, just before we hang up, shall we have a password between me and you for the one who will receive? What do you think? Isn’t this better?
Abu Tariq: The one who will receive [the money] from you will greet you saying, “Peace be on you.”
Amir Gbou: Yes.
Abu Tariq: He will say to you, “Abu Ziad sends his regards to you.”
Amir Gbou: “Abu Ziad sends his regards to you.”
Abu Tariq: OK?
Amir Gbou: Thank you.
Abu Tariq: “Abu Ziad sends his regards to you.”
Amir Gbou: May God save you, Abu Tariq.
Abu Tariq: You give him the package in your possession and do not talk to him at all.
Amir Gbou: No, no, no. I just give him the package and go on my way.
Abu Tariq: OK, brother?
Amir Gbou: OK.
———————————–
After the money has been exchanged, the family pleads with the kidnappers to release their son.
Amir Gbou: Is it OK if his mother talks to him?
Abu Tariq: Sure.
Amir Gbou: May God save you. I am grateful to you.
Sandy’s mother, Fareal Gbou: Hello?
Sandy: Hello?
Fareal Gbou: Hello, Sandy, my love, how are you?
Sandy: OK.
Fareal Gbou: Are you tired?
Sandy: No, no.
Fareal Gbou: God be praised. My love, be strong. Do not worry. OK, bye.
Sandy: Hello?
Amir Gbou: Hello. Sandy, give me Abu Tariq. Tell him, “It is my father.”
Abu Tariq: Hello?
Amir Gbou: Thank you, Abu Tariq, very much. I am grateful to you, dear. So we have agreed on the appointment today, God willing, after the afternoon?
Abu Tariq: I will soon call you at this number.
Amir Gbou: I am grateful to you, dear Abu Tariq.
Abu Tariq: Goodbye.
Amir Gbou: Goodbye.

Taken from “The Week,” August 7 issue of National Review:

France lost to Italy in the final of the soccer World Cup, in part because its captain and star player Zinedine Zidane, who is of Algerian ancestry, was sent off for head-butting an Italian player following an exchange of words. What words? The London Times hired a lip-reader who, after scrutinizing video of the event, claimed that the Italian had called Zidane a “son of a terrorist whore.” There was no independent confirmation of this reading, but it was sufficient evidence for columnist Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times to identify the true villain in the head-butt outrage: George W. Bush. “That’s pure trickle-down politics,” argued Ms. Morrison, seizing on the word “terrorist,” which is, she further argued, “The top playground potty-mouth slur for the 21st centruy.” And: “Who’s surprised? The Bush administration has been scattering the word like ticker tape on a Manhattan parade.” We are obliged to this very perspicacious lady for having identified the root casue of M. Zidane’s unsporting behavior. But who, does she think, inspired Mike Tyson to bite off Evander Holyfield’s ear back in ‘97? The governor of Texas, no doubt.

Notice an ability to reason doesn’t mean someone reasons correctly or truthfully. A tricky thing, rhetoric.

“Thus often promovers of error may be gifted with ability to reason, make queries, shift arguments and place of Scripture, preach well, pray well with a great deal of eloquence, and liberty of plausible expressions, yea, they may possibly not want, as it were, signs and wonders . . . and yet the Lord’s end is to try [his people], as was said. Of this sort are such as are spoken of (2 Pet. 3:16), Who wrest or pervert Scripture to their own destruction” (Durham, p. 143).

“Information is dangerous when it has no place to go, when there is no theory to which it applies, no pattern in which it fits, when there is no higher purpose that it serves” [Neil Postman, Technopoly (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), p. 63].

Here’s another small bit on Jaroslav Pelikan, the late scholar and teacher of Christian doctrine, tradition, and history. I’m taking this piece out of a larger article by Robert Louis Wilken (which can be found within the current August/September issue of First Things). It’s a lovely picture.

I saw Jaroslav Pelikan for the last time a few weeks before his death. I knew that he was gravely ill, and I wanted to have one last conversation with him. On that day he was bright and alert, and I enjoyed a simple Lenten luncheon with him and Sylvia at their home in Hamden, Connecticut. we talked about many things: about his scholarship and writing, about the Church Fathers, about his joy in the Orthodox Church, about friends and colleagues, about books and music, and about the strage ways of God. He learned that he had terminal lung cancer two days after he had received the prestigious Kluge Prize from the Library of Congress.

He said he had been reading again Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Milton’s Paradise Lost (even though Milton was an Arian and probably Pelagian, quipped Pelikan), and Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit. But it was when we came to music that his eyes shone and he spoke from the heart. He said that he was listening mostly to Bach and in particular to the B-minor Mass. As we talked about Bach, he told me a story about the conductor Robert Shaw. On several occasions Shaw had invited Pelikan to give a theological lecture in connection with the performance of a great religious choral work at Carnegie Hall in New York. On the evening Shaw conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, before he lifted his baton to begin the performance, he addressed the audience. He said that for some in the audience this evening, this will be the first time you will hear the St. Matthew Passion; for others, it will be the last time. Then he turned to the orchestra and choir to begin the opening chorus.

Jaroslav Pelikan will not hear again the serene boys’ voices high above the full chorus in the opening strains of the majestic choral “O Lamm Gottes unschuldig.” Now he joins the “Great number, which no man can number, from every nation, from all tribes, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb.’”

If you click here and buy Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences, you will have spent a very wise $14.00. Here is an exerpt from the introduction:

It is easy to be blind to the significance of a change because it is remote in time and abstract in character. Those who have not discovered that world view is the most important thing about a man, as about the men composing a culture, should consider the train of circumstances which have with perfect logic proceeded from this. The denial of universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience. The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably — though ways are found to hedge on this — the denial of truth. With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of “man the measure of all things.” The witches spoke with the habitual equivocation of oracles when they told man that by this easy choice he might realize himself more fully, for they were actaully initiating a course which cuts one off from reality. Thus began the “abomination of desolation” appearing today as a feeling of alienation from all fixed truth.

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy! My love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! Too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

‘Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

[Edward Lear]

Today, discussing issues and problems is widespread, as it should be. There’s a constant cry in academia, politics, film, etc. to talk about difficult questions.

Clearly, this is so that those problems can be solved. Paul Haggis, director of the recent film Crash, said that if only he could stir up discussion about the racial issues addressed in his movie, he’d be happy. Once people start discussing things, he said, problems are solved.

And this is true, to a certain degree. True at least, in theory, and in some lucky sectors. But for the most part, discussion becomes a sort of goal and not a means to the ultimate goal, which is conclusion and resolution. In college, we discuss cool issues. And we feel cool doing it. But when it comes to actually reaching a consensus about an issue, when it comes to actual persuasion, the success rate is extremely low.

Difficult issues abound. But it does nothing for the resolution of those issues to merely discuss. Students must be taught to assert, discuss, defend, and conclude.

When there is critical, logical thinking, there will ultimately be progress. Being “right” shouldn’t be the immediate focus. Taking an argument to its rightful end through logic and rhetoric should be.