I've read a fair bit about how Stanford is overrated. And we are, but we aren't. In sports, there's a difference between ability and performance. I feel like this is relevant when people call Stanford's football team "overrated" based on being 4th in the polls. If rankings were based purely in terms of talent, yeah, Stanford is overrated. They're not the 4th best team in the country. Probably half the SEC is better. Oregon is better. I think USC is more talented. I don't really watch Big 12 football at all so I have no idea how good they are, but Oklahoma is probably better. No one in the Big 10 though. Big 10 sucks.

The thing is, postseason rewards aren't based on how good you are, but on how well you perform, and I do think Stanford "deserves" its position because it's maximized its potential. Its taken care of every team it should have and lost to a better team. That's more than can be said for any team but LSU and 'Bama.

There was this lame debate that popped up on Quora after the Oregon game about whether Shaw should be fired. The guy who asked that is an idiot. Stanford really has maximized its potential. The team has a number of handicaps because it isn't super-talented; I think we're almost certainly less talented than last year's team. It amazes me that the team has done as well as it has. Our receivers are just not that good. Last year we had Baldwin and Ryan Whalen. This year we have Owusu, who's been injured and not fantastic when on the field. Our secondary last year was better with Sherman. Everywhere, we're slow. And losing our kicker had a surprisingly big effect, and not just for field goals - I want to say USC's average starting field position against us was the 40 yard line. Huge disadvantage.

It's been interesting how we've accommodated the lack of talent at skill positions. Predictably, we started the season mostly running, since our line is good and our opponents sucked. But even against them, when we passed, we seemed off. I think I've said after almost every game this season, Luck seems off compared to last year. I realize now it's because our receivers this season are just too slow; they can't get any separation. So after a few games, Shaw switched up strategy and started going with 3 TE sets. Since we didn't have speed, he went with our other advantage - height. And to my eyes, it worked. So Ertz going down was a huge blow; it left us with no advantage for our receivers, primarily because Toilolo has hands of stone.

So I wasn't that upset about the Oregon loss. They're just a better team, and there's not much we could do strategically to counteract that, especially with the horrid turf conditions (which, for some reason, seemed to affect us more than Oregon. I blame Nike). I will say I disappointed by how poorly the OL dealt with Oregon's twists and stunts. USC did the same thing and it gave them trouble, but they seemed to deal with it better as the game went on, and I was pleased, thinking it would be good practice for Oregon. But for whatever reason, they just could not deal with Oregon's stunts, and it consistently generated pressure. So subpar line play, no receiver separation, TEs that don't catch well - pretty big handicap.

It was interesting again to see how Shaw decided to deal with that against Cal. Sloppy field continued to give our line trouble, so he went with the TE height advantage, throwing a ton to our TEs (and Hewitt) even though they kept dropping balls early on. No choice. In any case, I feel like Shaw's strategic moves on offensive have been right on, and we should be over the moon with our record.

There's been some Luck backlash also, about how he's overrated. Honestly? I have no way of knowing. I do know he was better last year - some games last year he was sublime and I totally understand how he got so much hype. But he hasn't been at the same level this year. Objectively speaking, I don't think he deserves the Heisman based on this season alone. But how do you evaluate a quarterback with sucky receivers? I have no clue. I do think he's a great quarterback. I don't have the football knowledge to assess that he's the best prospect in the country.

I'm still worried about the Notre Dame game. They're a talented (though young) team that's made some stupid mistakes this season. We could totally lose this game.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist, or it's the natural result of being a Niners fan for the last 10 years, but I'm not that confident about the 49ers either and aren't ready to call them a top-5 team in the NFL just yet. Like Stanford, I think they've maximized their potential through good coaching. They'll almost certainly lose to the Ravens on Thursday. I honestly don't feel like they've played a top-tier team yet, and so haven't proven that they're great.

The only team I feel super confident about is my high school alma mater, Bellarmine. They've dominated every game this season save nationally-ranked De La Salle, and they took them to overtime. Ridiculously, they were seeded 2nd in the CCS playoffs. Their league (West Catholic, although it includes one Evangelical Christian school) is basically the SEC of NorCal sports. So them going undefeated makes them the equivalent of LSU. Them being seeded 2nd is a joke. The 1 seed (Oak Grove) ended up losing to the 5th place team (out of 8) in the WCAL. 2 seed. Absurd.

