Electroblogster

Taiwan Blog #2 - Taiwan's Size

2009-07-11T20:14:00.003-05:00

I did this little study to satisfy my own curiosity about the size of Taiwan. I compare Taiwan to Lake Michigan - something I have a little more familiarity with.

I should not have been surprised when some visitors from Taiwan were very interested in it because they wanted to know about the size of Lake Michigan. - they were surprised that they couldn't see across it --- to them it looked like the ocean. With the same picture they were able to visualize Lake Michigan compared to something THEY were more familiar with.

Proud Dad

2009-06-17T21:17:00.004-05:00

Here is my little math guy at work... He explained to ME "Here's 1. And two 1's is 2. And two 2's is 4. ..."

I wrote the powers on the top of the board. But only some of them. I let him tell me what I should put above the 32.

Now for the "penmanship".

You Can't Please Everyone

2009-05-11T08:09:00.003-05:00

I had to pass this one along because it made me laugh. You've heard that you can't please everyone. Well someone demonstrates this by rounding up the 1-star reviews on Amazon for classic movies and books. (Actually, they are not all classics.)
Samples of ACTUAL reviews:

This is the worst book I have ever read!!! I started it with an interest toward the Holocaust. Anne Frank never talked about anything even relating to this major historical event in her short life.

Re: The Odyssey

This book sucks. I dont care if Homer was blind or not this book is like 900 pages too long. I could tell this story in about 10 pages. Homer taking all long to say stupid stuff. Teens if you are reading this all I have to say is CLIFF NOTES CLIFF NOTES you will pass the test, unless you are in AP classes. The teachers expect kids to read cliff notes trust me my moms a teacher. P.S this book SUCKS.

Re: The Sound of Music

This movie should be called the Sound of Mucus. The only redeeming quality is that the family has to run from nazis.

and

This movie was made in the sixties, we live in the 21st century, GET OVER IT!

Warning: I would like for this site to do only that - keep it focused. However,
it seems they have to use it to push political stuff as well. Too bad.

Christmas Adam

2008-12-24T09:03:00.005-06:00

Today is Christmas Eve.

But the kids' excitement builds and builds and builds. So waiting until the day before Christmas is too hard. Even the day before the day before Christmas should have a celebratable moniker. What comes before Eve? -- Adam!

That's how we invented Christmas Adam.

I hope you have a Merry Christmas!

Reason

2008-10-27T09:36:00.003-05:00

I have had to change my mind. When I was younger there was nothing better than reason in an argument. But now I know that there is simply nothing stricter than reason in an argument.

I owe this insight to many things including grace and experience. But I wouldn't have noticed it so easily without my friend pointing it out like so:

"Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it." G.K.Chesterton

This is rather shockingly said - in my experience many touching moments in my life have been due to the beauty of the truth at the end of a line of reasoning. Yet it was too subtle at first to see that reason can be used as a billy club also.

I have been more sensitive this last year to this notion as I have been guiding an engineering project along. When there is a conflict between our expectations and the provided results I have been attempting to stay more human by appealing to the heart first. I have tried to leave the harsh reason of demonstration as a later or last resort.

Taxes

2008-10-27T09:27:00.002-05:00

Something to remember when deciding to impose or raise taxes.

"A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter." G.K. Chesterton.

G. can say things much better than I! And still true a continent and a century away. Fines are 10's or 100's of dollars. Taxes are usually thousands.

I am sure he had some good insight into "spreading the wealth around a bit". Fantastic when done voluntarily; NOT SO when required by the Leviathan - under the threat of law, i.e. loss of freedom.

Spicy Food

2008-06-27T12:48:00.002-05:00

My friend from Taiwan just told me about a neat little way the chinese (ethnic chinese - not just the PRC comrades) have of describing how spicy they want their food.

Note: This is for people who WANT spicy food. None of these is equivalent to "mild".

