65 citations

Did my Bibliography today. 65 books/articles read, 174 footnotes.
The current draft is 49 pages, 17,400 words,
Its due on Wednesday.
Peace,
Chris

My senator died

I once applied to be an intern for this guy. I think my mom did some Veterans Administration stuff with him once, and thought he knew what was what.
Peace,
Chris

All you need to know about Philo

Philo’s worldview can be summed up thus. Man is a mixture of body and soul; the latter requires salvation from the former. The Bible gives us examples of those who have been saved, but if it is properly read it “touches on the personal experience of each of us.” Within it we find the path to salvation from temptation. It gives us hope, calls us to repent, and allows us to achieve “limited tranquility.” Once we have reached this stabilized status we can attain perfection through learning, our natural capacities, and our right practice.

The last formal hall

Tonight was my last formal hall at St. Eds. Nothing special, I ate with an Estonian, a German, a Tibetan, and a Portuguese. We argued whether the garnish on the pork was sea weed or asparagus... Then as I sipped Port outside the College I met the parents of a British Divinity guy. We talked about South Africa and how their son should not anger Muslim extremists with his work.
I realize this won’t be the norm when I go back to the states. I’ll no longer wear the gown, I’ll not be served by English butlers, I’ll no longer select the finest cheeses for my crackers. I’ll be in Philly chillin’ with a bunch of ELCAers.
These last two years in England have been pretty darn cool, but they are coming to an end, 12 days and my thesis is due, soon enough after that I’ll be back in Oregon as if none of this ever happened.
Yet it’s been good. I’ve seen my country from the outside, inside, right side, left side. I’ve experienced a culture where CCTV and Chavs are the norm. And it has happened, my time here has been more than some dream. Two years of my life have been infused with England, and I’m fairly happy about that!
You may not hear from me again until my thesis is done. If that is the case… Peace.
Chris

Philo and Plain reason

Sometimes I give short shrift to the basics of the reformation, specifically that scripture was encouraged to be read with a literal meaning and with plain reason.
Wait, I'm a literalist now and all that implies? Nah, not exactly, but if the Catholics of the time read the Bible in a way anywhere similar to how Philo of Alexandria did I'd be nailing thesis to all kinds of things.
As you might have guessed I'm writing up my Philo chapter right now.
Peace,
Chris

The Folks

So here's my parents. They are chilling with MTV stars and writing things with their bodies... Mom's on the first D dad's on the first E. Sigh, to be old and carefree.
Back to the Thesis!
Peace,
Chris

Andrew Sullivan put up my window

Not something to write home about I suppose... but when you spend your days and nights writing about child sacrifice it doesn't take much to excite you.... Oh, yeah... I'm writing up my disertation. I've written draft one of my Josephus chapter, I'm finishing up the skeleton version of my disertation tonight (minus a conclusion about what contemporary rewritings of Gen.22 say about modernity.)
Peace,
Chris