Anyway, he recently wrote about music and nostalgia and it made me think a lot. I've written many times about how music is inextricably tied up with nostalgia, that a lot of the music I love I love because it's linked to a specific time in my life. But I've never thought about the nature of the link. Klosterman makes the claim that the link has nothing to do with quality; we don't necessarily feel nostalgic for the "best" songs of a given time. Rather, it's simply about repetition. The songs we happened to have listened to most during a time in our lives, that's what makes us nostalgic for that time.

When I think about it, I think it's true. There are certain songs that I do associate with specific events (have I written about this before? My family didn't turn on the car radio on when we drove. There's only a single time we did in my childhood - we had visited a family in the hospital whose child had died. When we left, none of us could talk, and the silence was so oppressive that we turned on the radio. George Michael's Careless Whisper came on. The mood of that song was stunningly appropriate, and to this day, whenever I hear that saxophone riff, I can't help but think of that car ride). And it's not completely divorced from quality - we tend to listen more to good songs.

But there are definitely songs that make me feel nostalgic that have nothing to do with being good. Like, there's a specific set of K-Pop songs (by Solid, DJ Doc, Noise) that instantly transport me to Korea in the summer of '95. The songs mostly suck. They're derivative (Solid), formulaic and repetitive (everything else). But Korea played the crap out of them that summer so whenever I hear it, I smile.

Same for certain songs from the summer of '94. I worked in a lab in Houston, and all summer the lab had a radio set to Houston's Mix 96.5, a station that believes in playing the same 20 songs over and over and over again. I nearly went mad. That's why I know the words to Ace of Base's The Sign intimately well. I learned how to play Richard Marx's Now and Forever on guitar and Elton John's Can You Feel The Love Tonight on piano note for note without ever sitting down at an instrument. Do I like those songs? Not particularly. Some of the songs from that summer (like John Mellencamp's version of Wild Night with Meshell Ndegeocello) I despised. But they still make me feel nostalgic.

So yeah, maybe music and nostalgia are linked simply by repetition. Interesting idea.

What troubles me is that some people have gone beyond just appreciation to a sense of personal loss. Some of them expressed surprise at their own response, but that's what they felt. And the reason it troubles me is because I think it reflects how much of a consumer society we are. To feel a sense of personal loss at Jobs' passing can only happen if we identify so much with the stuff we have that losing the person who gave it to us makes us feel like we're losing a part of ourselves. And I think that's what it is. A lot of times, we identify ourselves by the things we have. We're Mac people or PC people. iPhone or Android or Blackberry people. Minivan people. Homeowners. We define who we are, sometimes even our progress in life, by the things we have. But none of that really defines us, or at least it shouldn't. It's just stuff.

And losing someone who just gave us stuff, while sad, doesn't make me feel personal loss. And I think that's ultimately what Steve Jobs was - a guy who gave us stuff. He wasn't personally warm or generous. As far as anyone knows, he didn't give anything to charity. He was single-mindedly driven in the pursuit of a single goal - better products - and wildly successful at it. But it's just stuff.

Not to say that stuff didn't make a positive impact or that I don't personally appreciate it. His accomplishments and wisdom should be recognized. But the sense of personal loss that some people have felt disturbs me a bit because of what I think it reflects about society. I talked about this with someone yesterday and they thought it was a stretch. Maybe. But I dunno. Our society seems to most deeply and personally mourn those public figures who give us stuff or entertain us. And that makes me a little sad.

Well lo and behold, a recent TED talk argues that doodling does in fact facilitate better comprehension. As happens a lot, Jieun is proved right by science. Who knew. So maybe my endless drawings of Wolverine and Batman during youth group sermons served a greater purpose after all.

The article points to one of those reasons - in Asia (and probably most places in the world), women tend to marry up. The problem is that as Asia becomes more equal in terms of education and career between the sexes, it makes it difficult for two groups to get married - highly educated women and uneducated men. The article notes: "South Korean women seem to be no longer interested in marrying peasant farmers." It also notes how some uneducated men deal with it: foreign brides: "44% of farmers in South Jeolla province who married in 2009 took a foreign bride."

While in Korea, we watched this fascinating TV show about some Korean guy from the country who married a Nepalese girl. The show followed them as they went back to Nepal to visit her family after many years away. I was shocked, because I have known Korea to be a xenophobic and, frankly, racist country. I couldn't believe they would feature an interracial marriage. But my mother-in-law said that it's becoming more common, for country men to take foreign wives, and the Economist's stats bear this out. But still, that it's so common to be broadcast on Korean TV surprised me. I guess it helped that she was attractive and spoke impressively fluent Korean. But Korea is changing.

