Expropriation in Taiwan…

"Elderly farmers... said the proposed amendments to the Act of Eminent Domain are still tilted toward corporations. Tsai Pei-hui, a professor of Social Transformation Studies at Shih Hsin University who joined the protest, said a dozen of the controversial land expropriation cases in special agricultural zones are related to major government construction projects. The draft amendment... allows the government to acquire private lands in agricultural zones, which means farmers' properties can be expropriated at will.... One of the main points of the amendment bill is that land expropriation must be in the 'public interest....'" However, the draft bill, which was scheduled for a second reading Tuesday, did not take into consideration the public's opinions on what constitutes 'public interest,' [Tsai] said."

Farmers say draft bill fails to address land expropriation woes - Taiwan News Online

www.taiwannews.com.tw

What you read is what you get…

…and other amusing anecdotes of late.

Earlier this week I was playing a grammar game in class, which involves three staircases represented on the board, which each team can ascend (to glory) or descend (to doom), and, further, which teams can push their opponents down. Three staircases is the best format, since two teams invariably gang up on the third team. Well, almost invariably. This week, I was simultaneously appalled and amused to see my seventh-grade students discovered game theory on their own! At some point, team A insisted on pushing team C up one step. I said they couldn't do that, but they were adamant. I was bemused, since vicious competition makes students focus better and try harder, but I let A bump C up. Two questions later, team C insisted on bumping team A up! Fortunately, the class was over soon, so their spirits weren't utterly sedated by their socialism. I caught one student, the original philanthropist, explaining to her teammates that she could tell team C was getting angry, so she wanted to make them feel better, not the least so that C wouldn't lash back at A. Fascinating.

This morning while driving to work, a man ahead of me was wearing a purple T-shirt with the word "STAGE" printed on the back in capital letters. The A, however, was printed without the middle horizontal bar, so all I saw was one form of the logical symbol for "empty set." That's what I get for reading oodles of philosophical logic!

On the same ride, Quine's famous phrase in "On What There Is"––namely, that modal realism "offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes"––came to mind, as I had been reading it at breakfast, and with it came the memory of my work-study manager, Bill, from my first year at university. During a break all of us were chatting and he was asked about God. He explained that he is an atheist "for aesthetic reasons," a claim I took at the time to refer to the problem of evil, but which now seems to be of a piece with Quinean nominalism. God is the ultimate in realism, modal or otherwise, so for someone offended by modal realism, such as Quine and perhaps Bill, the reality of God may be so unseemly as to be unbelievable. Fortunately, however, the Jews found God first in the desert.

Later this morning as I got up to go to class, my plastic folder-box wouldn't close properly. I pushed the lid down again but then noticed the leg of a small cardboard rocking horse was stuck in between the edges. I have seen the rocking horse every day for weeks now, but it was only this morning that I had reason to lift it up, whereupon I noticed two foiled wings were under it. They had been removed, for originally the horse was a rocking Pegasus. This was another strange coincidence, since in the same essay, "On What There Is", Quine discusses the disputed existence of Pegasus and the property of anything like it as "pegasizing."

More about books. A couple weeks ago I left a small bag at a friend's house. There were two library books inside the bag, so when I finally got around to picking the bag up at his place earlier this week, his roommate handed me the bag and explained that he "figured the books might be overdue, so [he] returned them for [me]." I was civil about it, mainly because I was in a rush, but also because I couldn't quite believe my ears. He opened my bag, inspected its contents, removed the unfinished books, and returned them for me without any notice. I felt like I was in an episode of Seinfeld. Alas, my friend tells me the roommate's logic doesn't operate on the same plane as ours. Time to go to the library, I guess.

Nothing about books this time. Last night my wife and I were eating noodles. I think she saw I was about to eat the last clump of them off my plate, for as I lowered my head, verily, to eat the last clump of noodles, the extra clump of noodles she had on her fork craned over into my hair as she tried to lower it onto my plate. I just gaped and stared. She just bawled and patted me on the back. It was a hoot.

Dream job?

A couple weeks ago my girlfriend (yes, I have a girlfriend, it's not a secret, nor is it a subtle metaphor) notified me of an ad at an online classified website seeking... wait for it... a tutor in philosophy with... wait for it... both a focus on Kant's thought and... wait for it... the freedom-determinism debate! And the pay is more than adequate. I thought it was a prank. How much more fitting could it be? "Must speak good Chinese and excellent English... a background in humanities or philosophy or law... Etc." Long story short, after some flirting about an answer and providing samples of my writing, I and the contact arranged a meeting this morning. Well, sort of a meeting. (Who is Keyser Söze?)

