Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, October 30, 2006

It was an interesting weekend around these parts for mostly mundane reasons (if that makes any sense). The weather for the weekend got me into one of those contemplative moods and so I thought I'd try to chronicle my thoughts in some fashion.

Friday was the rain event we've been waiting for for about 3 months. It started raining Thursday night and rained almost all the way through Friday, slowly building in intensity until the cold front that had been plowing through the tropical moisture got here. When that happened, the rain got really heavy for about 45 minutes and then everything sort of tapered off with just an occasional cloud burst for the rest of the evening. After the front passed though the wind picked up and on Saturday morning we were treated to one of those days that reminds you that the world is dying at this time of year.

For most of the morning the sky looked like tattered rags being blown across the sky at varying speeds like they were in a race dictated by the whims of the four winds. The gusts tugged the dying leaves reluctantly from the trees and sent them cartwheeling down the street. It really was weather fitting for Hallowe'en.

I wonder if Hallowe'en happens now because it is now that the world really looks like it's dying. In a lot of places the leaves have changed and are being dropped and the reminders that all things must die (even though they actually don't-at least most of them) can be seen everywhere. The trees have flamed-up and are now headed towards their long hibernation wherein they look like skeletons rooted in place while reaching towards the sky. The birds are moving and all the butterflies and bees and the rest are long gone along with the fitful activity and purposeful buzzing. More often now, there is silence broken only by wind and the rustle of the dead leaves.

I wonder if Hallowe'en is so powerful in our psyches because we fear dying a lot more than we fear death. For most, death is either a good place to be or nothing at all but dying, that's another story. Maybe that's why demons and ghosts and ghouls and such are so frightening to us deep down. They aren't dead but they aren't alive either. They seem to be in a constant state of dying and slow decay. There is never any rest for the pain and sorrow and heaviness of existence nor is there any joy or contentment. Just existence in that perpetual state of Fall becoming Winter.

As Saturday wore on the tattered sky showed through some blue and then cleared but the wind kept on through the weekend until today it finally blew itself out. As such, all my riding was indoors on a trainer or exercise bike. Today, which promises to be a nearly perfect day, holds almost no time for riding so I will likely enjoy it in a more pedestrian fashion. Still, if the weather can hold for a bit longer this week, I should get a couple of good rides in even with the Sun going down so much earlier. At least my morning commute in to work can now be done daylight which reduces the risk of getting hit by an unsuspecting motorist.

I have this urge to really unplug; to live by the cycle of the natural light given. I've been reading a new book, "Acquainted with the Night" that talks about night and how we have changed it and I think I miss it. I wish there was true night sometimes. A darkness that forced us to settle down and rest and be more still than we are. Over the weekend, as the weather was settling itself out, I spent a lot of time reading by candlelight and found it very restful. Yet as the week begins, I realize that I'll have little opportunity for that kind of rest. I understand that our ability to carry and create light is a good thing but there are those times...

Anyways, thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Hello there. How's it going? I thought I'd write a post here. I'm not exactly sure why but I have this need to ramble on a bit about a few things that have been bouncing around in my head the last few days.

I've been thinking a lot about the whole God/faith/religion thing a lot lately. Probably that's tied to the fact that I'm back in the gym for my early training workouts which means I spend out 45 minutes on an exercise bike and I read while I'm spinning along. I just finished "Practitioners: Voices Within the Emerging Church" and I'm now reading Don Miller's latest book, "Searching for God knows what." Along with these I've been reading a really challenging book on prayer from the Orthodox (OC)tradition. The Miller book is really stretching me right now. It's amazing how his writing speaks to me. "Blue Like Jazz" was one of those books that I'll probably read every year for a while. To me it seems like Miller's a postmodern Augustine in that he speaks to his reader from within his relationship to God which has been a lot of places. I feel like that. I've always felt like I've been outside the evangelical faith movement even while I was a part of it. I felt like the evangelical god was too small for the God I had met while wandering through the forests of Oregon. Miller's experience is similar and it really helps me to know that I'm not some sort of freak or weirdo. I don't understand all these people who can just sit in a pew and hear some preacher talk about how Christ came so that we could have a bunch of "self-help" ideas.

