...and the bloggin is easy. Apparently not, since I haven't posted most of this month! I think I'll post sporadically over the summer. It's been a good year but my brain is tired...
A few personal updates:
- My five year anniversary with Amy Lane is this Friday!
- I started teaching Aviation Physics as a hybrid course last week. I've never taught (or seen) a hybrid introductory physics course. So far it's going well. (Of course, we haven't hit free-body diagrams yet...)
- I'm listening through Beethoven's Symphonies, as conducted by Leonard Bernstein. I'm halfway through #5, and find it sad that the second movement is so often upstaged by the first.
- I'm trying something very different in my Electromagnetic Theory I course in the Fall; more on that later...
- I'm re-reading Sire's Habits of the Mind. As always, when I re-read a book, I find myself wondering why I highlighted some of the things I did, and why I didn't highlight others. Sire & Newman are right: The mind is like a mountain climber...
See you around!
The EPA Expo weekend before last went great! We're very proud of our students. You can find pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/110636788435437003869/EPA_EXPO_2010#.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
LOST is quickly drawing to a close. There are three regular episodes left before the two-hour finale. As the title of the show implies (and as conversation with any LOST fan will reveal), LOST is a show that raises many questions. What happened to so-and-so when she disappeared? Why did That Guy kill That Other Guy? What is The Monster? (For those of you who stopped watching mid-stream: No, we still don't know!)
There are perhaps 1,000 little questions that LOST has yet to answer, and many of us are wondering how the writers are going to answer them in only 5 more new hours of programming. I'm beginning to wonder if they intend to answer any of the little questions.
In fact, that seems to be their point as we head toward the finale: Not all questions matter equally. (In fact, one character even explicitly stated this back in Season 4: "Why don't you ask the one question that does matter?") They want us to focus on the big questions, which right now are basically boiled down to: What is the Monster? What is the Island? Who is Jacob?
While this frustrates me as an academic (I should have the ability to find the answer to any question, no matter how obscure!), I wonder if I need to be reminded that this is, in many ways, how God works.
In Scripture, we don't get the answer to every detail-oriented question: How many angles & demons are there? Was John the Baptist really saved before he was born? How old is the universe? What is "gopherwood?"
And from the point of view of the main themes of Scripture (the "Monster," the "Island," and "Jacob," if you will), these questions don't ultimately matter.
And perhaps this is not contrary to an academic mindset. After all, don't we teach our students to pick out the main ideas & themes of a work? Don't we want them to identify and readily employ the primary equations of a section?
Looking forward to May 23!
Disclaimer
The views expressed on this blog are solely my own and do not reflect the views of any present or past employers, funding agencies, colleagues, organizations, family members, churches, insurance companies, or lawyers I have currently or in the past have had some affiliation with.
I make no money from this blog. Any book or product endorsements will be based solely on my enthusiasm for the product. If I am reviewing a copy of a book and I have received a complimentary copy from the publisher I will state that in the review.
