We Are All Milkshakes

Nigel plays with his new walking toy.

2009-06-16T09:06:00.001-04:00

swinging!

2009-04-05T08:56:00.000-04:00

Nigel loves to swing and watch other babies swinging, too!

Nigel slides down the slide!

2009-04-03T21:16:00.002-04:00

Nigel loves to slide down the slide. This slide is at Trinity Bellwoods Park, but he also loves the slides at High Park and the little playground around the block from where we live.

nigel crawling

2009-03-11T08:45:00.001-04:00

maybe this isn't technically crawling, but it's pretty close!

Nigey Spielt Auf

2009-03-06T22:16:00.000-05:00

Nigel pulls up

2009-02-12T18:02:00.001-05:00

Nigey expands his skills.

Nigel on the jolly jumper

2008-12-14T13:44:00.003-05:00

Not as exciting as a hamster eating popcorn on a piano, but...

Nigel takes aim

2008-08-24T18:07:00.000-04:00

Nigel August 19th

2008-08-19T11:21:00.001-04:00

This morning, Nigel laughed and smiled, and we got some of it on camera.

Nigel makes some faces.

2008-08-14T12:41:00.001-04:00

At long last, a new blog post. It's a widdle video of Nigel making some cute widdle faces.

#1,348

2007-10-16T11:52:00.000-04:00

We are #1,348 in line to be assigned a family physician in the Guelph area.
Thank you, socialized medicine.

August Civil Holiday: A History in Two Parts. Part One.

2007-08-07T14:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Monday 6 August 2007 was August Civil Holiday in Ontario. The city of Guelph name the Holiday in honor of its founder, John Galt, a Scottish novelist. He was a contemporary of Sir Walter Scott.

The city organized a celebration. Everyone gathered in front of city hall for the raising of the John Galt flag. Then there was a skit performed by two people, one of whom was dressed as John Galt, the other dressed as an axeman.

After the skit, everyone was to sing "God Save the Queen." We didn't know the lyrics, and I don't think that many other people did, either.

Today, when we were thinking back over our experience, we had the totally awesome idea that we should've sung "My Country 'Tis of Thee" simultaneously at the top of our lungs and then chanted 'U.S.A! U.S.A!...!'

Guelph Arboretum

2007-07-29T18:22:00.001-04:00

The weather has been so great lately that we decided we needed to spend a bit of time out of doors. The University has an arboretum that has native Ontario trees as well as a variety of trees imported from Asia. There is even a Japanese-style meditation garden.

We took a little picnic lunch and walked around for a while.

The kittens love treats.

2007-07-29T18:11:00.000-04:00

John loves to feed treats to Gray Cat and Black Cat. They come running out whenever they hear John shake the treat bag.

When we first started giving them treats, only Gray Cat would jump up and put his paws around John's hand to secure the treat. After a while, Black Cat learned to jump up and do the same thing with his paws.

He lets the cats lick his fingers after they get the treats.

Our little Apartment

2007-07-26T10:59:00.000-04:00

This is our living room. With our new gray couch. The door beside the bookshelf is the front door, and the window looks out onto the front lawn.
The pink ledge you see in the foreground is one of the kitchen counter tops.

The kitchen. We've come to really like the kitchen.

The refrigerator. It is quite small. Or "wee" as some people say up here.
A wee fridge.

voyage au Canada

2007-06-15T13:07:00.001-04:00

Just a couple of pictures from our trip to Canada.The sky in Iowa.
The line to cross the border into Canada. When we were coming back into the country, the American boarder guard did not even look at our ID's. He just chatted with us for a minute or two and decided we were ok.
The outside of our new apartment. White brick, a small porch off to the side. Some nice trees shading the windows. Fourplex.

John's face after we found the right apartment. Looking for apartments is tiring. We did a good job, though. We didn't get grumpy or fussy. I go into kind of a manic frenzy looking for the right apartment. John helped me stay a little more sane than I would have on my own.

BAT FACE!!

2007-05-27T20:08:00.000-04:00

At camp, we learned a lot about bats.
Bats fly with their mouths open. This helps them catch
over 2,000 mosquitoes every night.
John and I spent a lot of time perfecting our bat faces.

The fourth graders did not think this was very cool.

Don't worry.
Our faces didn't stick.

Guarding the Mystery: On Science and Religion again

2007-05-19T14:22:00.000-04:00

Since the Dennett posting generated so much controversy, I thought I would continue with some of my own homegrown thoughts regarding naturalism and religion. -- JHW
----------------------------------------------

"The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena." Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.371

"Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose." Chesterton, Orthodoxy

What did Wittgenstein mean in saying that it is an illusion that laws of nature are explanations of natural phenomena? I believe he meant that some are led by scientific laws to the mistaken thought of a deep structure undergirding natural phenomena in accordance with which they are produced. Wittgenstein wanted to persuade us that there is no deep, governing structure, either in thought or in what we perceive. Or at least, it is an enormous and generally incoherent presumption we make if we think there area such structures. Laws of nature allow us to predict future phenomena, but they do not articulate a deep structure that explains why there are such phenomena, which is, according to Wittgenstein a perfectly contingent matter. Why is this important to note? We are especially prone to pose the question "why is there something rather than nothing?" And we are especially prone to the illusion that we have answered this question when we have not. Science and religion both offer temptations to this illusion.

