In honor (oops, that's "honour") of Canada Day, the New York Times published a bunch of paragraphs from Canadian expatriates asking them what they miss about Canada. I like this one, from one of the writers of the Simpsons:
I miss the snow. Yes, I know the United States gets snow, but to my Canadian eye, American snow is like American health care: sporadic, unreliable and distributed unevenly among the population. In my hometown, Exeter, in the heart of Ontario’s snow belt, punishing squalls were a fact of life from November through mid-April. One time, 39 inches fell on the town in three days — and school wasn’t even canceled. And it wasn’t just the quantity of snow — it’s the speed with which it arrived.
When I was a child, it wasn’t unusual for my 15-minute walk home from school to begin under clear skies and end in a blizzard. I remember once, when I was 8 years old, stumbling into my house, my hair covered in powder and my eyelashes frozen together, and screaming, “Why do we live here?!” My mother took my face in her warm hands and said, “Because it’s where people love you.”
At the time, that struck me as the lamest statement ever uttered by a human being. But today, as I sit under the California sun, it only strikes me as halfway lame, and maybe even less than that.
— TIM LONG, a writer for “The Simpsons”
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Book Review: Faith, Science, and Understanding
(Nice Escher-inspired cover, by the way...)John Polkinghorne was a scientist who helped discover the quark, and then he became a full-time Anglican priest. Needless to say, he puzzles Richard Dawkins. He is probably the best example of starting from science and moving to theology in how he thinks as well as how he lives. The "problem of measurement" and chaos/complexity theory provide his starting material, and then he thinks about what these say about God and how God acts. This leads him to the verge of "open theology," which sounds disturbingly unorthodox, but on everything else he's very orthodox, so that leads me to want to mull over his open theology a little more.
This particular book is a grab-bag of responses to others, follow-ups to previously pubilshed lectures, a miscellany like R.E.M.'s Dead Letter Office or the 77's Sticks and Stones. And just like those albums, this book stands on its own and may even be a favorite. There's a chapter titled "Design in Biology" which is succinct, probably a little too much so, but my favorite part of the book. Then there's some long exposition on different theories of time, which was too detailed to follow but not detailed enough to learn from for this non-physicist. In any case, enough of Polkinghorne's thinking shows up that, if you're willing to sacrifice coherency, this may actually be a good place to start reading him, especially if you have an interest in education (the first two chapters argue that theology has a place in the modern university and automatically hooked me, though I realize it may not do so for everyone).
I'll definitely be reading more Polkinghorne as I gear up to write the upcoming lecture (ten months of preparation suddenly seems very short ...)
Camille Paglia Quote of the Month
"The problem facing international security is that people who believe something will always be stronger and more committed than people who believe nothing -- which unfortunately describes the complacent passivity of most Western intellectuals these days."
From http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/06/10/waterloo/index.html, including a nice review of the new U2 album.
As usual, she closes her article with a paragraph or two on the Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury which I simply don't get. Maybe it's her version of ritual.
From http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/06/10/waterloo/index.html, including a nice review of the new U2 album.
As usual, she closes her article with a paragraph or two on the Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury which I simply don't get. Maybe it's her version of ritual.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
How to Help Your Grandma with General Chemistry
When I was visiting my relatives in southeast New Mexico last week, I was asked to solve a chemistry problem with real-life impact. All my reasoning came from freshman-level chemistry.
The thing was my grandma had run out of potassium chloride solution that she needs every day. For some reason the pharmacy didn't have it or something. To make up for it she was eating bananas but they didn't have much of an effect and she was feeling sick. So I was asked if there was something in the pantry they could try.
Ok, any guesses? Potassium chloride in the kitchen?
I remembered that some salt substitutes were potassium (instead of sodium) chloride. They had one, and while there were a few trace ingredients, it was mostly potassium chloride. So then I just had to figure out how to make a 10% solution of that.
The useful rule of thumb is that water weighs 1 gram per milliliter, so a 100% solution would be 1 gram per milliliter of water. (I'm skipping a few things here but it's close enough.) Of course, the salt was measured by volume, not weight, but on the back it said 1/6 tsp = 1 gram. I figured 30mL of a 10% solution would require 3 grams of salt, so would take 3/6 tsp or 1/2 tsp of salt substitute.
The uncertainties? Those trace elements are weird, and I know too much potassium can hurt or even kill a person (potassium is part of the lethal injection regime), but when the answer came out to be just 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, I felt a little better. But still a bit nervous.
Anyway, the next day grandma was feeling much better. Looks like the chemistry did the trick. And now I have a "real-life application" calculation problem for the next time I teach freshman chem.