I wonder about what's going to happen to Korean society though, when there's a large demographic that can't get married and not by choice. I guess we'll see.

I also learned something else interesting while in Korea. I can't remember who told me this, so it may not be true, but it felt true. In America, we mingle groups all the time. When we have parties, say a birthday party or a housewarming, we think nothing of inviting people from all our circles. But in Korea, they don't do this, mix circles. They keep all their spheres separate, be it family, work, school, or whatever. If they're going to have a birthday party with different spheres, they have separate celebrations. They don't mix. And because of that, it's much more difficult than in America to meet new people - you generally stick to family and work. And that's why they have all these artificial dating constructs to meet people, like sogetting. They don't naturally meet new people so they need something forced to make it happen. Again, no idea if this is true or not, but it felt like there was at least a hint of truth to it, and seemed to explain a lot.

I left Korea thinking about how much of the society I wanted to fundamentally change, from its education, work culture, to dating, which is both naive and arrogant on my part. But there's so much about the society that I just don't understand or see as sustainable. It's an interesting place.

There's a weird phenomenon going on in the church in Korea right now. Giwoong went to some young adult gathering and noticed that 80% of them were female. His cousin says that's generally true of the Korean Christian young adult population. 80% female. Why? Who knows.

One consequence of that is that it's really hard for single Christian women to meet single Christian men. So then, what's theologically correct here? Just say that 60% of young adult women should not get married? Encourage missionary dating? What?

There's other weird stuff happening here too. This is all second-hand, so I might be totally wrong about this. But in America, a lot of immigrant churches have gone through struggles where the next generation doesn't jive with the authoritarian, paternalistic style of the original immigrant church. The more authoritarian the style, the stronger the generational conflict. (I long ago abandoned the belief that immigrant churches and their English ministries can stay together long-term.) Well apparently the same conflict is playing out in Korea as well. But it seems like (again, maybe completely wrong) instead of leaving and starting their own churches like the younger Asian immigrant generations have done in the U.S, the younger generation in Korea is just abandoning the church. Especially the men.

I've also abandoned hope of Korea ever becoming unified. The younger generation doesn't even want it. They feel no sense of connection to North Korea at all, and think unification would be an undue burden on their economy. It's not just that North Korea doesn't want to come together; young South Koreans don't want them. And I suppose if there's no sense of familial binding, there's no real reason why they should unify.

In contrast, I've been driving a decent amount in Korea, and driving in Korea is completely stressless for me. Almost entirely because of Gini, the best GPS software I've ever used.

First an aside. I can't remember the details, but I think several of my ancestors visited America decades ago. One's visit is the reason we spell our name "Chai". Our last name is usually translated "Choi" in English, but when he visited, there was no standard spelling, so when asked how it should be spelled, he wrote "Chai", because in Korean, the name is pronounced like the English word "chair," but without the 'r'. As his descendants, we followed his lead (except for my uncle. When he was passing through immigration, the person there looked at the spelling of "Chai," thought it was wrong, and changed it to "Choi"). But we gave up on the "chair without the 'r'" pronunciation thing since no one does it.

Anyway, one of these descendants, not sure if it's the Chai one or someone else, wrote a book that included his experience visiting America. Years ago, my cousin who had a copy translated some excerpts from it for me. Really interesting. Like, during his visit he went to a Yankees game to see Babe Ruth play. But he writes that he was just as impressed by another player on the team, a fellow by the name of Lou Gehrig. That my great-grand-something-or-other saw Ruth and Gehrig play blows my mind.

One other thing he wrote stuck with me. He wrote about how much more civil American society is. As an example, he wrote how in America, people consistently follow the traffic lights, even when there aren't other cars around. That impressed him, because Korea was decidedly unlike that.

Ever since reading that, and based on my experiences elsewhere, I've had a working theory that how people drive somewhat reflects how advanced a society is. I have no idea what my criteria for "advanced" is, and it's probably a really small correlation, but I'm sticking with it. For example, looking at videos of driving in India, it seems like it's absolutely nuts there, no rules whatsoever. This says to me that it's got a ways to go in terms of development. China has more organization, but the rules (e.g. traffic lights) still feel largely optional there. Must like the country itself. Korea is interesting to me, because I feel like the driving has changed since I first visited in '95. Back then, it was crazier; cars regularly ran red lights, and the lane markings seemed extraneous; I'd regularly see 6 cars driving side by side on a 4-lane road. But that doesn't happen anymore. Cars stay in their lanes. I don't see cars just blatantly disregarding lights (except for jumping the gun on red lights that are about to turn green, which I think is weird, but everyone seems to do it). Korea's developed as a society.