The ancient and medieval conception of the world, in the West, at least, embraced the idea that God explained the existence of something rather than nothing. It was part of the neo-Platonic view that any adequate explanation had to terminate in something that itself did not need explanation. The idea of a 'necessary being' (God) comes in here to plug the gap. Here's the structure of the illusion: everything must have an explanation, so the beings in nature must have an explanation, the only way to have a complete explanation is for there to be a necessary being that is the cause of them all, therefore God must be the cause of all things. Platonic metaphysics wedded with Hebrew mythology to create a very nice picture to dispel our craving for an answer. The first part of that argument, the claim that 'everything must have an explanation' is called 'the principle of sufficient reason.' The claim, more technically, is that every positive fact must have an explanation.

Thomas Aquinas rightly observed that to give an explanation of the present state of affairs by appeal to a prior state of affairs explains very little. But he still insisted on the principle of sufficient reason -- and thought that it proved the existence of God. The so-called cosmological argument for the existence of God turns very centrally on the principle of sufficient reason -- more to the point, it turns on our need for explanation. But why assume that there is an explanation?

It seems to me that in these matters a crucial component of religion is being sacrificed to a undisciplined rationalism, by which I mean the demand to give an intellectual accounting for all matters. Kant and Wittgenstein both wanted to discipline our rationalism. That is not to say they were encouraging us to be less intellectual -- rather, they were encouraging us give up illusory pseudo-explanations, and to remain content before that which we cannot explain (either at present or in principle).

There are two basic types of intellectual error: not taking into account our best available evidence. A Creationist who offers an account of the universe in conflict with our best scientific observations is guilty of this error. The second is using available evidence in ways that go beyond what it shows. There are rather mundane ways of doing this, and deeper ways of doing this.

There is a sense in which some who embrace a literal creationist account of the origins of the universe is in the same boat as someone who thinks that physics will 'explain it all.' The physical explanation is a certain sort of explanation, but it does not, if we are honest, explain away the mystery. I should also note that there is a way of embracing the a theistic creation account without losing the mystery -- it would be to acknowledge: this really explains nothing! That there is a God, that He created this world, that there is ecstasy and suffering in it -- all of that is mysterious! Likewise, physicists can explain the big bang down to a micro-scale of time and acknowledge: this really explains nothing! (or, one can hold: it explains something, but leaves something unexplained, as well, and the latter is even more important).

What do we gain by guarding this sense of what I have called mystery: an empty open-mouthed astonishment? I don't think so. Preserving a sense of mystery also preserves a basic problem: the formation of a fundamental attitude to what there is. Take pleasure and pain: regard these as a fundamental mystery. Granted, science can tell us a great deal about the neurological processes undergirding these phenomena. But the fact we know that pain is a C-fiber firing doesn't really explain pain. We can control pain rather well now, but that doesn't dispel the fundamental problem. Should we want to increase our pleasure and decrease our pain? Or should we want to do so, provided it doesn't produce further bad effects, future pain or disablement (a heroin addiction)? If this is our view, we've already slipped into a certain attitude toward pleasure and pain. I'm not saying we should not attempt to control our pain, but I think I understand why people who renounce controlling pain do so; they want their fundamental attitude not to be a superficial hedonism, but a receptivity to the world (most would regard this position as irrational, but that is because they are taking a different, and not obviously superior fundamental attitude). Our present challenge is to guard our ability to take the fact of our pleasure and pain as a fundamental problem, more fundamental than controlling it. It is even more than a moral problem -- how we relate to such matters in some sense sets the framework within which we will pose moral questions. It is a challenge particularly for us because the framework of medicine is based on control and, perhaps even more than pain palliation, survival. The configuration of our cultural concepts puts pressure on us not to adopt other attitudes.

I've been too obscure here. But my point was mainly to gesture at a problem that is common to many naturalists and theists who see themselves as opposed.

On Seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls

2007-05-15T13:53:00.000-04:00

With the semester over, I've come into some time for taking in the world around me. Last week, I went to an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls at a museum here in KC. It has been quite a well-publicized and, by all accounts, highly trafficked event -- there have been billboards, television advertisements; the accompanying lecture series was sold-out within a week or so. Even at $20 per ticket, the exhibit was crowded when I went during the afternoon on a week-day. It led me to wonder: what is the source of this intense interest? The scrolls themselves are tiny, dark pieces of parchment that were dimly lit with barely visible markings of archaic Hebrew letters. In some sense, they are uninteresting. The best parts of the exhibit were about the Essene community at Qumran. They did a great job situating this community historically, but unfortunately, there was little about their understanding of Scripture -- I suspect because the Essene interpretation of the Scriptures would be quite out of keeping with a contemporary evangelical understanding, and there was no desire to ruffle any feathers on the part of the organizers.

Does this event signal an awakening of interest in genuinely scholarly approaches to the Bible? As someone who has just finished teaching at a Christian college, I doubt this. My students mostly resented having their received views of the Bible challenged by an historical approach, though some found it liberating and enlightening. Perhaps readiness to face such challenges grows with age. But I suspect that there is another motive for most people: an excitement at the nearness to something that seems authentic and pure, as it were 'closer to God.' I heard one woman, approaching a facsimile (not even the real thing!) of a scroll of Deuteronomy exclaim to her husband "It's the Ten Commandments!" excitedly pushing ahead to plant herself right in front of it.

I may be misinterpreting what I saw -- perhaps I am uncharitable. But if I am seeing correctly, it seems to me that the interest in the Scrolls actually represents an kind of desperation to get spirituality. If one needs an ancient piece of parchment to put oneself in the proximity of God, then probably the other elements aren't working. The wonder I felt in front of those pieces of parchment was one of having a tiny bit of contact with a group of people who lived fully within a world very foreign to my own, who genuinely felt themselves to be living in an end time, and fully expected God to intervene in history and to turn the tables, continuing and completing his work of creation -- perfecting this world, not taking us to another world.