The thing was my grandma had run out of potassium chloride solution that she needs every day. For some reason the pharmacy didn't have it or something. To make up for it she was eating bananas but they didn't have much of an effect and she was feeling sick. So I was asked if there was something in the pantry they could try.
Ok, any guesses? Potassium chloride in the kitchen?
I remembered that some salt substitutes were potassium (instead of sodium) chloride. They had one, and while there were a few trace ingredients, it was mostly potassium chloride. So then I just had to figure out how to make a 10% solution of that.
The useful rule of thumb is that water weighs 1 gram per milliliter, so a 100% solution would be 1 gram per milliliter of water. (I'm skipping a few things here but it's close enough.) Of course, the salt was measured by volume, not weight, but on the back it said 1/6 tsp = 1 gram. I figured 30mL of a 10% solution would require 3 grams of salt, so would take 3/6 tsp or 1/2 tsp of salt substitute.
The uncertainties? Those trace elements are weird, and I know too much potassium can hurt or even kill a person (potassium is part of the lethal injection regime), but when the answer came out to be just 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, I felt a little better. But still a bit nervous.
Anyway, the next day grandma was feeling much better. Looks like the chemistry did the trick. And now I have a "real-life application" calculation problem for the next time I teach freshman chem.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Belated Father's Day Post
[A good article on fatherhood was posted at First Things this month. Here's an excerpt that particularly stood out to me, having just flown halfway across the country with three children, because the article specifically references that type of experience (Laurie, look! We're not alone!):]
Most fathers-to-be suppose that their old ego-centered lives will continue more or less unabated after the child arrives. With the exception of a few more obstacles and demands on their time, their involvement with their children is envisioned as being something manageable and marginal. Nothing like a complete transformation—an abrupt end to their former life—really enters men’s minds.
But then the onslaught begins, and a man begins to realize that these people, his wife and children, are literally and perhaps even intentionally killing his old self. All around him everything is changing, without any signs of ever reverting back to the way they used to be. Into the indefinite future, nearly every hour of his days threatens to be filled with activities that, as a single-person or even a childless husband, he never would have chosen. Due to the continual interruptions of sleep, he is always mildly fatigued; due to long-term financial concerns, he is cautious in spending, forsaking old consumer habits and personal indulgences; he finds his wife equally exhausted and preoccupied with the children; connections with former friends start to slip away; traveling with his children is like traveling third class in Bulgaria, to quote H.L. Mencken; and the changes go on and on. In short, he discovers, in a terrifying realization, what Dostoevsky proclaimed long ago: “[A]ctive love is a harsh and fearful reality compared with love in dreams.” Fatherhood is just not what he bargained for.
Yet, through the exhaustion, financial stress, screaming, and general chaos, there enters in at times, mysteriously and unexpectedly, deep contentment and gratitude. It is not the pleasure or amusement of high school or college but rather the honor and nobility of sacrifice and commitment, like that felt by a soldier. What happens to his children now happens to him; his life, though awhirl with the trivial concerns of children, is more serious than it ever was before. Everything he does, from bringing home a paycheck to painting a bedroom, has a new end and, hence, a greater significance. The joys and sorrows of his children are now his joys and sorrows; the stakes of his life have risen. And if he is faithful to his calling, he might come to find that, against nearly all prior expectations, he never wants to return to the way things used to be.
[I, for one, never want to return ... and life has indeed completely changed. Old things have passed away.]
[Let me note that the best hint I got about life that is along the lines of the Dostoevsky quote is not from reading, but from music: the music of a band called The Choir, which is all about "active love" versus "the love in dreams." Should be required listening for any 20-year-old!]
Most fathers-to-be suppose that their old ego-centered lives will continue more or less unabated after the child arrives. With the exception of a few more obstacles and demands on their time, their involvement with their children is envisioned as being something manageable and marginal. Nothing like a complete transformation—an abrupt end to their former life—really enters men’s minds.
But then the onslaught begins, and a man begins to realize that these people, his wife and children, are literally and perhaps even intentionally killing his old self. All around him everything is changing, without any signs of ever reverting back to the way they used to be. Into the indefinite future, nearly every hour of his days threatens to be filled with activities that, as a single-person or even a childless husband, he never would have chosen. Due to the continual interruptions of sleep, he is always mildly fatigued; due to long-term financial concerns, he is cautious in spending, forsaking old consumer habits and personal indulgences; he finds his wife equally exhausted and preoccupied with the children; connections with former friends start to slip away; traveling with his children is like traveling third class in Bulgaria, to quote H.L. Mencken; and the changes go on and on. In short, he discovers, in a terrifying realization, what Dostoevsky proclaimed long ago: “[A]ctive love is a harsh and fearful reality compared with love in dreams.” Fatherhood is just not what he bargained for.