The OC prayer book has convinced me though that while I see God as so much more than what you hear from so many bad preachers and narrow churches I am nowhere near really accessing that. I understand that God is very relational and not so transactional but I don't seem to be very good at being in that relationship. I seem to be a better husband than I am a Christian. I communicate with my wife a lot more regularly than I do with God. There was a chapter in "Practioners" that talk about a movement in the UK called 24/7 Prayer and all of the sudden I long to be in that kind of community. I want to be able to exist in the "place"/community where I can just pray and not have to organize it all. Reading the book on prayer from the OC tradition I have realized just how shallow my prayer life really is and I long for a lot more. The question is how to carve it out of a busy life. I think that as I finish up some of the commitments I have I'll not replace them and spend that time trying to grow a prayer life.

In something that probably relates, has anyone noticed how bad TV sucks? I've been watching more TV lately to see what's on (and because I've gotten a little too lazy) and so much of what everyone says is good TV really stinks. I watched Studio 60 and saw nothing compelling. It looked like a show by boomers, about boomers in the entertainment industry. Sort of a West Wing meets SNL sort of thing. The story was just banal (I only watched to see Sting play the lute-another boomer thing I suspect) and entirely generationally self-centered. The acting on TV has just gotten terrible (maybe it always was and I'm just now beginning to realize it). And the comnercials...who pays these people who make up the ads? For most of Tuesday night I kept looking at my wife after a commercial and asking, "Was that as stupid as I thought?" She didn't disagree with me once.

I've started back into training. Time in the gym and shorter base mile rides right now. For some reason I feel like this is so much a better use of my time than spending time on anything in pop culture and yet I struggle a bit to get on the bike and actually do it. Still, I like how I feel right now and I'm looking forward to next season. I enjoy going down into the gym and lifting a bit because it's different than just spinning my wheels and I like the feeling of getting rebalanced. I have a yoga/Pilates balance-ball workout I like to do during the base miles period of training. I pulled it out and did it last week and was surprised how little coordination and strength I had on any part of the workout that wasn't directly related to an one-the-bike movement. Tells me that I'm way out of balance nuerologically. Lifting and the yoga stuff should get that sorted out.

Well, I'll stop now before this gets any longer and more boring and more rambling and...well, you get the picture.

Thanks for reading and peace.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, October 13, 2006

As the weekend comes around I thought I'd share a little find with my readers...all three of you. A couple of weeks ago the lovely wife and I were down Macon way to do some general shopping. I decided that I wanted to stop by a package store known for carrying an occasionally good supply of microbrewed nectar to see if I could score some Sam Adams Oktoberfest. Little did I know that much, much more theological things awaited my inspection.

As I looked through the selection I was pleasantly surprised to see a large variety of little known ales and lagers from smaller breweries far and wide. So excited was I that I missed entirely the Sam Adams seasonal I had come looking for. I had looked over most of the stock and even the nice selection of hard ciders they carried when my eye wandered across a couple of six-packs at the bottom of the cooler. I couldn't really believe what I was seeing. The beers were called He'Brew: The Chosen Beer. One was a dark, brown ale (my favorite variety of ale) called "Messiah Bold" while the other was "Genesis Ale". I had to have the darker of the two varieties and as you can see from the picture, it is in excellent humor. After having a few, I can report that they are also in excellent taste.

So, if you are of age and willing to try something humorous and tasty, I recommend these. And, yes, they are Kosher.

L'Chaim!

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

I hope that you can appreciate the sublime irony of this post. I found the following article out at CNN and thought I'd share. If you'd like to get together for a soda sometime or to turn a pedal in fellowship, just drop me an email...