Someone who looked closely could see traces of an entirely different relation to the Scriptures at the exhibit. There were, found at Qumran, weathered phylacteries to hold scrolls of the Torah and the bands they used to tie them to their arms and head, as is still done by Orthodox Jews. There, it seems to me, is a deep, living way of taking the Scripture as a vehicle of relating to God. It's not the piece of paper, but the promise that it represents; one holds it near to oneself as a way of not forgetting, as a way of focusing, and meditating on one's responsibility. I find this practice to be representative of a genuine religiosity because if practiced sincerely it would engage the whole person -- the mind at contemplating the content and nature of the Torah, the heart longing to fulfill its commands, and the body through being brought into contact with the physical instantiation of the Torah. I wonder how many religious practices really engage people that fully today? My sense from students at an allegedly religious institution was that they were not used to being fully engaged -- perhaps especially unused to engaging their minds in their religion. Alas...

2007-05-10T20:24:00.000-04:00

on a walk home

2007-05-09T19:58:00.000-04:00

This is me, trying to finish the final exam for my class, Foreign Language Teaching Methods.
I had to design an Oral Proficiency Exam for a Second-Year French Class. John took a photo of me practicing the French "r" sound.
Just kidding, I think I was just making a face at the camera.
Back to my exam: I got an A++++. Really. I didn't know that was possible, but that is what my teacher told me I made.
Looks like all that hard work (visible above) really paid off.

"Tump" and "Eye" on the stove

2007-04-28T21:41:00.000-04:00

i taught john these two words.

"tump"

and

"eye" meaning the eye on the stove.

TUMP:
VERB:
Chiefly Southern U.S. tumped , tump·ing , tumps
VERB:
tr.
To overturn. Often used with over: You're about to tump that thing over.
ETYMOLOGY:
Probably akin to tumble

(http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/tump)

My example: "I just got back from a canoe trip down the Spring River and my canoe didn't even tump over once."

EYE:
6. Something suggestive of the vertebrate organ of vision, especially:
a. An opening in a needle.
b. The aperture of a camera.
c. A loop, as of metal, rope, or thread.
d. A circular marking on a peacock's feather.
e. Chiefly Southern U.S. The round flat cover over the hole on the top of a wood-burning stove. Also called regionally cap1, griddle.

(http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/e/e0307500.html)

see, john? they really are words.

Competition

2007-04-12T22:48:00.000-04:00

A newspaper article reported that "over 250 women applied for the 34 slots" for being a Denver Broncos cheerleader. For a typical job opening in philosophy, there are usually around 200 applicants for 1 slot. That means it's easier to become a professional cheerleader than to become a professional philosopher. Wow.

An interesting article

2007-04-04T11:38:00.000-04:00

Here's an article by one of my favorite philosophers, Daniel Dennett. It's written for a general audience. It's about why he does not say, "thank God" and why he is ambivalent about religious friends who pray for him.

Dennett Article "Thank Goodness"

Another article, another dime

2007-03-25T13:06:00.001-04:00

John found out a few days ago that his article Moral Status in Virtue Ethics was accepted for publication in the journal Philosophy. It may come out as early as July.

He's very excited!

Spring Break

2007-03-25T13:06:00.000-04:00

We had a fun spring break. It was a kind of de-tox from working too hard Spring Break.
First, we went to Chicago for a few days. We went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where there was an exhibit by Rudolph Stingel. One of the main pieces was a Bouddha with useful objects in its many hands. Cliché but entertaining and fun.
The view from our hotel window:

We also went to Millenium Park and saw that crazy shaped mirror sculpture.

Then, we went to Ohio to visit Erin and Sara.

We had a great time!

2007-03-25T00:45:00.000-04:00

Science Fair

2007-02-23T18:40:00.000-05:00

We just finished the Science Fair at the school.
I created a blog for the school a couple of months ago.

I posted some pictures of different projects on the blog:
Science Fair!

You can't really tell much about the projects from the pictures, but I thought I'd post something about it, anyway.

Some pictures from our month

2007-02-14T09:02:00.000-05:00

john & laura
black cat & gray cat
ricotta cheesecake
gray cat & black cat

Will you be mine?

2007-02-07T09:06:00.000-05:00

ice in the river

2007-01-16T12:13:00.000-05:00

Homemade pasta

2007-01-16T11:36:00.000-05:00

Last week, I thought it would be fun to make homemade pasta using a recipe from an article in Bon Appetit magazine that featured a chef from southern Italy. Gray cat sat in the chair while I rolled out the dough, and John helped me form the dough into smaller shapes.
These shapes are called orrechiette: "little ears", but they look more like small pea pods.

Conference on Heresy, Blasphemy, and Freedom of Expression

2007-01-13T18:44:00.000-05:00

I'm heading off to a conference at the University of Central Florida this Thursday. The conference is on Heresy, Blasphemy, and Freedom of Expression. These issues have received interest from folks interested in ethics and communication, given the issues raised by Muslim outrage over unflattering depictions of Muhammed.

In my paper, I argue (surprisingly perhaps for those who know me) that blasphemy should be taken seriously, but that it's not strictly concerned with the divine. For instance, Ward Churchill, the phony Native American UColorado professor blasphemed, I think, when he said that those in the WTC on Sept. 11, 2001 were 'little Eichmanns.' My argument for that claim is in the paper. Also, there's a succint overview of Thomas Aquinas's views on blasphemy, on which I draw. Anyway, here it is:

Blasphemy Paper

Corn Muffins

2007-01-01T21:54:00.000-05:00

Today we made black eyed peas for lunch. We also made some corn muffins using a recipe out of The Rather Sweet Bakery Cookbook that Marianne gave us for Christmas.