They use 3 words in 3 different arrangements:
La (spicy)
Bu (not)
Pa (worry/ fear)

In levels of increasing heat then...
1) Bu pa la = not worried if it's spicy
2) La bu pa = spicy does not worry me
3) Pa bu la = I am worried that it might not be spicy.

Isn't that fun?

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

2008-06-06T12:03:00.004-05:00

Many, many people (though still not enough) are loathe to deprive any person of life. There are good reasons - not the least of which is the irreversibility of so doing. But that alone is not something we always fear. We have no problem parting with our money for food though the transaction (as soon as we have eaten) is clearly not reversible. There is more to a LIFE than that! This is so eloquently expressed by Tolkien via the sage and humble wizard Gandalf:

Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Wiser than all the wise, God himself is the giver of life. God Himself seems to aver cutting off the lives of even very evil people. (ref. "only the good die young".) Since we do not know his ways, and since we should surely respect his ordinance, it is right to be suitably fearful of making such a verdict on any fellow man.

Now let's turn to liberty. Surely it is similar to life itself. With it one is able to work good or evil. Our nation's founding fathers were not the first to agree that it is granted by God. Then they carefully noted that it is inalienable. But is it?

Once again God seems to allow plenty of people to use liberty to the most self-centered of ends. Some just frittering away their efforts and some as bad as Iago - even Lucifer became Satan using his own free will.

But these considerations are pretty heavy archetypes. What about work? - you know - a job.

I trade about 40 hours a week of my liberty to my employer - making my choices based on the good of the company. Don't I?

A supreme sinking feeling comes over me. If I am really doing this am I not also ceding my very life to him in 40 hour chunks? ... for money??

NO.

The bromide "If you love what you do you will never work a day in your life" hides the substantial answer to the heavy challenge above. I will not make choices "for the company" that are NOT choices that I would consider wicked, evil or in any way bad. And further, in working at the company, as part of a corporation (notably the same root as corpus - used to describe the Church - the body of Christ) I can, and hopefully do, improve the lot of mankind, perfect nature and do what gives glory to God.

It is true that there is sweat of the brow involved. And true that some decisions while not evil are clearly not motivated directly by my personal advancement. But in these, I believe, lie the "small things" of humility that we are supposed to grow in if we are to be ready for the kingdom of heaven. And, as God is good, there are usually commensurate small rewards to draw us on - pecuniary of course, satisfaction also and importantly growth in many facets of being a person. a.m.d.g.

Good Friday

2008-03-19T12:42:00.002-05:00

I cannot remember the exact words.
I cannot remember which visionary heard it.
I cannot even remember when I heard it.

But cannot forget the most moving thing I heard about Jesus' suffering and death - that he would have suffered it all if there were just one person who needed it. All that suffering, all that love for one small wretched sinner! Even, gulp, for me!!!

Taipei Trips

2008-02-28T11:56:00.010-06:00

At the request of my beloved wife I will post a few things about Taiwan. First post is about food. Besides - that's the first thing people usually ask about.

A lot of what I eat in Taipei is good. Though it took a while to develop the taste for it. (About 2 years to be precise!)

Dragon Fruit is wonderful (taste and texture) AND exciting to look at.

I have found that I love shrimp in almost any dish.
But NOT raw shrimp!!!! They have tricky shrimp that are orange when they are raw (not the common blue-when-raw - orange-when-cooked shrimp). The flavor might actually be good but I was overwhelmed by the gooiness of the texture and the notable features in this photo - black eyeballs and green-brain-goo. Yikes I need some Taiwan Beer just thinking about it!!

They have a killer dish that has tempura shrimp with pinapple-and-mayonaise sauce. Yum. They insist on putting colored sprinkles on it - gotta be cutsie.

You can always find something good in the "lunchboxes".

Oolong tea is wonderful - the best tea! - if made right - light, slightly sweet aftertaste, yum! It is very bitter when made wrong - and no amount of sugar can help fix it.
Zak, the best oolong tea maker I have encountered is trying to instruct me in the art.

