Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
That's one way of looking at Sarah Hey's assessment of TEC's new Presiding Bishop: 2) Presiding Bishop-elect Curry has a lovely speaking voice and will continue to offer nice sermons. This will serve, no doubt, to assuage some of the embarrassment that moderates and not a few liberal Episcopalians felt when they heard Katherine Jefferts …
Continue reading "The Episcopalians Go From Smashmouth to Mealymouth"
The Holy Father has once again ambushed American Catholics with Laudato Si, his encyclical on the environment and global warming. As was the case with his earlier document on social teaching, we should not be too surprised; there is a great deal of precedent for this kind of thinking. As R.R. Reno points out: In …
From Bossuet's History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches, III, 12, this gem: For although the Eucharist, as well as the other mysteries of our salvation, had a spiritual effect for its end, it had, like the other mysteries, that which was accomplished in the body for its foundation. Jesus Christ was to be …
Anyone who works in a university environment these days--especially in a public university whose state support continually evaporates--has heard about the concept of "safe space". It's an idea promoted by LGBT advocates where parts of the campus are designated as safe for such people to be without fear of opposition. The problem with that is …
Continue reading "An Important Way Church Needs to Be a Safe Space"
Putting a wrap on Bossuet's Elevations on the Mysteries, III, 8: Now there is only this beautiful place in Proverbs, where the uncreated wisdom speaks thus: The Lord has possessed me, generated me, from the beginning of his ways. I am myself this beginning, being the worker idea of this great artisan and the original …
Well, we're up against it: we're starting to see Evangelicals, generally thought reliable adherents to Scriptural Christianity, defect to the other side over the LGBT business. For people raised in the system, this is a shock they are not mentally prepared for. For those of us who came out of liberal churches of long ago, …
Continue reading "Some Advice to Evangelicals on Major Division from Anglican/Episcopal Experience"
With--what else?--a lawsuit, with complaints to the Federal government to boot: Getting into Harvard is tough enough: Every year come the stories about applicants who built toilets in developing countries, performed groundbreaking lunar research, or won national fencing competitions, whatever it takes to edge out the competition. So you can imagine that the 52-year-old Florida …
Continue reading "The Country Where Merit is Run Down, Part III: The Asians Strike Back"
Lining up another one of the Elevations on the Mysteries by Bossuet, III, 7: God made the basis of his work. God decorated it, God put the finishing touch, God rested. When he made the basis of his work, that is to say in confusion the heavens and the earth, the air and the waters, …
Continue reading "On the Creation of the Universe: The Order of the Works of God"
A new monograph for my geotechnical readers. You can download it here. Abstract is as follows: Many undergraduate civil engineering students find their required geotechnical courses strange. They enter into a new world of soil classifications, granular mechanics and porous materials, and a raft of empirical formulae. There seems to be little connection between the …
Continue reading "Stresses and Strains in Soils: Elastic and Plastic"
This is the month we get to see whether SCOTUS will "redefine" marriage. That "redefinition" was entirely avoidable if either the protagonists or the opponents of same-sex civil marriage had challenged the concept of state defined marriage to start with, but our political debate is not up to such an idea--not yet, at least... In …
Positive Infinity 