These muffins were the best corn bread/muffins we had ever put in our mouths.

They were slightly crunch on the outside, and the insides were as light as air.

I had one with peanut butter in it for a snack this afternoon. I drank some milk with it, but I didn't need it to unstick the peanut butter from my mouth. That is how moist, light, and fluffy these muffins are.

This was the first recipe we tried from this cookbook. We are excited to try more, since this one turned out so well!

a less goofy picture?

2006-12-28T09:29:00.000-05:00

This is another picture that we took using the built-in camera on Tammie's new lap top. We hope that she will look upon this one with more approving eyes.

On a different note, I just received the scores from the Praxis II French Content Knowledge test that I took a little over a month ago. This is a standardized test that is given to people who want to teach French. The Praxis II is given in most subject areas- if you want to teach at the high school level, you have to take this test in the subject matter you'd like to teach. It is necessary for certification, but simply passing it is not equal to being certified.

Anyway, I scored a 200 out of 200. But this will probably go unnoticed by anyone who has the power to give me a job teaching French.

Tammie requested a nice picture

2006-12-24T23:11:00.000-05:00

This may have the unfortunate effect of making Brett hungry. Oh well. Here's the result of the bunny when cooked.

An interesting article

2006-12-17T23:11:00.000-05:00

We post without comment:

"FRIDAY, Dec. 15 (HealthDay News) -- As a child's IQ rises, his taste for meat in adulthood declines, a new study suggests.

British researchers have found that children's IQ predicts their likelihood of becoming vegetarians as young adults -- lowering their risk for cardiovascular disease in the process. The finding could explain the link between smarts and better health, the investigators say.

"Brighter people tend to have healthier dietary habits," concluded lead author Catharine Gale, a senior research fellow at the MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre of the University of Southampton and Southampton General Hospital.

Recent studies suggest that vegetarianism may be associated with lower cholesterol, reduced risk of obesity and heart disease. This might explain why children with high IQs tend to have a lower risk of heart disease in later life.

The report is published in the Dec. 15 online edition of the British Medical Journal.

"We know from other studies that brighter children tend to behave in a healthier fashion as adults -- they're less likely to smoke, less likely to be overweight, less likely to have high blood pressure and more likely to take strenuous exercise," Gale said. "This study provides further evidence that people with a higher IQ tend to have a healthier lifestyle."

In the study, Gale's team collected data on nearly 8,200 men and women aged 30, whose IQ had been tested when they were 10 years of age.

"Children who scored higher on IQ tests at age 10 were more likely than those who got lower scores to report that they were vegetarian at the age of 30," Gale said.

The researchers found that 4.5 percent of participants were vegetarians. Of these, 2.5 percent were vegan, and 33.6 percent said they were vegetarian but also ate fish or chicken.

There was no difference in IQ score between strict vegetarians and those who said they were vegetarian but who said they ate fish or chicken, the researchers add.

Vegetarians were more likely to be female, of higher social class and better educated, but IQ was still a significant predictor of being vegetarian after adjustment for these factors, Gale said.

"Vegetarian diets are associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk in a number of studies, so these findings suggest that a such a diet may help to explain why children or adolescents with a higher IQ have a lower risk of coronary heart disease as adults," Gale said.

One expert said the findings aren't the whole answer, however.

"This study left many unanswered questions such as: Did the vegetarian children grow up in a household with a vegetarian parent? Were meatless meals regularly served in the household? Were the children eating a primarily vegetarian diet at the age of 10?" said Lona Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

"In addition, we don't know the beliefs or attitudes of the parents of the children, nor do we know if there was a particular event that led these children to becoming vegetarian in their teens or adulthood," Sandon said.

As the study showed, more women than men chose a vegetarian diet, Sandon noted. "Other research shows that women in general will focus more on their health than men. So, if they believe that a vegetarian diet will have health benefits, they are more likely to follow it," she said.

Given these factors, "we cannot draw any solid conclusions from this research," Sandon added.

Another expert agreed that a vegetarian diet is healthy.

"The evidence linking vegetarianism to good health outcomes is very strong," said Dr. David L. Katz, the director of the Prevention Research Center and an associate professor of public health at the Yale University School of Medicine.

"Studies, for example, of vegetarian Seventh-Day Adventists in California suggest that they have lower rates of almost all major chronic diseases, and greater longevity, than their omnivorous counterparts," Katz said. "Evidence is also strong and consistent that greater intelligence, higher education, and loftier social status -- which tend to cluster with one another -- also correlate with good health."

Christmas 2006

2006-12-17T22:55:00.000-05:00

We didn't get Christmas cards out this year, but here's what we were going to send.

What's the point?

2006-12-06T11:19:00.000-05:00

A note from a very good student in my Christianity and Tyranny course:

"By the way, let me tell you how much I've really enjoyed Yoder's book. To be honest, the other ones I could care less about, but his argument is so interesting! Its a really good choice for the syllabus!"

This semester we've read: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Roger Williams, John Locke, Reinhold Niebuhr, Gustavo Gutierrez, and John Howard Yoder. This student could care less about them all, but for Yoder!

SNOW DAYS!!!

2006-11-30T23:09:00.000-05:00

It's like Thanksgiving Break two weeks in a row!

I didn't have to go to work today or to my night class, and I don't have to go to work again tomorrow!

John's night class was cancelled last night and he didn't have to go to school today, either.