The stinky tofu is not something I want to have every day. But if you are ever challenged to eat it there are two things you should know: 1) It smells a lot worse than it tastes. and 2) you really DON'T want to know how it is made.

I really do like sushi. But have learned that you should eat it toward the beginning of a meal rather than when you are already mostly full. Thankfully, the nauseating results were never seen by the world... but only just.

I tried Sea Urchin eggs/roe just this last visit. They came around the resturaunt on a little conveyor - which was fun. They looked great! They didn't taste good. Maybe this is why:

- ouch!

Raw lobster is good but I wish they wouldn't be so instistant on demonstrating the "freshness" by putting the still moving head on the table.

And I was relieved to find out that they don't serve actual people despite what the sign may say!

And yes I ate this fish eyeball:

but none of this meat:

or these cute little guys:

"Suffer the little children..." - my children to be more precise

2008-02-28T11:33:00.004-06:00

Last night I sent my kids up to bed. As often happens they come down again by ones and twos to get books or drink water. When I found my daughter downstairs and not actively drinking water I hurried her back up.

She offered no resistance nor excuses but traveled a bit slowly. At the top of the stairs I noticed that her faced seemed a little cloudy. Thinking that I had been too stern in my demand I asked her if anything was wrong and expected to hear that she was downstairs "only looking for a book". Instead, as a couple tears welled up, she quietly explained she had been doing the stations. And I still didn't understand... I asked if she was sad that I stopped her from doing the stations or if it was the stations that made her sad. She was sad for Jesus.

Each time I start to think nothing will get through her skin she does something like this. I love her. I am sure Jesus does too! What could be better?

Physics Grand Unified Theory

2008-01-16T20:36:00.000-06:00

I would like to take credit for being uber-insightful. Instead it is just a really satisfying coincidence that my previous post about the 248 dimension beauty may actually have a profound physical significance. Hat tip to Science Mom over on Unity of Truth blog.

It turns out that there is a theory in some physics journal by Garrett Lisi, a very colorful physicist/surfer, that suggests this may be able to explain the four fundamental forces that drive our universe: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; the weak force, which controls radioactive decay and now finally gravity.

Not even he knows if it is true - it's only a formal (very formal) hunch at this point.

But I want it to be true.

Here's one major reason why: it's mechanism is geometry rather than the much more confusing equation-noodle-pot that is string theory. Wouldn't it be nice if the unity could be pictured. It just makes my brain feel better to look at geometry. At Thomas Aquinas College I got to re-learn calculus. Night was turned into day when the proofs (OK they were quasi-proofs) were shown in geometrical terms and pictures.

Islam Today

2007-10-11T11:50:00.000-05:00

Last year Pope Benedict VI gave an intellectual speech with a provocative challenge that Muslims ought to denounce violence done in the name of their religion. In it he recalled a dialog between a Christian and a Muslum from around 1400 that had some strong language!

The immediate and NONintellectual reaction to the speech was to create a few new Christian martyrs and generally burn and smash things.

OK. One sector of Islam heard from. Is there another?

Where are the peaceful multitudes of the "religion of peace"? Probably terrified of sector one! But were are the intellectual leaders? Perhaps we have finally heard from them...

"In an unprecedented open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars from every sect of Islam, the Muslims plead with Christian leaders "to come together with us on the common essentials of our two religions."

I have been praying for the impossible... the conversion of all Muslims. Maybe it is only my foolish hope - but I do hope that this is the beginning of a better world.

Rich and Beautiful Book of Hours

2007-10-06T12:44:00.001-05:00

Pictures are great! Love 'em. So these little snippets I have seen over the years from Belles Heures and Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry have always caught my attention. Their bright colors and medieval castles together with the agriculture scenes have always felt to me like a canvas of jewels. I am not sure who this Duc fella is* but I thank him for his commissions!

http://www.christusrex.org/www2/berry/berry1.html

This site has not only a lot of the wonderful pictures from this book of hours but also some descriptions of the content of the illuminations. I often find myself wondering about details in paintings and symbolism - what the art books usually tell me is details about the size of the paintings, where it hangs, and maybe a thing or two about the brushstrokes. This is what I prefer.

