So there are no beautiful managers of R&D

As I was sitting here watching a documentary about how people look affects how others react to them, I looked back over my life to how many times I’ve let a beautiful woman turn my head or convince me to do something incredibly stupid. I remember one time in college I let this all too attractive if not incredibly bitchy Chi Omega talk me into buying her and her friends drinks. Of course, I thought I was going to get somewhere with my superior generosity and fantastic charm. Wrong. I ended up with a $300 bar tab and that chick left with her friends and, you guessed it, three other guys. Am I bitter about beautiful people? No. I love beautiful people. But it just seems like they come out on top a lot. Well, apparently not all the time. Supposedly you can be too hot to be an engineer or prison guard if you are a woman.

Good looks can kill a woman's chances of snaring jobs considered "masculine," according to a study by the University of Colorado Denver Business School. Attractive women faced discrimination when they applied for jobs where appearance was not seen as important. These positions included job titles like manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor. They were also overlooked for categories like director of security, hardware salesperson, prison guard and tow-truck driver as well.

"In these professions being attractive was highly detrimental to women," researcher Stefanie Johnson said in a statement, adding that attractive women tended to be sorted into positions like receptionist or secretary. "In every other kind of job, attractive women were preferred. This wasn't the case with men which shows that there is still a double standard when it comes to gender."

The study, published in the Journal of Social Psychology (I was a subscriber in college, but it is kind of pricey), was based on giving participants a list of jobs and photos of applicants and asking them to sort them according to their suitability for the role. They had a stack of 55 male and 55 female photos. While the researchers found good-looking women were ruled out for certain jobs, they found that attractive men did not face similar discrimination and were always at an advantage. But Johnson said beautiful people still enjoyed a significant edge when it came to the workplace. They tended to get higher salaries, better performance evaluations, higher levels of admission to college, better voter ratings when running for public office, and more favorable judgments in trials.

The Babaganoush Sports Beat

Texas Rangers
Playoff talk (positive and negative) is sweeping much of the Metroplex, thanks to the Texas Rangers' 8-game lead in the American League West. But there is a moratorium on the subject in the home dugout and clubhouse at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. It's not an official ban that has been imposed by, for instance, manager Ron Washington or third baseman Michael Young. Everyone in a Rangers uniform knows where his team stands, while also knowing that in early August plenty of baseball remains to be played. So, forget all talk about first-round playoff previews over the next eight games, beginning tonight when the New York Yankees come strutting to town for a two-game series. Boston visits this weekend to conclude a five-game homestand, and the Rangers head to Tampa Bay for the only time this season Monday. Despite all the current markers that point to a first-round matchup between the Rangers and one of those three AL East teams, the Rangers aren't biting.

The Rangers' thoughts are centered on righting the ship after an inconsistent nine-game road trip to the West Coast. The fact that they have to do it against the past three American League champions and two of the past three world champions isn't a major concern. Rangers players say they usually rise to the occasion when playing a quality opponent, but their focus will be on playing well instead of the name on the opponent's jersey. The Rangers' record is 6-7 this season against the Big Three, who entered Monday a combined 65 games over .500, but only three of those games have been at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. That will even out some over the next five games. The Rangers are a cool 36-21 at home this season, the second-best winning percentage in the league, and they lead the AL with a .292 home batting average. Their 3.60 home ERA is fifth in the league.

First up are the reigning world champions, who have the best record in baseball. The Yankees swept three games from the Rangers in New York back in April during a season-long six-game losing streak. Even though the Red Sox are without Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, their pitching staff is healthy again. Boston, which qualified for the playoffs six of the past seven seasons, knows how to win down the stretch. Tampa Bay swapped first place with the Yankees last week but has fallen back into second place. The Rangers know a big test is ahead, a test that is part of the process of getting to the playoffs.

But wait, it's August, and with the summer heat beating down on the Texas landscape, the theory often has been advanced that the Rangers are somehow at a disadvantage, playing home games at the baseball venue most associated with the term "heat index." Isn't this Kryptonite Month for the Rangers? Shouldn't they be preparing for postgame ice baths and getting the pitching reinforcements ready for a 15-man staff? Aren't their helmets melting in the Texas sun yet? Um, no. Call it an urban legend, or call it a meteorological assumption, but August and September always seem to enter the conversation when it comes to the Rangers. This 2010 squad is prepared to leave that conversation in the past.

Really, the evidence doesn't support the myth that when the calendar flips to August, the Rangers start to fade. They were a non-disastrous 14-15 in August last year, losing just two games in the standings to the Angels, who got hot down the stretch to pull away. The last time the Rangers were really in the hunt was in 2004, and they went 16-12 in August that year, including 11-5 at home. Each of their division-title seasons included solid August marks (18-12 in '99, 16-13 in '98 and 16-12 in '96) but then those were quite a while ago. Something says the 2010 Rangers can stand the heat, regardless. Actually, almost everything does: This is a complete team…not perfect, but certainly capable of handling the heat of a division race, especially with the pitching depth it now possesses.

