Careful Thought

Each August since 1998, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List. A creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it looks at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students.

Members of the class of 2010, entering college this fall, were mostly born in 1988. For them: Billy Carter, Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner, Billy Martin, Andy Gibb, and Secretariat have always been dead. For these students:

1. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
2. They have known only two presidents.
3. For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
4. Manuel Noriega has always been in jail in the U.S.
5. They have grown up getting lost in “big boxes.”
6. There has always been only one Germany.
7. They have never heard anyone actually “ring it up” on a cash register.
8. They are wireless, yet always connected.
9. A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents’.
10. Thanks to pervasive headphones in the back seat, parents have always been able to speak freely in the front.
11. A coffee has always taken longer to make than a milkshake.
12. Smoking has never been permitted on U.S. airlines.
13. Faux fur has always been a necessary element of style.
14. The Moral Majority has never needed an organization.
15. They have never had to distinguish between the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams.
16. DNA fingerprinting has always been admissible evidence in court.
17. They grew up pushing their own miniature shopping carts in the supermarket.
18. They grew up with and have outgrown faxing as a means of communication.
19. “Google” has always been a verb.
20. Text messaging is their email.

Continue reading “The Class of 2010″

Technorati Tags: 2010, Beloit College Mindset List

Tags: 2010, Beloit College Mindset List

Must, wash out, my eyes…. With bleach. Because of this.

From a Breitbart article here:

Greenland’s glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, according to a Danish study, suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming. Danish researchers from Aarhus University studied glaciers on Disko island, in western Greenland in the Atlantic, from the end of the 19th century until the
present day.

“This study, which covers 247 of 350 glaciers on Disko, is the most comprehensive ever conducted on the movements of Greenland’s glaciers,” glaciologist Jacob Clement Yde, who carried out the study with Niels Tvis Knudsen, told AFP. Using maps from the 19th century and current satellite observations, the scientists were able to conclude that “70 percent of the glaciers have been shrinking regularly since the end of the 1880s at a rate of around eight meters per year,” Yde said.

“We studied 95 percent of the area covered by glaciers in Disko and everything indicates that our results are also valid for the glaciers along the coasts of the rest of Greenland,” he said. The biggest reduction was observed between 1964 and 1985.

“A three-to-four degree increase of the temperature on Greenland from 1920 to 1930, and the increase recorded since 1995 has sped up the ice melt,” he said. The effect of the rising temperatures in the 1920s and 1930s was “visible dozens of years later, and that of the 1990s will be (visible) in 10 or 20 years,” Yde said, adding that he expected Greenland’s glaciers to melt even faster in the future.

The shrinking of the glaciers since the 19th century is “the result of the atmosphere’s natural warming, following volcanic eruptions for example and greenhouse gases, created by human activities, which have aggravated the situation further,” he said.

Of course they offer no proof for that last little gem about human activities. Looks like things are not going well on the scientific front for global warming alarmists.

The pastor nailed it today with his discussion of Jehoshaphat. J-phat was one of the early kings of Judah and his story is told in 2 Chronicles. We’ve been looking at his life for a few weeks, but today the pastor focused on the king’s response to news of a pending massive attack from Edom, Moab, and some other ne’er-do-wells from the south (probably Meunites). [This episode is recounted in 2 Chron 20, if you're following along.] When the bearers of bad news passed the word to the king, J-phat was understandably alarmed, but instead of doing the chicken dance and and flying into a panic, he prayed. And he didn’t just pray, he declared a fast and called the entire nation to pray. And they did. When Jehoshaphat stood before his people to offer prayer at the temple it was not a plea for quick deliverance or an “I know I’ve sinned, but please get me out of this one” prayer. When the enemies of God and of Israel were making tracks toward Jerusalem, J-phat matter-of-factly laid out the case before the Father, trusting Him and reminding Him that He had promised to care for the nation of Israel and that he (J-phat) was powerless before his enemies apart from God.