Enjoy!

*note: Thanks to the Internet I have also found out a little more about the Duc. Not the greatest guy - but he sure left us a lot of good art.

Liberty

2007-09-26T11:45:00.000-05:00

"... unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." - Declaration of Independence

Alan Keyes, during a Q&A after a talk touched on the Liberty aspect and laid bare the foundations with such clarity... he said (not the eloquent original text): If God himself saw fit to give men freedom we should be most reluctant to reverse that endowment!

So what happens when you give every person freedom? Evil. Yes - some evil will undoubtedly happen in the world. To prevent it wouldn't God have to rescind free will?

St. Augustine defined evil as the lesser of two goods. (This takes some time to get used to but it is based on the simple fact that what God made (created things) are objectively goods.)

So how do you give freedom to every living person? You have to allow for each person to see the various choices available to him - to be able to weigh them according to their different attributes and consequences - and to make the choice based on that stew. Someone who always makes the choice which brings him alone the most pleasure (at the expense of others' or even God) is a hedonist. Someone who always makes the choice which brings him alone the most power (at the expense of others or God) is ambitious (in the bad sense). Someone who genuinely works to make the choice that is THE best available (with respect to God, others and himself) is a saint. Etc.

So every action must touch on several attributes and consequences. We must live in a web with other creatures and with God.

Therefore it seems that God will not remove all hurts and obstacles and ornery folks precisely because He wishes to preserve in us the dignity of Liberty.

Gordon Moore

2007-09-21T00:08:00.000-05:00

I have been at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this week (sweet!). It is really a geek festival. There was a competition going on as I left of 3 guys racing each other building overclocked top-end computers for prizes. And they had a big audience standing around wishing they could be doing it too.

But that serves only to introduce Gordon Moore. Instrumental in bringing the integrated circuit from curiosity to commonplace- (but still staggering-) reality. He was among a handful who made Intel. And he still has some pretty good experience and thinking skills!

He was educated as a chemist and physicist. When asked what he would go into if he had to start today he said Biology. Life sciences are really making leaps and growing lots. It is an area with a lot of potential still too! Meaningful too.

His advice to new engineers is this (paraphrased - I can't write that fast):
It's not the exotic... It's not the non-linear equations... it's the fundamentals that you learned. Keep well grounded in the fundamentals. Make them part of your way of doing things.

Which got me thinking... In electrical engineering V = I * R is a fundamental. I have solved a lot of things in my career by writing that down on the top of a whiteboard or a scrap of paper - and going from there.

In fact there are probably just one or two things to remember in many of the disciplines and sciences. Maybe we could make a list - a simple list!! - to give to the kids. The fundamentals of:

Electronics: V=I*R
Chemistry: elements are conserved. Maybe something about bonds too.
Biology: (help me out here). Life is the universe's consistent exception to entropy.
Math: = + - zero
Religion: God is good. He made us to know, love and serve Him.
Philosophy: There is truth. And it can be known. WE are made to know the world.
History: History is a great teacher - learn humility. Never use absolutes! Everyone is like you. No-one is like you. There have been remarkable changes in the body of knowledge but people are remarkably recognizable as far back as we can see.
Manners: Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
Humor: The surprise of seeing two things together that you weren't otherwise seeing as related.
Speaking in public:
Decision making: (This is another thought from the Gordon Moore interview here. I am still mulling on it.) The hard decisions are often the ones where you see the least difference between the choices. Consequently, they in particular probably won't make that much of a difference either way.
Thermodynamics already has it's own nice little set of laws.
Mechanics does too. (mostly thanks to Newton).
Leadership: those who simply DO are usually the leaders.