These folks wanted me to link to them

So I have. It is a pro-homosexual inclusion blog.
Peace,
Chris

Short Story Monday: Space

I left him screaming in his padded room. He was the third one we’d picked up this week. The new Captain was too green; he still believed we can bring them back, he thinks they want to come back, these raft riders, Asteroid miners, and solar pirates.
They don’t. None of them are 1st generation like most of us on the Minnow.
I sat down in the mess hall. Some coffee was brought to me. It hovered gently in my cup. We’ve yet to adequately produce all of Earth’s wonders consistently on long voyages like ours. I took a sip. It was good, though you could still taste the dry shippy bitterness, even in liquids.
“That’s an unhappy face there Iris. What’s on your mind?” Kevin from security said, sitting down across the table from me. He set his stainless steel thermos on the table.
“The Asteroid boy is still at it.”
“Umm.”
“Four generations in space.”
“Jeeze. Imagine not knowing where you came from?”
I nodded in agreement and drank some more of the coffee.
“What you suppose his great great grand dad was running from?”
“It might be that he was running too something,” I countered.
“Most of ‘em were criminals though.”
“Criminality is in the eye of the beholder,” I said. His face soured at that. I tried to explain myself, “I think there was a real urge then to, you know,” I took a sip, “to fill the space. To fill space. It’s a very primitive, primeval urge. Dr. Gix Jin said, ‘Space is the womb, the fiminine, passive. Man wishes to fil it. To return from wence he came, to create anew the greatt old pattern, but now writ large upon the canvas of eternity.’ Yeah,” I said, “Dr. Gix Jin.”
I took a sip. Kevin drank from his thermos.
“Its bullshit. They were filth from the gutters of earth.”
“Even filth is motivated by something.”
“Is that why we are out here?”
I sipped the dreadful coffee, “No. Its just a job,” I finished it and left it on the table. I got up.
“See you later Iris.”
“See you Kevin,” I said, walking back to the hospital rooms.
The boy had never been to earth. He’d never felt real gravity, at least of the Earth kind. He’d likely lived on that asteroid his whole life. Yet we want him to be an earthman.
I could hear him still screaming as I neared his room.

The New Christianity

What can I say we are a nation wedded to war.
Peace,
Chris

Christian Aid Week: 250 Pounds

Last Thursday I trotted through the rain knocking on doors along with other folks from Emmanuel URC's Young Adults Group for Christian Aid Week and raised 258.17 pounds, or about 500 US. Not to toot our own horn or anything, but I think we did a pretty darn good job!
Peace,
Chris

Um... this is really bad.

he White House went ahead and reauthorized a controversial, presidential-power-grabbing program deemed illegal by the Justice Department, after trying to extract permission from a critically sick John Ashcroft who didn't quite know what day it was.

Did I mention I'm TTBA editor?

CUSFS Science Fiction and Fantasy Contest Get published in TTBA!!!

Peace,
Chris

Short Story Sunday:Wiki-schools

Sometimes technology, politics, economics, and society at large, come together in such a way that they create out of disparate pieces something truly novel. Take for example Wiki-schools.
It was the year 2010 the Bush Era ‘No Child Left Behind Act’ had finally run its course. It had broken the backs of the teacher’s unions. Most public schools (in the American sense of course) were shut down. The private sector had moved in. Sadly ‘Teach 4 Les’ a Halliburton subsidiary, was doing no better, in fact much worse, than the old public school system. Then, during the historic Wiki-Warner GoogleTubeNews Corporation merger Rubpert Murdoch announced his company’s intent to enter the teaching sector.
That same year ‘Teach 4 Les’ went bankrupt when its CEO bought a Russian space ship and escaped to a Swiss asteroid along with all the company’s money. Wiki-Schools bought out the ailing and embarrassed company, and received all its no-bid government contracts.
Wiki-schools were ingenious, not to mention relatively inexpensive. For the first two years students were taught to read in intensive at-home one-on-one tutorials. In the third and fourth year students were moved to classrooms where they were taught basic math, science, and internet browsing skills. The remaining six years were self-taught. Students were given a laptop and introduced to progressively more advanced article links. They explored the vast Wiki-School database and in their third OS (Online Study) year were allowed to access non-Wiki sites. At the start of their fourth year of OS they begin contributing their own articles and their final two years consisted of a mixture of contributing further articles and correcting articles of their peers.
Within eight years of their introduction Wiki-schools had become the norm, replacing the few remaining public schools in the United States. Soon Open Source Schools (OSS) were the norm throughout Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Mexico followed suit in 2021 and the Eurussian Union made a similar program mandatory in 2025. That same year UNSP Secretary General Cameron signed the Education Equality Act, which required all Humans, both Planetary and Interplanetary, between the ages of 7 and 16 to be connected to an OSS by 2030.
This lead, directly or indirectly, to the two Homeschool-wars, the Great Crash, the 2nd Life Suicides, the creation of Internet Five, the Second Great Crash, the WOW/Gates War, and the creation of Internet Six. When all was said and done by 2040 equal education was universal.

Richardson's job interview

Kinda funny... we need a western president (and no Texas is not western).
Peace,
Chris