Yet, through the exhaustion, financial stress, screaming, and general chaos, there enters in at times, mysteriously and unexpectedly, deep contentment and gratitude. It is not the pleasure or amusement of high school or college but rather the honor and nobility of sacrifice and commitment, like that felt by a soldier. What happens to his children now happens to him; his life, though awhirl with the trivial concerns of children, is more serious than it ever was before. Everything he does, from bringing home a paycheck to painting a bedroom, has a new end and, hence, a greater significance. The joys and sorrows of his children are now his joys and sorrows; the stakes of his life have risen. And if he is faithful to his calling, he might come to find that, against nearly all prior expectations, he never wants to return to the way things used to be.
[I, for one, never want to return ... and life has indeed completely changed. Old things have passed away.]
[Let me note that the best hint I got about life that is along the lines of the Dostoevsky quote is not from reading, but from music: the music of a band called The Choir, which is all about "active love" versus "the love in dreams." Should be required listening for any 20-year-old!]
Book Review: Auralia's Colors
Jeff Overstreet, the author of Auralia's Colors, works for SPU (like I do) and was in the SPU honors program in the early 90's (like my wife was) and so I'd like to meet him someday! For now I'll just have to settle for reading his first novel.
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This is a fantasy novel and so I'm very familiar with most of the conventions of the genre. The good news is, as far as plotting, character, and underlying philosophy, this novel is about as original as they come. One of the first things a fantasy novel reader wants to know is "what is the system of magic like?" and this one's got potential, with a natural, even artistic vibe that resonates with the setting, although it's not spelled out very much. Hey, Tolkien never spelled out magic much either. When it all comes together at the end there's quite a few plot surprises that make this a decent fantasy novel for the 21st century. This novel is "deep" and "thick," definitely more so than the average fantasy offering. It has a theology that is as deep and original as that of the Narnia books, perhaps even more practical than those.
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The thing it lacks is narrative drive. Perhaps in the storytelling there's a little bit too much originality -- sometimes the plot jumps around in time, introducing us in the middle of a scene and jumping back to the beginning. I'm just not personally a fan of too much of that. Neal Stephenson is somebody who does this a lot, too, and it can end up being more confusing than intruguing, especially if done too much. For the first half of the book, the pieces don't really connect and the characters aren't quite differentiated enough to pull the reader along. What are they doing? There's no quest, really. That's partly good because it's original, but the reader always needs a reason to keep reading, and I didn't feel like I had one till about 2/3 of the way through the book.
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So overall it's a very good first novel, and my advice is to stick with it, the strands really do come together in the end. I'll be searching out the sequel some day soon.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Politicizing Random Violence
I have read four different columnists (or blog columnists) for the New York Times in the past week connecting the shooting of Dr. George Tiller with the Holocaust Museum shooting, citing both as evidence of far-right domestic terrorism. I think the connection is more spurious than factual, a coincidence of the calendar rather than a movement. (Not to mention that there isn't really much ideological ground the two shooters shared, other than that they probably didn't vote for Obama.) Where was this speculation when a pastor was shot in the pulpit in Illinois this past May? Note that Tiller was shot in church as well, but rightfully, no connection is made on those grounds. There was another church shooting in Tennessee last July, and before that the December 2007 shootings in Colorado. Were those shootings evidence of disturbed, violent individuals, or a connection to a wider societal trend?
Well, of course it was both. But I think it's telling that not a single NYT columnist mentioned any of those incidents that I can recall, and definitely there was no "connect-the-dots" type reasoning.
I'm going to keep reading the NYT daily, but every time something like this happens I'll have to correct for the ideological blinders of those columnists. I mean, the point of columnists is that they write with ideological blinders on, and it's the reader's responsibility to account for them. But they lose credibility with this reader when they don't at least try to consider other points of view.
Well, of course it was both. But I think it's telling that not a single NYT columnist mentioned any of those incidents that I can recall, and definitely there was no "connect-the-dots" type reasoning.
I'm going to keep reading the NYT daily, but every time something like this happens I'll have to correct for the ideological blinders of those columnists. I mean, the point of columnists is that they write with ideological blinders on, and it's the reader's responsibility to account for them. But they lose credibility with this reader when they don't at least try to consider other points of view.
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