Dallas Cowboys
Preseason openers typically provide small sample sizes for the starters and incomplete grades for the fringe players fighting for roster spots, particularly in an additional (fifth) exhibition game like Sunday's Hall of Fame special. To that end, Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips's goals were clear against the Cincinnati Bengals: play to win, evaluate, and get back to Dallas relatively healthy. Injuries occurred, most notably to tight end John Phillips' right knee - officially termed a sprain but discussed to be a torn ACL during test on Monday. Overall, though, the team accomplished its goals in a 16-7 victory at sold out Fawcett Field, the culmination of former running back Emmitt Smith's weekend enshrinement into the Class of 2010.

As expected, the starters played only one series each and 22 total plays (14 offense, 8 defense). Quarterback Tony Romo's unit drove 70 yards to the Bengals' 2, overcoming a holding penalty near midfield, though they settled for a field goal after three straight incompletions near the goal line. Then Phillips' defense forced Cincinnati, led by quarterback Carson Palmer and ex-Cowboys receiver Terrell Owens, to punt in eight plays. That was it. The remaining 46:27 belonged to the backups - a critical audition for those hoping to fill out the eventual 53-man roster. That's weeks away. The next priority is returning home for Thursday's preseason game against Oakland at Cowboys Stadium, then traveling to Oxnard, Calif. on Friday for the remainder of their split training camp.

The image of God through our ages

I went to church on Saturday with a friend and it was a different experience for me. I’m Catholic, and though I have sprinkled other religious services here and there in my life, I am a regular attendant at my church’s Sunday mass. The church that we went to, which I was already familiar with, has a huge congregation. In order to sustain this fellowship, they have a well oiled machine that deals with the children and youth including several rooms and programs. In the Catholic Church it is rare to have the children do a program or service than the rest of the church (Catholicism is big on family faith and community faith). This got me thinking about how I saw God as a child and how differently I see him now. It's true that children seem to have a natural openness to the existence of God. Yet as we grow older, our childlike understanding of God meets a lot of painful awareness.

Childhood images of God reflect a childhood faith. Fair enough; we all have to start somewhere. An adult faith, however, requires more adult images of God, that is, new mental pictures which can help adults better understand a God never fully captured in human language. Childhood images of God as judge and father can be complemented by other biblical images of God, such as those portraying God as potter and mother. Childhood images of God are not automatically upgraded to adult images. Childhood images of God may need to grow if we are to have a vibrant, adult faith. Often a childhood image combines something true (God is all-powerful) with a mistaken conclusion (God will never let anything bad happen to me). If we fail to see how our childhood images of God are incomplete, we risk stunting our growth toward an adult faith.

Most of us gravitate toward two or three images of God as long as they help us make sense of life around us, but those images are not necessarily the whole truth about God. For example, God is a loving creator who may not answer my selfish prayers (like winning the lottery), but God will certainly answer my prayers if it's more serious (like someone's life), or so I think. But what happens to that image of God when I pray for a very sick person who then dies?

Consider the analogy of outgrowing a pair of shoes. If I have a single image of God and this is decisively contradicted by a new and painful experience in my life (example: God will always protect me, but last week I was beaten and robbed), in a sense, it's like outgrowing our old favorite footwear. We are challenged to change our assessment of the shoes, even if they were our favorites. I can continue to wear the same shoes and complain that they do not fit (why is this good God punishing me?). Or, I can quit wearing shoes altogether (become an atheist or an agnostic). Perhaps I can find shoes that fit (find images which do justice to all of God's self-revelation and to all of life as I have experienced it).

A Christian who chooses the third option must reexamine the Scriptures and reconsider the lives of holy Christians to see if he or she has missed any key information. In fact, this third option is a commitment to continual growth regarding the person's images of God. Imagine that when you were five years old someone asked you to describe your parents. Perhaps you would have answered (or did!) that your mother was very loving (the world's best cook!), your father was very strong (more so than your friend's father) and that together your parents took very good care of you. Now imagine that at age 30 you were asked the same question. Would you simply repeat your earlier answers? Hardly. Although you might use many of the same words (strength, love, care), they would have a deeper meaning.

Which description of your parents would be the correct one: the one you gave at age five or at age 30? Is it possible that they are both correct and are simply reflections of your growing ability to appreciate your parents? It would be a mistake either to disregard the five-year-old's description of his or her parents or, on the other hand, to accept it as the last word. Important discoveries (positive and negative) await everyone willing to see the "whole picture" about another person. It is, of course, possible to remain frozen in our earliest impressions of our parents. As a result we may idealize them, never allowing them to become real people with their own difficulties and "shadows," or we may fail to see good qualities we didn't value properly when we were children. If we can act this way with our own parents, why should we be surprised to find that our childhood images of God are insufficient? Is God insulted that we did not understand everything correctly from childhood? Or does God regret, rather, that as adults we are content to rely exclusively on those childhood images?

We would do well therefore to seek deeper images of God which are in better harmony with our adult faith and experience. However, developing adult images of God can be challenging, enriching and scary. Shortly after John Henry Newman retired to Littlemore (near Oxford, England) to reconsider his position in the Church of England, he wrote, "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often."

Men and women become adults spiritually not with the simple passing of years but rather when they begin to recognize how much their images of God fall short of the reality and how much God stretches us to respect all men and women created in the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27). When we truly convert, we surrender our idols and accept life on God's terms. Only then can our images develop until we see God face-to-face, so to speak, at the eternal banquet.