Facing the Faceless

At least we don't have too many laptops at our Wednesday night CoffeeHouse.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, October 08, 2006

As I enjoy our Fall Break I thought I'd say a few words about my classes as Mid-terms have come and gone.

The class that is most surprising to me is my physical science class. For the last three semesters I have had classes that have really struggled with the material. The weird thing is that I've been teaching using my present syllabus for about six semesters. Previously I had taught the course using a real world issues/solutions approach where the material revolved around considering three or four real world issues (such as global warming and colonization of Mars) and understanding the issues that are involved in finding those solutions. The experience was pretty uneven with the really good students getting a lot out of the class but also doing a lot of the work for the weaker students. So I went to a model based curriculum where we study the content through looking at the modeling process in the context of the scientific method. For the first year the students did really well with the average in the class being about an 80. Since then things have been in a slide with this year's group being the most underachieving. That's not to say that there are good students in the class; there are. It's just that there are some students who, even though this is their second year in college and who have failed classes before, still haven't figured out this isn't high school. Some students are failing the class badly and didn't withdraw by the last day to do that without taking the WF (same as an F in terms of GPA). Others are getting by with a low C/high D on basic intelligence but just don't want to work. Overhearing the conversations in class many of the students put about three times more time into their social lives than they do their academic lives. These students want to be educators. It almost makes me glad I don't have kids.

On the positive side, my engineering physics class looks pretty darn solid in a lot of ways. I've got a good group of students who seem to be truly interested in the material. My boss came in to review me during this class and they made me look great. They were engaged, they asked excellent questions and they were obviously prepared for class so I looked like the greatest teacher ever. I can honestly say I look forward to teaching this group every day. Next week is going to be applications of Newton's 2nd Law which is real nuts and bolts physics. Once we get done with this we go into the really elegant stuff of the two conservation laws but this is really where the foundation for the rest of the year gets laid. From what I'm seeing right now, I'm very, very encouraged.

The last two days have been pretty close to perfect as far as vacation days go. I've enjoyed some college football (specifically my Gators beating LSU) and an occasional strategcally placed nap. The weather Saturday was so perfect that I was both disappointed and relieved that I had taken the bike to the shop for the annual off-season tune-up. Instead of riding I lounged around in the backyard doing some reading and then catching up with my brother who was traveling back home from a trip to Ireland (yeah, some guys have it tough) and had some time to kill in New York. The big thing has been to get some rest and some re-creation so I've been reading about prayer and studying the Gospel of John. Tomorrow we have a trip to a nearby state park planned with the dogs for a little hiking and a picnic before I do my Tech College teaching gig.

Thanks for reading and I hope your week is as good as my weekend has been.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, October 06, 2006

Election season is here. How can I tell? The first sign for me is the increasing number of stupid comments being made by incumbants of the US House of Representatives at kiss and shake gatherings. Wisconsin Representative Frank Lasee suggested that it should be at least legal and maybe mandatory for teachers to carry a little heat in the classroom.

I'll let that sink in for a few minutes.

This guy's a Republican who, if he follows the general trends of his party, thinks most teachers are basically incompetent to teach someone else's children (his are probably in private school somewhere) and yet he thinks we should put loaded firearms in their hands? Don't get me wrong. I think the recent spate of school shootings deplorable but maybe this guy should work on child porn, parenting skills and violence on TV and videogames issues instead of turning algebra class into "High Noon" in Tombstone.