Because we had the day off today, we thought we would just walk down to the pizza place for lunch. We put on our coats and scarves. We took two steps out the door and decided to turn around because it was just too too cold and snowing too too hard.

john doesn't know yet that i don't have to go to work tomorrow because he's at the gym. when he finds out he's going to be so jealous!

thanksgiving photos

2006-11-24T12:59:00.000-05:00

The stuffed squash, green beans, and dressing.

John is sad because the operation to have our bodies
permanently sewn together resulted in
his neck having to be constantly bent.

This apple pie is huge.

thanksgiving

2006-11-23T15:53:00.000-05:00

The Thanksgiving Menu:
Breakfast:
French Bread with Cranberry Butter, Yogurt Cheese (both Homemade) and Honey.
Clementines.
Coffee.

Cooking Snack:
Roasted and Spiced Acorn Squash Seeds.
Granny Smith Apple.

What We Listened to While Cooking:
Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
Music of My Mind, Stevie Wonder

Main Course:
Acorn Squash with Wild Mushrooms, Potatoes, Goat Cheese, Rice and Spinach.
Contorni:
Green Beans, Grilled with Radicchio and Garlic.
Rustic French Bread Stuffing, with Rosemary and Thyme.

Dessert:
Apple Pie, hand made by john.

Accompanied by:
the Nouveau Beaujolais (2006, of course). slightly chilled.

pictures to follow.

John Locke: Faith and Reason

2006-11-04T18:45:00.000-05:00

In my Christianity and Tyranny course, we are currently reading Locke's Second Treatise Concerning Government. Some of my students are disturbed by Locke's appeal to reason above scripture. On Monday, I'm going to show them these passages from Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding:

Reason is natural revelation, through which ·God·, the eternal father of light and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth that he has put within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated immediately by God, the truth of which is supported by reason through the testimony and proofs it gives that they do come from God. Thus, someone who takes away reason to make way for revelation puts out the light of both – like persuading a man to put out his eyes so that he can better to receive the remote light of an invisible star through a telescope! (IV, xix, 4)

….

In any matter of divine revelation the only proof we need is that it is an inspiration from God. For he can neither deceive nor be deceived. But how can we know that a proposition in our minds is a truth put there by God - a truth that he declares to us and which we ought therefore to believe? This is where enthusiasm fails. For the enthusiasts boast of a light by which they say they are enlightened and brought into the knowledge of this or that truth. But if they know it to be a truth, they must know this either through its being self-evident to natural reason or through rational proofs that show it to be true. If they see and know it to be a truth in either of these two ways, it is pointless for them to suppose it to be a revelation; for they know it to be true the same way that any other man naturally can know that it is so without the help of revelation. . . . If they say they know it to be true because it is a revelation from God, that is a good reason; but then we should ask how they know it to be a revelation from God. If they say ‘By the light it brings with it, which shines brightly in my mind and I can’t resist’, I ask them to consider whether this amounts to anything more than ‘It is a revelation, because I strongly believe it to be true’. For the ‘light’ they speak of is only their strong though baseless conviction that it is a truth. . . . What easier way can there be to run ourselves into the most extravagant errors and miscarriages than in this way to take fancy for our only guide, and to believe any proposition to be true, any action to be right, simply because we believe it to be so? The strength of our convictions is no evidence at all of their own correctness; crooked things can be as stiff and inflexible as straight, and men can be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. (IV, xix, 11)

Here Locke argues thus:

1. The only reasons to be convinced of the truth of some claim is that it is either self-evident to natural reason or that there is some rational proof supporting it.
2. The claim that something is revealed by God is like any other claim.
So, 3. To accept that that something is revealed by God it must be either self-evident or have rational proof supporting it.
4. It is not self-evident that any claim is revealed by God.
So, 5. There must be a rational proof that any claim is revealed by God.
So, 6. Those who accept a claim as revealed by God because of an inner light have no grounds to be convinced of the truth of the claim.

Locke’s ultimate conclusion in that the rational acceptance of any claim be on the grounds of its self-evidence or rational proof, and that another claim is revealed by God is subjected to the same scrutiny as any other claim.

My favorite animals.

2006-11-01T20:05:00.000-05:00

It has been awhile since anyone has been treated to lovely images of John and the kittens. In the middle one, John is holding the kittens. I think they are loving it. In the lowest one, we see gray cat sleeping in the spice box that Marianne sent for John's birthday. After we removed all the delicious spices and put them on the counter, Gray immediately took to lounging in the box.

The coolest thing: Jabberwacky.com

2006-10-18T21:17:00.000-04:00

Go to jabberwacky.com
It's an AI (Artificial Intelligence) chat robot.
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What Would Augustine Do?

2006-10-10T15:12:00.000-04:00

I'm know attempting to teach Augustine's Confessions to a group of freshman (anyone praying for me: please add in something about this). They tend to assume that they know what the Confessions must contain, without reading it, because it's written by a Christian. They neglect to consider the difference that one thousand six hundred years can make. So, I made up the following questionnaire. I will have them give their answers, and then give the answers Augustine would have given. Take it yourself, if you like. The goal isn't to give Augustine's answers, but to contrast our answers with Augustine's. If you want to guess what Augustine would say, that's okay too. I'll post Augustine's responses in a few days.

Read the following statements; if you are a Christian, check those that you believe; if you are not check what you think a present day Christian believes.

1. ___ It’s okay to keep a concubine.
2. ___ It’s okay to abandon a woman you love and with whom you have a child for the sake of your career.
3. ___ It’s okay to go see horror movies and be thrilled with them.
4. ___ It’s appropriate to weep for your parents when they die, even if you are sure they are going to heaven.
5. ___ God is completely spiritual and entirely lacks human form.
6. ___ One of the best ways to live as a Christian is to renounce sex altogether and become fully chaste.
7. ___ A Christian thinks about the condition of his or her soul every day, nearly every minute of every day.
8. ___ In the end time, our physical bodies will be resurrected and turned by Jesus into an incorruptible substance.