Comments and corrections ALWAYS welcome.

Love2Learn Consilium Conveniet

2007-06-28T12:33:00.000-05:00

Over the past few years Love2Learn mom has enlisted the help of several Internet friends to assist with love2learn.net. During the past week and a half I had a chance to meet some of them in South Dakota.

Wow!

What excellent people! I knew already that I would respect them. I was not expecting to so quickly and unequivocally add enjoy and admire to the list. Those are not things that generally happen quickly. However, I was privileged to see them in action as they discussed the site - from principles down to details. I also met husbands (also great) and kids. I was overwhelmed. I am sure they are cringing at this because among the impressive attributes was that of humility. In deference to which I should probably stop gushing. :)

However, if you ever want to go on a great vacation make sure Love2Learn mom makes the plans.

I also have to mention that we did more. In fact we met wonderful folks at other stops along the way which she has chronicled over at studeo (in a number of posts) if you are interested. It was great to meet Dr. Thursday*. - and others at the Chestercon. Minn. Mom was a great host. Great friends from college were not only good hosts, fun to catch up with, but also helped us enjoy Chestercon by watching the kids. Even met someone new in Sturgis who was most interesting and kind. It all wrapped up to a most wonderful vacation. Thanks!

One of the wonderful things was how well the families met and were instant friends. The kids instantly had friends. (BTW, in case you are wondering, a fresh batch of kittens helps break the ice REALLY well!!)

* Dr. Thursday I promised to send you a link about how to see polarization WITHOUT a film. Here it is. Check out the larger site. This guy is as excited about polarization as you are about Chesterton ;)

Library: $16,000

2007-06-01T08:22:00.000-05:00

This is pretty neat! Cliff Missen has made it his pet project to bring libraries to African communities in a unique way. Since much of Africa lacks decent infrastructure (and it costs big$$$ to get it!) many communities can't possibly get on the internet he brings the internet to them.

Using a simple backup drive from Seagate Technology, he started loading as much educational information as he could. After two years, he is now on his fourth version of the eGranary. It can hold more than 10 million documents, including thousands of instructional videos and audio files. By hooking it via network cable to a computer, anyone can access the data.
http://www.mercurynews.com/businessheadlines/ci_6026753?nclick_check=1

Here is his site:
http://www.widernet.org/digitallibrary/

And here's the pricelist. For $16k - a comlete lab including the server and 12 stations the town can access the best the english language has to offer. If they already have a computer or two then it can be as little as $750. This is 10 million documents!!!! That's more than your local library probably has on it's shelves. Brilliant!

It will be great to see Africa bloom again - this man's crude-but-effective actions may be a key to that! 1 person with a plan can surely make a difference.

Slave to Sin

2007-04-30T12:07:00.000-05:00

The pastor this morning told us a story that I just have to capture.

Frank gets a bow and arrow for his birthday. He goes outside to practice and practice and gets quite good. As he is walking back to the house he spots one of his grandmother's ducks and without thinking of the consequences aims, shoots .... and kills the duck. THEN he thinks of the consequences. So he goes and hides the dead duck in the woodpile and slinks back home hoping no-one saw him.

Later on Betsy his sister says she is going to the lake to swim. When
grandma says Betsy needs to finish her chore Betsy says "No, Frank said he wants to do that today" and passes by Frank before he can protest quietly saying "Remember the duck!!"

Betsy goes out with her friends the next day. Frank has volunteered again for her chores. And she murmurs "Remember the duck."

After a full 3 days of this Frank tells his grandmother about the
duck.

She says, "I saw you kill the duck and hide it. And I forgave you then
because I love you. And I was sad to see how long you let yourself be a
slave to Betsy for it."

My pastor told it better. : )

This was a prelude to his homily about the gospel where Jesus says 3 times "Simon son of John, do you love me?". I don't know how it escaped me for all these years but I finally put together that this is AFTER Peter denied the Lord 3 times. I am sure that Peter didn't miss that connection!!

