Rant of the Exiles

In Chapter 6 of Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg tells women never to ask someone to be your mentor. She compares it to being like the young bird in the children's book "Are You My Mother?". And just like the innocent little bird who asks a steam shovel if its his mother, it should be obvious to us when someone is our mentor or not. Asking someone to be your mentor is the wrong question. She compares it to someone on a date asking "What are you thinking?" Instead, Sandberg tells women that they need to earn the right to be mentored by asking very specific questions, providing some special insight, creating some kind of value, etc. Basically you need to prove to someone that you're worthy of being mentored. And you have to do so in a way sensitive to gender dynamics (don't meet a senior man in a bar). And don't appear too dependent on others.  That makes me angry. She spends the preceding chapters telling women to raise their hands and keep them raise...

Fighting Ivan Drago:  In the late 20th century, two countries posed a threat to America's economic and political freedom: the Soviet Union and Japan.  The Soviet Union was the target of movies like Red Dawn (the first one) and Rocky IV (Ivan Drago!) and the Japan likewise was the target of movies like Gung Ho, Die Hard (Nakatomi Plaza as a symbol of Japanese capital investment in the US) and Michael Crichton's novel Rising Sun. But these two countries quickly faded as threats for the same reason: falling fertility. Author and demographer Jonathan Last doesn't quite blame everything on the lack of baby-making but in his " What to Expect When No One's Expecting " about America's coming demographic disaster, fertility is precisely the issue. It is the lens through which Russia and Japan's economic collapse can be better understood. Last makes a depressing case for what is happening not just in America but all over the modernized world. In ...

There are few spiritual forces more potent than the Asian youth group. It is a unique avenue of blessing. I was talking to another English ministry pastor in a bay area Chinese church and we both agreed on the incredible bonding effect that happens within youth groups in Chinese and Korean immigrant churches. He met his wife through their youth group. Many of my friends and acquaintances who attended an Asian youth group on a weekly basis formed lifelong friendships in the process. 20 years later, these social networks are still alive and vibrant, even when former youth group participants no longer attend church. Young people make decisions in their junior high and high school years that shape the trajectory of their lives. How does the Holy Spirit work uniquely through Asian youth groups? How are they different from their mainstream (white) counterparts? What might a sociological explanation look like? Here are some attributes that make Asian youth groups a uniquely ...