Here's a cheesy portrait of Augustine. I take it that he's a model Christian: handsome, male, serious, concerned about his soul...

my new job

2006-10-04T19:07:00.000-04:00

i got a job at an elementary school, called North Rock Creek/Korte, in the kansas city public school district.
they have a website: http://www.kaboom.org/Default.aspx?alias=www.kaboom.org/nrckorte
a couple of times a year, they have a wildlife/environmental studies camp in warrensburg, mo, which is about an hour and a half from kansas city. the one for this semester starts this sunday. and guess what? i'm going along, too. as part of the job.

next week, everyone will need to send john e-mails and phone calls because i won't be there for him to talk to.

if you would like a view of the school, follow these steps:
1. go to http://maps.google.com
2. type in "2437 S Hardy Ave, Independence, MO 64052"
3. in the top right corner of the map, you will see the buttons 'map', 'satellite', and 'hybrid'. choose satellite.
4. the school is actually located a little bit south east of the green arrow. you will have to zoom in on the map in order to see it. (this can be done with the mouse roller or the zoom scale on the left of the screen)
5. now, south east of the arrow, you will see an oval-shaped parking lot. just south of that is the school building.
located behind the school building, and behind the parking lot, are things like an amphitheatre, a log cabin, and a little wooded area that has benches and a path where the kids can go to read if they want. i think they've started calling it 'the secret garden'. pretty cute, huh? i don't think you'll be able to pick these things out on the map, but it's still neat to see a bird's eye view of the school.

so, even though this job is not going to be luxurious or high profile, or even well-paying, i think that it will be a great job. it is important to me to make connections and friendships with people. it is hard to do that if i only see them once or twice a month (at most), which is what happens with substitute teaching. i think that if i were able to sub everyday in liberty, i would end up making more than i will make at this full-time job. but i think that the life i will have at this job will be better than the life in which subbing plays a substantial role.

a few pictures

2006-09-18T09:19:00.000-04:00

Some bi-planes we saw practicing for the air show. We also saw the blue angels, some wart hogs, a b-52, and some other bi-planes.

A lecture from my Christianity and Tyranny class

2006-09-14T13:31:00.000-04:00

Here's an example of what I'm doing in my "Christianity and Tyranny" class, in case it interests anyone. Comments welcome. J H-W

The Old Testament, Jesus, and Moral Reasoning

I. The Bible as Repository of Divine Precepts

Some hold that the Bible should be approached as containing a series of absolute laws that can straightforwardly settle what to do in many situations.

1. The Bible says not to commit adultery (Exodus 20:14)
2. The Bible is the word of God.
3. One ought to obey the word of God.
So, 4. One must not commit adultery.

There are two problems with this view of moral reasoning.

1. Unless this is supplemented with something else, it leaves a great deal underdetermined. Specifically, it leaves undetermined what counts as ‘adultery.’ Recall that polygamy was widely held to be permissible in ancient Israel. Yet, for most of us, it would count as adulterous.

One might think this problem could be fixed with a direct specification of what counts as marriage, and what things would count as transgressing marriage, but this proves not only difficult to do, but probably impossible.

I will argue below that this is one reason Jesus rejects this mode of moral reasoning.

2. Surveying the body of laws in the Old Testament, there are laws that presently seem to us important and laws that don’t, and even laws that strike us as repugnant. Yet, if we are really committed to premises (2) and (3) above, then there seems to be no grounds for making a distinction among them and refusing to act on some of them. There is some temptation to look to Jesus for help here, but Jesus did not revise the text of the Old Testament, and he even says, “I did not come to abolish the law, but to complete” (Mat. 5:17)

This leads us to a dilemma: either we accept that we ought (for example) to give rebellious children the death penalty (Deut. 21:18-21) or we reject the Bible as the word of God. There is, on this view of the law, no middle ground for picking and choosing which laws we want. But I suggest that it is the model of reasoning above that leads to this dilemma, and we ought to reject it, and, indeed I think Jesus is teaching us a different way of looking at the law.

II. The Bible as Source of Moral Exemplars

Instead of looking at the Bible as a source of moral precepts, we might look at the Bible as providing us with moral exemplars. In fact, I think it provides us with examples of good AND bad or misguided action. Obviously we are not supposed to imitate Adam and Eve as they take the fruit from the tree of knowledge. But we do see ourselves in them, we reflect on temptation and how hard it is to be obedient to God. We are to feel sympathy with them, and to follow the story that is unleashed by the fact that humans have this (constant?) possibility of temptation away from their duties. This is what good literature does: it represents us to ourselves realistically; it picks out stories and characters that reveal the human drama poignantly. In the case of the Bible (as with much ancient and medieval literature), the human drama is wrapped up intimately with a divine story. Some of the Bible’s most moving moments occur when people do something misguided out of love for God or their people, as when Jephthah pledges his daughter to God (Judges 11:29), as well as when God reaches out with his mighty hand and leads his people powerfully (Exodus).

What is it to be a moral exemplar? In the case of a positive moral exemplar, someone that is presented as admirable, we not simply to do what they do. Obviously, few of us are in a position literally to lead a nation out of oppression (Moses) or to abandon our families to go about itinerant preaching (Jesus). A moral exemplar is someone we are to see as acting on the right reasons and having the proper motivations; we are to follow those reasons and motivations so far as our lives yield opportunities for doing so. We are to try to follow the shape or the form of the life, though we cannot live the life of Moses or of Jesus. We are to take the opportunities presented to us and to attempt to act (for example) benevolently in them, allowing Jesus to shape our conception of benevolence.