“For
we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.” (2 Chron 20:12b)

Ya know what? God delivered His people (again) without the king or his armies having to lift a sword. In fact, God told them that they would be delivered without having to fight. All they had to do was step in after the armies of the south had destroyed each other to gather up the spoils. J-phat and his people trusted in God and He was faithful. In fact, after the people lugged all the booty home, J-phat led his people straight to the temple to offer praise to God. My first response to turmoil is rarely to turn to God. Instead, I try to thrash my way though — and generally make a mess of things. When will I learn that God is faithful?

Amazingly cool image of Orion taken by the Spitzer telescope in infrared.  God is cool, all the time.

I just finished two books - Bill Bennett’s epic history of the US called America: the Last
Best Hope (Vol 1) and Jay Worrall’s fictional Sails on the Horizon set in England in the late 18th century. Bennett is a student of history writing about a subject he loves. Worrall is a Quaker writing a fictional account of warfare. His disdain for all things military reduces Sails to a simpering revisionist diatribe against the military of the era.  Bennett’s love of freedom and his country, on the other hand, elevates Last, Best Hope.

I don’t care about Worrall’s characters. His Commander Edgemont becomes a hero through no valour of his own, but rather by being the last officer standing aboard his ship at the Battle of St Vincent. Commodore Horatio Nelson and Sir John Jervis (later Lord St Vincent) fairly worship the young officer for his supposed brilliance in staying alive. Edgemont woos a Quaker girl while at the same time mocking religion as being acceptable “so long as it doesn’t interfere with one’s life.” It’s also apparently fair to threaten an Anglican rector to get him to perorm your wedding. And surprisingly, enlightened British officers can lie with impunity to break men free from the evil press gang with no consequences. In truth, naval vessels of the era were often so poorly manned that officers recognized the need for coercive means. But then again, not all officers were hot for Quaker chicks…. And [SPOILER WARNING] guess what, it’s okay to bring in another author’s fictional character. (No, it’s not Aubrey or Maturin. That leaves the other guy….)

Bennett presents America’s history, warts and all, beginning with the 15th century voyages of discovery. This first volume of Bennett’s multi-volume edition ends with the events leading to World War One. Throughout this work villains and heroes abound. History I barely paid attention to in grade school and high school comes alive. If I have a critique of Bennett’s work it’s his fascination with statistics. Nearly every election result is presented with actual vote count. Do we need to know that Chester A. Arthur won with 1,856,847 votes to his opponent’s 1,652,084 votes and that Millard Fillmore received 2,420,938 votes to his challenger’s 1,827,197? I get the point. This is a minor quibble, though, and I found Bennett’s work fascinating. I struggled through Worrall’s book, but only out of a misplaced sense of duty. It reminds me of one of those negative comments found on a performance report: “His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of curiosity.”

Thinklings links this poster.  I’m disappointed that kids these days don’t know what a Red Shirt is and why it’s a bad thing to be.

(As judged by me.)

1. Monty Python & The Holy Grail
2. A Christmas Story
3. Young Frankenstein
4. A Fish Called Wanda
5. Blazing Saddles
6. The Blues Brothers
7. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
8. Monty Python’s Meaning of Life
9. Animal House
10. Raising Arizona
11. Airplane
12. Caddyshack
13. Planes, Trains, & Automobiles
14. Groundhog Day
15. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
16. Spies Like Us
17. History of the World, Part I
18. Wayne’s World
19. Stripes
20. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Three Mexican fishermen found drifting in the Pacific Ocean could have been lost for almost a year and two others were missing and presumed dead, the manager of a fishing company that rescued them said on Wednesday.Early reports suggested the fishermen had been lost at sea for about three months and drifted more than 8,000 km (5,000 miles) before they were found by a Taiwanese tuna fishing trawler in waters between the Marshall Islands and Kiribati on August 9.But Eugene Muller, manager of Koo’s Fishing Co. Ltd in the Marshall Islands capital of Majuro, said it now appeared they had been at sea much longer than that in an extraordinary story of maritime survival.

“The first report was three months, but after that we got some more word from the ship that it might have been since last September,” Muller told Reuters by telephone from Majuro.

Technorati Tags: mexican fishermen, rescue

Tags: mexican fishermen, rescue

Hurricane Harry has the answer here.