Anyway, like I said, driving in Korea is stress-free because of Gini, this incredible GPS software that everyone seems to have. It uses a huge screen, probably twice the diagonal length of typical GPS devices in the U.S, and the detail on it is incredible, probably because Korea is so small and they can fit a lot of info on it. Like, it reports the speed limits everywhere, has diagrams of every on/off-ramp, and even indicates where speed bumps are. Amazing detail.

So it's an interesting experience driving here. I never know where I am. I don't know in what direction I'm traveling. I don't know the name of the street I'm on. I don't know the name of the street I need to take next. I never know exactly where I'm going. I don't think I could even if I wanted to, because I read Korean so slowly; by the time I've fully decoded a sign, it's passed. But it's totally fine. Gini's so good, all I need to do is see the zoomed map that says the next turn I need to make, and I get to where I need to go. I don't feel stressed about it at all.

Interestingly, this is in contrast to Jieun's mom. She usually only drives from her place in Yangpyeong to Giwoong's apartment in Suseo when she comes to Seoul, taking the subway from there to anywhere else she needs to go. We've been driving to all these other places she's not familiar with, and it's stressed her out a little. She's constantly trying to get her bearings, figure out where we are, where we're going, reading all the signs to figure things out. It's taxing.

There's a spiritual lesson there, I think. When you know you can trust what's guiding you, not knowing where you are and where you're going doesn't have to be stressful. In fact, it's harder when you try to figure out where you're going. When you just trust that consistently following the next turn you've been shown will get you where you're supposed to go, it can be a peaceful experience.

And that's what driving in Korea is like.

That said, because I can't speak the language well, getting food in Korea by myself is by far the most stressful part of being here for me. Everything else, I can get by. I can manage the subway (and now the bus!) by myself fine. Other places, also OK. But restaurants induce incredible anxiety.

I mean, I have problems ordering Korean food even in America. I remember one time in college, my drawgroup went to Korea Palace. I got there first, I think with Charlie and Irwin (both Chinese). I remember thinking beforehand how I need to limit how much Korean I speak to minimize the mistakes, preferably speaking none, but when the waitress asked in Korean how many more people are coming, I panicked, and responded in Korean with "two more". There are 2 methods of counts in Korea, one that refers to people, and one that refers to everything else, and I used the wrong one, so I basically said "2 things more". She tried to hide it, but laughed out loud. My Korean is so poor that 3 syllables is all it takes to get even nice people to laugh at it. Usually though, at Korean restaurants, when I speak Korean they just respond in English, as we both realize that their (usually broken) English is superior to my Korean. One time at a place in Cerritos, the waitress responded to my Korean with a 5 minute sermon on how I need to speak it better. So yeah, there are some scars there. And this is in America.

In Korea, there are difficulties in every part of the process. Like ordering. Sometimes there's no English and I'm not totally sure what the menu items mean. Sometimes there is English and it's gibberish. Other times, the item is a Korean transliteration of a foreign phrase. I've written about this before, but for the life of me, I can't pronounce these the Korean way. Like, you can get a "chicken burger set" at Burger King. But in Korean, it's pronounced more like "chee-keen buh-guh seh-tuh". I just can't do it. Not sure why. My officemates weren't around today so I had lunch alone and had to get said Cordon Bleu item myself. Very difficult. But worth stumbling around for, since it's delicious.

After ordering, I'd say 2 out of 3 times, the cashier responds with something I can't understand at all. One time, I eventually realized that she was asking whether I want my sandwich warmed up. But usually, I have no clue and just respond yes, hoping it's something about getting the receipt or if it's for takeout. I did that this morning, and the cashier gave me an odd look. Possibly she hadn't asked a question. I have no clue. I can't understand.

Then there's the etiquette. I have no idea what it is. I vaguely recall a friend saying it's weird to eat alone in Korea. Is that true? So what do I do on days like today when I'm alone? I'm not even totally sure how to order for takeout. I checked out a bunch of restaurants today to see if anyone was eating alone. It was unclear. There were a handful of people sitting by themselves, but it wasn't obvious whether they were truly alone or waiting for someone. One time, I ordered takeout jjajjangmyun for the family, then wasn't sure where to wait. I just kind of stood around, but the help kept looking at me funny. So I sat down, and a waitress kind of physically hinted that I shouldn't be taking up a seat. So where do you wait for a takeout order? I don't know. Other things too, like how you know when your order is ready, what to do with your tray when you're done, where to get napkins, it's all kind of mysterious. And stressful.