The next sign is the increasing font size found on the Drudge Report. At this rate, by the time election day rolls around Matt Drudge will have one HUGE word for you to click on. Today's headline was about Nanci Pelosi and a comment she made about needing a woman to clean House. Of course, Drudge focused on the inflammatory line but if the substance of her comments is considered there's a lot to recommend them...at least to me. She wants to eliminate the federal deficit (not the debt) which I'm all about. I've been calling for that for the last five years. Want to run a war? Do it but then tell the American people they have to give up something to fund the troops. I love the troop support but what we as a nation are doing is supporting them by loading the young men and women that are fighting on our behalf with a load of debt that they'll spend the rest of their lives paying off. You want to spend $2 bllion a day (the cost of the war) then you gotta cut $2 billion a day out of people's art funding and scholarship money and local police force enhancement grants. On the flip side, if you want to cover every child in the nation with some sort of health care plan then you've got steal that money from another program or you have to raise taxes. I have to balance my budget, our students at Gordon have to pay their bill in full before we allow them to take classes and I think the Federal Gov't should adopt a pay as you go program. She also wants to enact legislation that breaks the link between lobyists and legislators. While I doubt that any legislation she might try to enact will work for very long (money always finds a way to power-it should be the Davies' First Law of Historical Action or something) it at least sends a message.

Anyways, here in Georgia, the Republican Governor is pimp slapping his electoral opponent and, in what may be one of the most amazing, audacious and effective political strategies I've ever seen, mananged to make a martyr out of the person his Democratic challenger beat in the primary after a long and viciously negative campaign. Sonny Purdue, in a single commerical, turned defeated candidate Kathy Cox into a victim of his opponent, Mark Taylor, and a martyr for his campaign. It's about as politcally brilliant a move as I've ever seen. Kind of slimy but politics usually is. The whole sausage metaphor really applies here of course.

Well, I've got a splitting headache so I'll sign off. Hopefully I'll have the post mid-term update sometime this weekend.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Mid-term is bearing down on my students like a runaway semi full of cargo. For some of my students, the semi is loaded with soft, fluffy pillows while for others it is filled with anvils. Big anvils. Big, hard, iron anvils like the ones Wile E. Coyote always seemed to be ordering from the Acme company to squash the Roadrunner with that always seems to boomerrang on him after he fell off the cliff into a batch of cacti and land on his head. These are the anvils in the semi driven by Agent Smith from the Matrix that is headed for some of my students. It's gonna leave a mark.

For my Physical Science class today the anvils come in the form of their mid-term exam. Things haven't really improved much since my last update on this class. One bright spot is two of my students actually came to my office with question indicating they had actually studied the material. There was great rejoicing. Still I expect this to be a massacre (which is more than decimation but less than annihilation...I used to have an instructor in grad school who referred to his tests as annihilation operators; he wasn't too far off in his description). Not enough studying for some students and too much studying at the last minute for others. I expect very few took my in-class advice to study some every day for the week before the test. That having been said, there will be those who are prepared and will do well.

My physics classes went through their first round of exams and they are now smaller. My good early section all made it through pretty unscathed. The interesting thing is that most have B's right now. My later section of algebra-based physics didn't fare so well and I'm now down to 11 out of the original 22 with a couple more that need to drop. The engineering physics class did well, which was to be expected. The biggest obstacle in that class is a bit of laziness where a student will ace one thing and then put the next off for too long and not have enough time to really nail down the ideas and so do poorly. That's something I'll have to fight to break over the course of the year.

I'm off the bike for the next few weeks. The season has finally just caught up with me and I can't go any more. I had hoped to make it through November but all the signs pointed to chronic overtraining so I'm taking 3-4 weeks off to let my body heal. Once I finish with that it'll be back to base training and light weight training to rebalance things before I start into the heavier work.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, October 02, 2006

As I write this the national news services are reporting the third school shooting in a week; two of which were by men specifically targetting girls. What's happening here? There seems to be no apparent pattern with one attack in Colorado at a fairly affluent suburban school and another at a rural, Amish one room schoolhouse. There's nothing that might tie these attacks together and we may just be looking at a statisically aberrant cluster. On the other hand, I've got to wonder how much of this is driven by the rise of violence in our society on TV and in Videogames. I'm not talking about the normal well-adjusted individual but more about the marginal member of society. Has the increased levels of violence seen begun to erode the boundaries of what is unthinkable in the minds of some? Hard to prove statisitically and so it's hard to counter some sort of First Amendment argument but one has to wonder.

The Physicist   Link Me    |