Jesus let Peter confess it - and he forgave him. It's great. It's catharsis in the fullest.

In fact it goes further than you would have thought at first. Any of us would probably have asked only once and been OK with the answer. But Jesus, the good author, asks 3 times. Hmm. Why?

In this way it reminded me of another story: Eustace doesn't lose his dragon skin in one swoop - it takes several painful peelings. I guess that all of these show us that we need the forgiveness that can come all at once - but there is merit and usefulness and a view of real human nature in that we need to work at rooting out a habit. Real humans live in time. Few things happen so suddenly and so completely all at once. We may say we "fall" in love. But we don't love someone for just an instant. We wake up every day and love them some more. We don't get forgiven once (barring the exception of deathbed conversions) but rather we have the opportunity to ask forgiveness again and again - - - thank goodness!!

Poets vs. Philosophers.

2007-04-30T11:20:00.000-05:00

Poets vs. Philosophers.
Hmm. That's a big one!!!! What separates one from the other?

Philosophers. They analyze and synthesize. Some do one some the other some both. At any rate they try to understand (and tell the rest of us) about reality. They abstract from reality to show it to us.

Analysis: They look at things and try to determine the underlying principles. That is they look for what may be a "rule" that applies to the worlds state or activities that shows the unity of different things or actions.

Synthesis: Using the principles (above) they try to show how these assemble to make predictable ends.

Poets. This is a much tougher nut to crack. They seem to feel the principles that the philosophers do. But do they know them as well? Maybe some poets know them perfectly well. Of these poets it would make sense to say that they are able to describe things and events in just such a way as to make the world more understandable to us. But they use the imagery of the world to do it. They don't abstract. They wield a description of a something to cast our minds beyond that very thing into a place with a better view - an understanding. They will usually use an event or thing which the readers already know about (like two roads on a snowy evening) or a character (which we recognize from likenesses to ourselves and those we know) and say it in just such a way as to trigger in our own minds the bigger picture. They can tell a story that makes reality clearer by making the characters' motivations just a little clearer (like Nathan the prophet telling King David about the man with only one sheep. At this point the poet would typically stop and let David figure out the rest for himself. But Nathan goes on - explicitly revealing that that sheep is Bathsheba the widow of Uriah the Hittite). The poet somehow adds more meaning.

This "topic" is going to keep me thinking for the rest of my life. Feel free to share your own ideas!!

Here's another tangent. There seem to have been great philosophers popping up in response to great poets throughout history. Who is Shakespeare's philosopher? - - - John Paul II?

Higher Math - Sophus Lie and the 248th dimensions!!

2007-03-29T12:16:00.000-05:00

A calculation the size of Manhattan

http://www.aimath.org/E8/

This is some pretty intense math. The "problem" has been around for around 100 years. The solution took a dedicated team (from around the globe) 4 years and a supercomputer to solve. The solution is in numbers/code that if written out in the tiniest print would blanket Manhattan. For comparison the human genome is about 1GB in a similar coding. This is 60GB!!

Now WHAT exactly is the solution? Well I started looking at what the problem was and started to get tangled in a web of math. I think that generally, it is about a system to classify symmetry. The Lie groups, of which E8 is the Everest, start out with very simple 1 dimensional symmetry (one group) and 2 dimensional (4 groups) on up to this E8 solution which is 248 dimensional being the symmetries of a particular 57 dimensional object. Start to explore some of the terms on Wikipedia and you quickly begin to see that the most basic understanding of this E8 fellow is not a depth easily fathomed!!! I think one would spend years just to understand the question. The solution is mathematical but is making physicists and geometry folks are getting giddy about it. (pretty picture of the E8 root system)

One theme that keeps coming up and is manifest here too is that many of the really great achievements are born and fostered in small groups of great friends.

