Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
It was a pleasant surprise to see Philip Jenkins article When Evangelicals Were Cool about what many of us refer to as the "Jesus Music Era". Given the protracted trashing that Evangelicals have gotten since (done, in part, because they're perceived as a threat) it's nice to see someone bring up an era--the late 1960's …
Continue reading "When Evangelicals Were Cool: He Doesn't Know the Half of It, Musically at Least"
There were two things I was hoping to escape when I joined a Pentecostal church: social-climbing Christianity and social justice Christianity. Silly me: I've achieved neither of these. I deal with the former on an irregular basis. I think my church people and pastor are aware of my rants on the subject but up to …
Continue reading "Why I've Never Been Sold on "Christian Social Activism""
This exchange of correspondence about someone who wanted to transfer their membership to one of the "seceding" dioceses' parishes would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. Basically, the parish of the Diocese of Dallas (whose Dean's parting shot was commented on here) refused to start a "canonical" transfer of membership to one of the …
Continue reading "The Episcopal Church: Getting Out While the Getting Out Was Good"
The object of this is to solve the differential equation $latex {\frac{d^{3}}{d{x}^{3}}}y(x)-\mu\,\left(1-\left(y(x)\right)^{2}\right){\frac{d^{2}}{d{x}^{2}}}y(x)+2\,\mu\, y(x)\left({\frac{d}{dx}}y(x)\right)^{2}+{\frac{d}{dx}}y(x)=0 $ for the following boundary conditions and parameters: $latex \mu=\frac{1}{2}$ $latex y\left(0\right)=0$ $latex {\frac{d}{dx}}y(0)=\frac{1}{2}$ $latex y\left(2\right)=1$ Conventional wisdom would indicate that, because of the high order of the derivatives, this problem cannot be solved using a scalar implementation of simple shooting. However, …
The UN's latest idea for funding itself: The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for poor countries. An annual lump sum payment by the super-rich is one of a host of measures including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, currency exchanges or …
Continue reading "What a Billionaire's Tax Means Depends Upon the Currency"
While reading Grabau's 1913 Principles of Stratigraphy, I came across this fascinating description of the geology of Florida and its coral reefs. This is for the most part a summary of expeditions in the early 1850's by two of this country's pioneering geologists: Louis Agassiz and Joseph LeConte. In addition to the outline of the …
Continue reading "A Geologic View of Old Florida and its Coral Reefs"
From Gerald Bray at the Churchman, the best wrap on the man and his role I have seen yet: The shipwreck of the Covenant brings us to the heart of Dr. Williams' long-term failure as archbishop. He sincerely wanted to keep the Anglican Communion together but believed that he could do this by political compromises …
Continue reading "A Tough (but Realistic) Assessment of a "Double-Minded Man", Rowan Williams"
Generally speaking I stop this time of year and commemorate an event of which you, the reader of this blog, are the beneficiary (?). On 1 July 1997 I uploaded the pages of my first website, called then The Wave Equation Page for Piling and now vulcanhammer.net. I duly editorialised the tenth anniversary of that …
I found retiring Dallas Episcopal Dean Kevin Martin's reflections on his long life in ministry fascinating, largely because his career span--to say nothing of his span as an Episcopalian--sweeps most of the enormous transformation that has taken place both in TEC (which was PECUSA when he started) and in the country at large. The question …
Continue reading "Two Score of Episcopal Ministry: My Response to a Dean's Reflections"
Like now: President Obama spoke today at a campaign rally in Durham, New Hampshire. "You know, it's fashionable right now for people to be cynical. We go in cycles like this and right now a lot of people are saying "Oh, America is doing terribly" and "What are we going to do?"... Being cynical, however, …
Positive Infinity 