Categories
Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass

Back from vacation — Through the Looking Glass today.

The best academic’s home page I’ve ever seen: Peter Simpson, philosopher at CUNY. Note: make sure your computer speakers are on.

Good inteview with Del Ratzsch, philosopher of science at Calvin College. Ratzsch makes some good points, I think, about epistemology, design in nature, and scientific method. (HT: Telic Thoughts.)

Meaty site: The Galilean Library. Looks like lots of interesting stuff is posted here (including the aforementioned Ratzsch interview) and there is some good discusion and community in the forums.

Categories
Looking Glass

Looking Glass — 3D Printers; Sermon on the Mount

I Want One: 3D Printers take information from CAD software such as Solidworks and produce prototype models from plastic in a matter of hours. Currently the printers cost about $50K, but Manufacturers of the printers have plans to make models that are von Neumann machines, reducing the cost. Other companies have plans to offer online replication services. For example, you design your own action figure in software, send it over the web to the printer, and have a solid plastic model sent back to you the next day. Cool! (HT: Wall Street Journal).

Excellent Book: Glen Stassen’s Living the Sermon on the Mount. This challenging study will change how you read the Sermon on the Mount, including the beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer. A longer review is for another day, but here is a little nugget from the book:

The beatitudes are not about high ideals but about God’s gracious deliverance and our joyous participation. Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says we are blessed because God is not distant and absent; we experience God’s reign and presence in our midst and will experience it even more in the future…. What greater meaning in life can there be than to participate, even in a little way, like a mustard seed, in the deliverance that God brings in Jesus?

Categories
Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass — India; Milblogging; Gaming Lessons

Through the Looking Glass today:

Received: current issue of Foreign Affairs. The survey on the Rise of India looks interesting.

Noted: Milblogging.com, the leading aggregator of from-the-ground blogs by military personnel. HT: Wall Street Journal.

Noted: Improve your Halo skills! The WSJ today reports on a booming new business: private video game tutoring. Companies like Gaming-lessons.com offer private online instruction in fragging. Maybe this will help me avoid getting demolished by my eight year old son?

Categories
Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass — Johnny Cash; Emergent Cohort

Through the Looking Glass today:

Meeting of the New York City Emergent Village Cohort, July 25, 6:30 p.m. at Origins Church (corner of 42nd and 9th Ave). Hoping I can attend, but I may be away. Missed the first meeting because of work in Europe, but plan to schedule meetings in starting in the fall.

Best current album, IMHO: Johnny Cash’s American V: A Hundred Highways. Based on sessions recorded just prior to Johnny’s death in 2003, the songs and performances on the album are deep, faith-laced and poignant, and bear repeated listening, especially while slaving away at home on academic publications!

Categories
Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass — Open Science Publishing

Through the Looking Glass today: research on open access publishing (yes, I’ve been working on a paper today). I think open access publishing is a good thing, though I’m not sure yet what role, if any, government should play in encouraging it.

This European Commission Report provides excellent background on the issues.

The Budapest Open Access Initiative is a key declaration of principles for the open access movement.

This NIH Policy encourages open access publication of NIH-funded research.

Peter Suber at Earlham College keeps an Open Access News Blog. Suber is one of the key academic activists in the open access movement.

Categories
Looking Glass

Through the Through the Looking Glass — Faith, Law and Culture Resources

(Note — I’m going to try to revive my regular “Through the Looking Glass” posts. In the past, I had used these to highlight stuff I noticed around the blogsphere. I’m going to try to broaden it to include books, film, music, or anything else I’m finding helpful or interesting at a given moment. I hope readers find it useful — and if not, oh well, it’ll be more of me talking to the wind.)

Through the Looking Glass today:

Received
Vol. 1 of The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics & Human Nature. I’d been looking for a good reference on Christian views about law and jurisprudence, and this looks as though it may fit the bill. Includes broad discussions of jurisprudence in the Roman Catholic, Protestant (including Reformed, Anabaptist, and others) and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Very thick and substantial. Also very expensive, but I got mine from midtownscholar.com, a used Amazon vendor, for a good price. I’m becoming an online used bookstore junkie.

Received August/September 2006 issue of First Things. Good correspondence on Alan Jacobs’ article in the prior issue about Wheaton College’s decision to terminate the employment of a philosophy professor who converted to Roman Catholicism.

Good Post
by Jeff about what it meanst to be “in Christ.”

Categories
Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass (Blog Roundup)

Through the Looking Glass today:

Maiken Hansen reveals the true origins of the peace sign. Wow, this brings back memories of youth group! I hope Maiken tackles backward masking and subliminal messages next!

David Wayne on Sodom: a balanced and thoughtful discourse on God’s judgment of individual nations and Christian political activity.

Jeremy Pierce has a thoughtful and balanced discussion of how Christians responded to the Schiavo case.

Categories
Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass (Blog Roundup)

Through the Looking Glass today:

Dry Bones Dance poignantly discusses aspects of the sanctity of human life beyond the Schiavo case.

Only Wonder Understands reflects on some of the pastoral considerations involved in end of life issues.

Ken Archer at Theological Thought begins what looks to be a fascinating series on why Edmund Husserl’s work on “pre-modern” philosophy is important to the current epistemological debates in Christian theology.

Categories
Academic Augustine Big Questions Books and Film Chrysostom Culture Ecclesiology Education Epistemology Flightsim Genealogy Historical Theology History Humor Justice Law and Policy Looking Glass Miscellaneous News Pascal Personal News Relief Work Science & Technology Spirituality Sports Theology Travel

Schiavo and Judicial Activism

I was listening to the Sean Hannity show on my way into the office this afternoon. He was discussing the Florida District Court’s ruling denying the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order under the federal statute passed by Congress (the “Schiavo Act”). Hannity stated that he believed the court’s opinion did not even reference the Schiavo Act. He was hammering the federal court’s decision as symptomatic of the arrogance of the judiciary. Senator Rick Santorum came on the Hannity show and claimed the Schiavo Act required the federal court to order the reinsertion of nutrition and hydration tubes pending a full hearing on the merits. Santorum also decried the ruling as an abuse of judicial power. This seems to be the Christian Right’s theme: a National Right to Life Committee spokesman referred to the federal court’s decision as a “gross abuse of judicial power”; Christian Defense Coalition Director Pat Mahoney, quoted in a Focus on the Family article, attributed the federal court’s decision to “an arrogant and activist federal judiciary.”

Unfortunately, all of these comments about judicial activism are wrong.