I used to resolve that I was going to learn Korean, because I'm impressed at how capable Jieun is here. (Actually, I told Dave this, but I was also really impressed by his Chinese skills. It's not that he's fluent. But he knows enough, both reading and conversing, that if you dropped him anywhere in China, he could get around. And being able to get around by yourself in a foreign country is, to me, an amazing skill.) She pulls out these Korean phrases that to me, seem almost creative. But the truth is, I never will. There's not just enough incentive to. I never have to speak it at home. And if I don't have to, I won't, because there are other, better uses of my time. Oh well.

Parents express their intensity in different ways, but I feel like the basic attitude behind it is the same - the decisions we make will have permanent effects on our children. In some sense, our actions determine the types of people they will be.

Which is weird, because most research nowadays indicates the opposite, that to a surprising extent, parenting doesn't have much effect on the outcomes of their children. In the end, nature trumps nurture. That idea is expressed in this Freaonomics post. And the idea isn't limited to the secular world. There was a really interesting (and controversial) Christianity Today article some time back that argued much the same thing.

As the CT article points out, Christian parents today tend toward the anxiety side, that how we parent forms our children, and that if we parent "right," our children will turn out to be good Christians. The thought that this might not be true, I think, doesn't sit right with most Christian parents. For a couple reasons. One, it seems to be contrary to certain parts of Scripture. The majority of children's ministries I've been involved with have made Proverbs 22:6 their motto: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." It suggests that how we parent has a big influence on how our children turn out. And when listing qualifications for church overseers in 1 Timothy 3, Paul says "He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)" That also suggests that parents' character affects how their children turn out, and that we have a responsibility to raise them well.

I think the idea that parenting doesn't determine kids' outcomes as much as we think also feels wrong because it doesn't jive with our personal experience. We can all think of numerous ways in which the things our parents did formed us, for good and bad. I don't think I'm the only one that has wished that my parents did certain things with me differently, thinking that if they had, I'd a better person. There's some part of us that attributes how we are to what our parents did. If we believe that, we have to believe that the same must be true for us with our children.

I don't believe that anymore. I believe the research. I think a lot of the specific experiences in our childhood that we believe indelibly formed us were actually incidental things that moved us along a path we were already on. I don't think parents have as much control over their children's outcomes as we believe. I also don't think that idea is scriptural.

I was reminded of this while doing our church's reading through Chronicles and Kings. For whatever reason, godly men frequently (even usually) made piss-poor parents, if that's based on how their kids turned out. Most of the kings of Israel and Judah sucked. Every once in a while, you'll get a good king, and think the tide has turned. But no, their kids end up sucking too. I would wager that if you listed all the godly parents in the Bible, you'd find that most of their kids ended up not so well. Solomon's kids weren't great. Eli's sons weren't great, so Samuel succeeded him. Then 1 Sam. 8 tells us that Samuel's sons were bad also. I can't see any reliable pattern at all of godly men producing godly children.

I think this jives with what we see in real life also. The truth is, godly people often produce screwed up children. It's well known that Billy Graham was pretty bad father, and his son went through quite a wandering phase. He ended up great, but it would be hard to say it was because of Graham's parenting. And maybe this is only when I was growing up, but in general, there was a perception that many pastor's kids had issues. Obviously not universal. But common enough that there was a negative connotation with PKs.

I buy the conclusions of the CT article. The problem with thinking that we determine our children's outcomes is twofold. One, it perverts our understanding of who is in control of our children. We don't own their outcomes; God does. We are called to be faithful, not determine how they turn out. We can't. Our responsibility is in the process, not the outcome, and judging either ourselves or others based on the latter is misguided. Two, it causes us to equate how our children are with how we are as parents, making it about us, not them, and becoming fuel for judging others.

Ever since reading that article, I've been reminding myself from time to time: be faithful, but God owns the outcome. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in the Freakonomics post as well. Instead of trying to push them toward something, the most valuable thing we can do for our kids is enjoy our time together.

As always, I'm still thinking things through. But that's kind of how I've been thinking about parenting lately.