The difficult question is: how does this understanding of the Bible, as a source of moral exemplars rather than moral precepts, affect our understanding of the Law?

I think we are to see Moses as using the law as an instrument to bring the nation of Israel to the love of God. In other words, the law is not the goal; rather, the goal is moral perfection. Jesus can be read as making the claim that people are confusing the law with the moral perfection that it is supposed to help them achieve. The law, which points in the direction of moral perfection, cannot bring about that moral perfection for the reason I pointed to earlier: by itself it is indeterminate. Indeed, Jesus’s claim, I think, is that the law is only properly understood and read by a person who is virtuous, that is, by a person whose soul is shaped in response to God, who strives at every moment to be in accordance with his will. Of course, if that’s the case, then how does the law point to moral perfection in the first place? This paradox (that we need the law to achieve perfection, but need perfection to read the law) is precisely why we need Jesus. The Jesus is to bridge the gap and bring us, through His supernatural intervention, simultaneously to a proper understanding of the law, and to moral perfection.

Jesus speaks of respecting every letter and dot of the law, but then, he himself seems to break the Sabbath law. Matthew here has Jesus claiming priestly dispensation for doing so; Mark has Jesus make a more interesting claim (Mark 3:4), “Is it permitted to do good or to do evil on the Sabbath?” This is supposed to strike us as absurd, I think. It is always permitted to do good and never permitted to do evil; those who read the law as ruling out doing good, or permitting doing an evil, have thoroughly missed the point.

Chopping some food.

2006-09-13T22:17:00.000-04:00

This picture was taken a few weeks ago. I like it because it shows Gray Cat sitting in the chair by the table. He likes to be a part of the fun, even in the kitchen. Maybe I should say especially in the kitchen... just in case someone pours a little milk.
We have stopped giving the kittens milk to try to keep them from begging for it and climbing on top of things in order to get to open containers of it.

This is Gray Cat with the mouse.
The mouse is just some pieces of fabric shaped like a mouse. There is a pouch inside for catnip. If the mouse is in a different "room" of the apartment than the one we are in, the kittens like to pick up the mouse in their mouth and bring it to us. They meow loudly when they do this, to get our attention... I guess to show us what sweet treat they are bringing. Those silly kittens!

this snake just ate a pregnant ewe.

2006-09-08T19:02:00.000-04:00

job information

2006-09-06T01:32:00.000-04:00

Here is practical information concerning my job search.
Today I had an interview at a new frame gallery. I would be selling art, frames, and learning how to make frames. It would be nice to be around art and people making things all day. I think it went ok.

Tomorrow I have an interview at a coffee house (not starbucks) called Beanology. John and I went there to have coffee last weekend when I turned in the application. It is a cute place, but a little sterile. It's almost like, what if Wendy's were decorated in black and gray, and had regular lights instead of flourescent. It would be a job, and probably not a bad one.
Low pressure... I could probably wear jeans and t-shirts (instead of something suite-like). For some reason, that sounds great. Maybe it is because whenever I go shopping for 'work clothes', nothing really fits the way I would like it to. I have one nice pair of gray pants that pretty much has to go with everything. Ok...I admit it, I tried to use some of the Macy's gift cards we got to buy clothes. I was thwarted by the fact that Macy's does not carry clothing that fits me, unless I want something with pink hearts and stars and ribbons on it.
Seriously.

I am also going to stop by this other place, www.bagettes.com. It's a place where you send them a digital picture, and they transfer it onto fabric and make a bag out of it. Pretty cool. A little cheesy, but cool. Apparently it's a famous company, but it's located in Overland Park, KS (suburb). They are looking for someone to cut and press fabric, and maybe do some sewing... It would be a good opportunity to learn some things about working with fabric to improve my sewing skills. The pay, however is only $7/hr. Imagine working a whole day and only coming away with $50. yikes.

Thursday, I have a substitute job set up to go in for a Jr. High math teacher. She's giving tests the whole day, so it should be a breeze. But it will finally be a little money earned off of something besides selling things through the internet (like books, the futon, and my blood... just kidding! i haven't been selling my blood over the internet--i don't think that's legal.
but maybe I should check into it... just kidding, i'm not really going to check into selling my blood over the internet or anywhere else).

oooh!
i knew you were scrolling down, just to see if i would put a picture of blood.
heeheehee.

orange tomatoes

2006-09-04T12:50:00.000-04:00

these amish people at the market always have the sweetest tiny tomatoes.

this week, i bought orange ones.

juice

2006-09-04T12:31:00.000-04:00

i am fascinated with the look of fruits and vegetables.
i like to look at the textures, lines, shapes, colours.
especially against the grain of a cutting board or the kitchen table.

In the first picture, I used a flash. In the second picture, I didn't. In the second picture, the vegetables strike me as being lonely, even though that's a strange thing to attribute to vegetables. It is the late afternoon dwindling sunlight that does it, I think.

The yellow vegetable on the board is a golden beet. The veins going through it look like someone's trigonometry homework. Graphing the cosign of the golden beet's wavy veins.

These vegetables made golden orange juice.
Black cat likes to sit at the table while I work.