Good news: I got the gig!

It's a week(end)ly 2.5-hour lecture-seminar that will be held at the man's house, with his daughter and her boyfriend, and perhaps the mother, in attendance. After the "heavy vetting session" this morning--during which I did not meet the man himself, but only his daughter and her boyfriend, and during which we spoke for over two hours on the fly without a single text--, I headed to a bookstore to get a few resources. I ended up getting a small book in Chinese on Kant (since I want to be clear on his terminology in Chinese), Pockett, et al. (eds.) Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?, and Mele (ed.) The Philosophy of Action. Needless to say (...), I have numerous other texts on my bookshelves and in my hard drive which I shall study and use for the seminars.

They mentioned that Powerpoint-style lectures would be nice (that's Asian politeness for "Use Powerpoint or die," I believe). Tonight I was also told I am to lecture in Chinese, though I know their English is good enough to read and understand my notes or desperate forays into English as I try to explain things I already barely grasp in a foreign language. I realized how worthwhile it will be to start assembling such lecture materials now, which I am sure I can use in the future, during grad school and beyond. Meanwhile, these seminars will sharpen my dialectical skills, give me constant material for my book(s) on these topics, and improve my Chinese by having to lecture and debate in that tongue, albeit with those occasional desperate trench-dives into English. So? I'm basically the research assistant for a seemingly very well-off retired man with a tickle, I suspect, to be convinced that determinism is wrong. Next week's topic is twofold: 1) Do humans have free will? 2) What have scientists (esp. in the past 100 years or so) said about determinism?

I now want to record a few notes from this morning's discussion (the conversation more or less followed the order below, though I have streamlined it to cut out the usual back and forth recursion of such conversations):

• The fourfold nature of the debate [not that this begins to capture all the nuances!]: 1. incompatibilist determinism (ID), 2. incompatibilist indeterminism (II), 3. compatibilist determinism (CD), 4. compatibilist indeterminism (CI). (I think I invented the fourth category rather on the spot.) If these views could talk, they would say:

1. ID: All things in our world, including humans, happen by necessity from antecedent causes, therefore human action happens by necessity from antecedent causes and free will is at best an illusion.
2. II: While it may be true that all things in our world happen by necessity from antecedent causes, certain dimensions of human action are exempt from this principle, therefore free human action does not happen by necessity from antecedent causes.
3. CD: While all things in our world, including human actions, happen by necessity from antecedent causes, human action is still "free" in the sense that if and when it emerges from humans as genuine members of the causal matrix.
4. CI: The world is not determinist in the way ID, II, and CD suppose, but human action is not therefore free: things just happen.

• If determinism (D) is the doctrine that all states of affairs (SOA) necessarily result from antecedent causes, then from what SOA did the initial conditions of the whole world (C_i:W) result? If C_i:W is supposed simply to exist from all time, then D is not true for all SOA. If C_i:W simply comes to be for reasons we do not know, and which perhaps we cannot in principle articulate, then why can't other SOA (such as my own actions) result in the same way?


• The IDist wants to corner me between two articles of faith: first, that all my actions happen for compelling psychological reasons which "overrun" my rational free will, and, second, even if we don't know what such causes are for any case, they still exert their power on my will by 'occult' means. Imagine my consciousness as the hub of a cartwheel: it is frozen in place by the n psychological factors impinging on my power to act. For some reason, though, some spokes are "thicker" (i.e. stronger) than others, and therefore induce my will to move in line with their perceived vector. The problem, however, is that we must now ask what factor accounts for the greater thickness of some spokes (call them ego-spokes) versus others. So... we posit more occult spokes (them id-spokes or meta-spokes) around the dominant ego-spoke supposedly manifested in my action. But, then... what induced those id- or meta-spokes to influence the dominant ego-spokes? And so on, ad infinitum. Eventually the IDist will just say, "It's the universe, stupid," in other words, it's the entire SOA of the whole world which caused my action. This, unfortunately, is no more illuminating than saying, "You chose what you chose because you are the kind of person who chooses such things, and you live in a world which generates people like you." Oh. I see.