Here there were a larger than usual group of 20 people who gathered annually altogether and more often in smaller groups.

Get this - Sophus Lie, the Norwegian mathematician who formulated Lie groups including E8, developed the theories with Felix Klein (of Klein Bottle fame).

and over to literature:
The Inklings (including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien) read aloud and critiqued/heckled eachother's work - with what grand results! English literature finally had mythology.

Mary Shelly (who wrote Frankenstein), Lord Byron (wrote Don Juan), Percy Shelley and others seemed to be a clique of sorts.

and over to politics:
OOOPS!! Most examples of this leave a sour taste!
... but not all. Consider the framers of the US constitution. Consider the advances in Athens.

It seems to be of use to have someone to "bounce things off of". It may have the effect of magnifying your stature since the public only first sees your ideas after they have been subjected to a round of constructive criticism.

The message to me is to never take lightly the criticisms of friends and colleagues - they will usually have your best interest at heart.

As for that exception above - politics. It seems that the best work gets done before there is too much at stake. Once the taxes are high enough and the country big enough that the participants are abnormally interested in that power they do not care about the best interest of anyone or anything but themselves. They end up out-shouting the good ones and even punishing them for "embarrassing [i.e. actual] good ideas".

Challenges

2007-02-26T12:19:00.000-06:00

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

I have met certain people that are terribly hard to discuss things with...

...it is not for want of intellect - they are often intelligent, capable people.

...it is not passion - passion is a love for the topic which drives intense conversation (although rare conversion).

...it is not arrogance - though this is to be loathed in any argument.

...maybe it is the inability to entertain any thought but their own.

Could it be that it is not their fault? Maybe it is just that sort of education which is missing in some schools today. Maybe there is a sad sort of indoctrination going on that fails to admit of more than one idea (too textbookish?). One gets little exposure to a really good adversary. In short one is not suitably challenged enough to develop this part of oneself. Could that be?

If so then it seems that in this way mankind is MADE for challenge and cannot develop fully without it.

Of course this is all about step 1... after entertaining the idea, the next step is being able to correctly judge between the opposing thoughts. And that is a habit well worth gaining!

Poetry Friday

2007-02-02T17:34:00.000-06:00

One is not always in the same state of mood or mind. It is human. Sometimes we are ready to be the hounds of heaven, sometimes we find inspiration in St. Thomas Aquinas' absolute reason, and sometimes ...

"Batter My Heart" by John Donne

Batter my heart, three person’d God, for, you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.

I, like an usurpt town, to’another due,

Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue,

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved faine,

But am betroth’d unto your enemy,

Divorce me untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

I heard this one over 20 years ago and it resonated to my teenage heart even then.

Chinese Saints

2006-12-02T18:03:00.000-06:00

I have fairly frequent dealings with a handful of the good people of Taiwan. They are interesting to me in many ways and many have become good friends. Yet there is a certain youthfulness about them that I have a hard time charitably describing. "Staid" and "Refined" and "Mature" are not words that come up a lot. One huge thing that is missing from their culture is a pervading notion of religion - although there are temples and small sacrifices to ancestors. I would dearly love to win some of those souls for heaven.

Who are some good intercessors from Taiwan??

Of course Taiwan is largely, in culture and heredity, of China. So Our Lady of China is apt. Though she is so busy already!! St. Fracis Xavier is legendary for his work in the orient so I include him. I vaguely know of a lot of martyrs in China but didn't know any of the stories until I noticed this one from a page in the St. Peter and the Vatican book we have.

St. Jean-Gabriel Perboyre
Sounds like quite a guy!! I will include him in the post rosary litany. But I still haven't found out names of some indiginous saints. Taiwan preferred but larger China is definately OK. Please contribute your recommendations with links to more info if possible.

Weather

2006-11-27T12:54:00.000-06:00

I love seeing the real deal. Here is the weather radar for the US... the entire US all in a picture/movie.
http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/full_loop.php