Jalapeno Poppers

2006-08-25T23:23:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, we bought about 10 fresh jalapenos at the farmers market down the street from our house.
Today, we still had nine left. We have only fixed Mexican food once this week. Let's face it, jalapenos are just not that common an ingredient if you aren't cooking Mexican.
We decided to use the rest of the jalapenos (that were starting to wither) to make jalapeno poppers. Deseed them, stuff them with monterey jack cheese, dip in batter, then fry. Fry them in the fry daddy that you got as a wedding present. That makes them really great.

an upclose look at a perfect specimen. this jalapeno was red.

John shows a plate of our entire meal: the jalapeno poppers, refried beans, and spanish rice. It was quite a delicious meal. Tomorrow we have to go to school for orientation. For some reason, at William Jewell, the incoming Freshmen have their first class meeting for their GEN ED 100 on the saturday before classes actually start. I just have orientation for the continuing education class that I am taking. booooorr-r-r-rring. even if it's boring, it's only for an hour. it will just be a tour of the campus, with a stop by the book store to buy books for the semester. it'll be a lot like a tour of a city in Europe: the tour guide will show us the city, then take us by the fanciest gift shop in hopes that we'll buy something.

And, what would a post from Laura and John be without a very cute photo of one or both of the kittens?
It just wouldn't be right, and it just wouldn't make much sense!

Here they both are, taking a nap together on the couch. sooooo cute!

a daytime view from the window

2006-08-24T14:22:00.000-04:00

Here is our view during the day.

and a picture of cute little black cat.

naps

2006-08-17T09:40:00.000-04:00

Black Cat is John's favorite cat.
Black Cat likes to take naps with John.

trip to memphis and corinth

2006-08-17T00:03:00.000-04:00

Mom is looking at John's syllabus. She cannot believe that he would actually make his students read Reinhold Niebuhr.
Joe helped move furniture. Then I held his mountain dew for him while he rode his motorcycle home.

Motorcycles get good gas mileage.
This cloud was enormous.
The Arkansas sky
and the Mississippi sky
are only slightly
different.

sara and erin came to visit

2006-08-16T23:41:00.000-04:00

sara and erin, two friends from ohio, came to visit us on their way from colorado back to ohio.
while they were here, we went to eat indian food, ate some thai food, made soul food & sweet tea, and went to see Talladega Nights.

In the Plaza, this upscale shopping center in KC, there is a park bench with a statue of Benjamin Franklin sitting on it. I'm sure that ol' Ben would've spent his money on fashions from Eddie Bauer and Urban Outfitters if he were still alive.

John insists that he is "only friends" with Mr. Franklin.

Where we actually live

2006-07-28T18:41:00.000-04:00

This is where we actually live.

We live on the top floor, facing west. Here's a view from out our window.

And two very cute inhabitants of our apartment.

Where we live: Kansas City

2006-07-27T23:11:00.000-04:00

This is the place that we almost decided to live:

New Lyrics to a song by Air Supply

2006-07-22T19:42:00.000-04:00

We have to amuse ourselves while packing. The fumes from cardboard boxes can have seriously adverse affects to [sic] our mood.

As a diversion, we spontaneously extemporaneously catatonicalazically came up with some new lyrics to the song "You're every woman in the world to me" by the band Air Supply.

You're every cetacean* in the world to me,
You're my manatee,
You're Shamu's baby...
You're every cetacean in the world to me...

*cetacean-An aquatic mammal of the order Cetacea, including whales, porpoises and dolphins. (http://www.acsonline.org/factpack/glossary.html)

Our Trip to Ann Arbor

2006-07-18T15:13:00.000-04:00

These are my friends: Dave and Erica Grimm-Choberka, and their daughter Ellie. I've been friends with Dave since high school. He's working on a Ph.D. in German Studies at the University of Michigan. Erica has a degree in botany, and has taught science at a Steiner high school for the past three years. Dave and Erica have been married for ten years now, and Ellie will turn two in September.

Ellie is already quite talkative. She loves to push carts around the house. Last Halloween she went as a skunk.

We couldn't resist trying on the costume ourselves.

Ann Arbor is a nice town. We couldn't escape hell fire and damnation, however.

a picture from our hanging out time with craig

2006-07-13T13:29:00.000-04:00

we had a great time.
we ordered a pizza. then we went to a party thrown by someone that craig works with at the Olive Garden.
one of craig's friends talked us into playing spades- he said, only one hand, then we'll quit. because we didn't want to stay that long, and spades can take a long time. because there was only supposed to be one hand, i didn't bother making sure we spelled out and agreed on all the rules.
well, needless to say, more than one hand was played. on about the third hand, i decided to go nill. my partner, this girl who has a crush on craig, bid five. it seemed safe. well, at the end of the hand, i hadn't won any tricks, but she only won four tricks. i was like, ok, at least we got ten points. then i saw craigs friend write "-50" on our side of the score sheet. i reminded him that i went nil and he should take account of that. he said that because our team went set, i didn't get the nil points. i don't know where he learned rules for spades, and i didn't want to get into a fight with him because he was craig's friend, so we just left.

Why Milkshakes?

2006-07-12T19:36:00.000-04:00

The Emperor of Ice-Cream, by Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

packing

2006-07-12T18:08:00.000-04:00

Gray Cat is bored with packing.
He tends to go a little crazy when things get out of order. He knows something is up. He knows he is going to have to move to somewhere new. He can feel it.

packing stuff

2006-07-09T19:32:00.000-04:00

today we are packing stuff. we are cooking lentils.

craig

2006-07-08T13:14:00.000-04:00

this is an aerial photo of where we live, oxford, ohio. it was stolen from someone else's blog (blogs.geekdojo.net):

tonight we are going to hang out with our friend craig in cincinnati.
thursday night we went to the 12:15 am showing of pirates of the caribbean. craig was surprised that we went to see it already, or even at all.