• Add to this the problem that, every time you nudge me to explain how my decision is determined by psychological factors beyond my control, you thereby expand my self-awareness and sharpen my rational agency by allowing me to be even more keenly, and thus freely, introspective, about my motives. If by such means I asymptotically reach a reflective equilibrium, which includes a humble awareness of my savory and less-than-savory inclinations, and make a full self-aware decision F, and yet you still insist I did F for some motive that's not even possible for me to be aware of... well, this begs the question: Are motives which are not consciously felt and not even unconsciously detectable really "motives" at all? If I act based on occult factors which plague me despite my best rational efforts, you might as well say I have demons. Actually, being told I have demons would be better, since at least then I'd have even more radically expanded self-awareness and publicly rational means for exorcising them and augmenting my freedom. If D can be true based on a promissory complete science which we only asymptotically achieve, then by the same token, ID can be true as a promissory, asymptotic victory. If it's only rational to accept beliefs based on adequate, if not compelling, empirical evidence, could it ever in principle be rational to espouse D (especially considering free will informs not only the myriad of normal human encounters, but also pervades our self-consciousness as agents)?


• Gödel. Say I devise a system S of five axioms: 1. A = A. 2. A ≠ B. 3. B = B. 4. A = D. 5. A = D. Fine. But then for S to be consistent, I need to add an axiom that no other axioms can be added which might compromise my axioms under different conditions. So then I have axiom 6: This is the last axiom of S. How would I secure this finality without a seventh axiom, though? On the completeness side of things, notice that I did not give an axiom for the sequence of 1-->5, nor that D in axiom 4 is the same D as in axiom 5 (or that A in axiom 1 is the same as A in axiom 5). I need more axioms, ad infinitum... or not, since it's up to me to decide when and where S "ends." So it is with every system of deduction: we decide its limits. As the boyfriend put it, "We are not limited by the tool if we don't want to use it." If human action supposedly falls out from deduction from its own assumptions, then there's good reason to think such deduction is actually subject to the agent's usage of them, not vice versa.


• Who says multiple layers of explanation are incompatible? I may say my nephew is being cranky because "his atoms are out of whack," my friend may say it's "because of a chemical imbalance," my neighbor may say it's "because society warps kids with TV," while his mom may just say it's "because he's hungry." They're all true, but only the latter account "maximizes intelligibility" (as Kant likes to put it in reference to natural teleology) and provides us with an efficient, rational course of action: put a sandwich in his mouth.


• Here's another tenet of ID: Science resorts to probability due to ignorance, not due to an actual indeterminacy in an event E's microconstituents. Imagine E is the flipping of a coin on a cool spring morning. Even though we say there is a "fifty-fifty" chance of the coin landing heads or tails, in fact, unseen by our pinhole eyes, there is strictly only one possible outcome for the coin. If we could implant a supremely cognizant observer (SCO) at the time of the coin toss, he could predict with total certainty how the coin would land. Unfortunately, however, his presence would alter the initial conditions of E (C_i:E), which would render invalid his prediction of E. We would then need a higher observer (SCO') to account for the influence of the SCO on C_i:E. But then we'd need an observer (SCO'') for C_SCO:E, and so on ad infinitum. It turns out then that D is only coherently possible if we grant there is an omniscient, immaterial agent who puts total attention on our world. In other words, D is just Calvinism with some serious Father Issues.


• Certainly we can retrospectively reconstruct the causal chain of events that led to an event G--say, a man finding a winning lotto ticket in the gutter after he storms out of an unforeseen feud with his girlfriend--, but this is not logically equivalent to saying that before G, there was only one possible chain of events which could lead to that SOA. The problem for the scientifically inclined IDist is that, while he wants to defend ID based on the elegant rigor with which science constructs causal accounts of events like G, he also must admit that our science is riddled with uncertainty--recall that it is only "human" weakness/ignorance which generates probability. The tools of science, which include probability, are supposed to vindicate determinism, which excludes probability, by providing an absolute, logically incontestable explanation for G. Here we see, though, how D is more of a theological superstition, a dogma, than a logical deduction. If the IDist says my defense of freedom is a "will of the gaps," then I can just as easily say his defense of D is based on a "determinism of the gaps." For imagine if one day science discovered a randomizer--a genuine cosmic gizmo that randomly altered the micro-principles of natural law--, science would prove not-D. This eventuality aside, the key point is that the 'deterministic' rigor of our scientific reconstructions of causal chains is a function of the exactitude of our science(s), and insofar as empirical science is always revisable, always provisional, always falsifiable (or so they say), always statistical, etc., so too are "deterministic" reconstructions revisable and probable (viz. not deterministic).


• On a camping trip. My friend is across the lake using his flash light to tell me, in Morse code, "Hurry, fire, help." I go there and help him. That night we are drifting off to sleep in our only slightly singed tents when it starts to rain. I hear a pattern of raindrops on the canvas which sounds exactly like "Hurry, fire, help." Why don't I get up to rescue the sky? Well, we "know" that my is rational and "know" the rain is not. How do we know this, though? Presumably, because we have "access to" a level of cognition which includes both people and raindrops and Morse code and our own appropriate action. It is this "higher level" of cognition, however, which is at the heart of rational freedom. Human freedom means that we can "take a step back from" our options and rationally deliberate about a course of action. Moreover, we can take another step back from this primary mode of deliberation (d:d1) to deliberate about the worth of deliberation (in d:d2). We can even "take a step forward," so to speak, and choose to "deactivate" our rational deliberation (in d:d0), such as in the movie Yes Man.


• In any event, a retort I've heard before about the raindrops/Morse code scenario is that a human is more complex than a series of raindrops, and therefore rightly amenable to a rational interpretation. By this logic, rationality is a function of complexity. (As one of my philosophy professors put it when challenged by the incredible complexity and spontaneity of human behavior, "Yeah, well, lots of weird stuff happens when billions of atoms jiggle together.") If this were true, I should credit more rationality to more complex things. (I should also view Rube-Goldberg machines as monuments of reason... but I will leave it to you to ponder why that's crucially absurd.) By all accounts, a weather system, such as the one raining on my smoky tent by the lake, is at least as complex, if not much more complex than, the system of a man's thumb on a flashlight and some photons hitting my eye. At the extreme we'd have to say that the entire universe is the most rational thing in..., well, in the world. But then "stoically reductive hard science" just gets us pantheism and gross anthropomorphism. Add to this the scenario that, when I was a small child, my big brother trained me in Morse code precisely by training on the pitter-patter of raindrops (like a music buff who challenges his friends to "name that clip" before he can). Despite my years of education, I never really shook the profoundly beautiful idea that, when it rains, "the world is talking to me." And so I listen when it rains. You never know what the world might reveal. Fortunately, I've learned to block out most of what people say, since we all know everything people say is just neurologically determined sea spray from the waves of their genetic rise and fall in spacetime. Oh. Wait....


• The bottom line is that, if I and the rain and the coin to be tossed are in principle equally subject to the same single set of causal constraints (i.e. if ID is true), then I either have just as much reason to treat rain and "triple rainbows" as complex rational agents as I treat my friends and family, or I have just as little reason to treat my friends and family with rational deliberation as I have to respect the rational interests of rain and black holes. If I can always in principle reduce anyone's decisions to the occult ramifications of their psyche and cognitive defects, then I not only have no obligation to listen to others as genuinely rational coins, I mean, people, but also have no grounds for faulting anyone for rejecting D. If it is irrational to base one's career choice on a coin toss--and, indeed, sadistically irrational to decide the fate of another person on coin tosses, as seen in Dark Knight and No Country for Old Men--, and if people are just as mechanistically determined as those coins, then it is irrational to base one's actions on the behavior of those pathetic bundles of tossed coins, those paragons of Kludgedom, known as human beings.

Above I linked to Bob "The Information Philosopher" Doyle's website about the nuances of this debate and I happened to discover his excellent Flash tutorial for his own thesis.

Notes from Formosa Ponderosa…

First of all, here is the latest (late December–early January) for BBEDU.

Second, I think I invented a new drink last night. A week earlier I had told some students of mine about egg nog. They were very intrigued and asked to bring some the following week. Well, as I don't know where to buy it, and as I don't have a kitchen in which to make the Nog, when Friday came I knew I'd be empty-handed. A failed missionary of the Nog. But as I was driving to class, I got to thinking… what is egg nog, really? It's sweet, rich, somewhat tangy milk, no? They have all those gustatory elements in Taiwan, no? Eureka!

Minutes before class, I bought two cups of "ginger tea" and a carton of papaya milk––Taiwan-style Egg Nog was at hand! (I also bought two cups of hot cocoa for them, lest they refused to try my concoction.) There was no time to drink in class and they all left pretty promptly afterward––with the hot cocoa, mind you!––so I had a bowl of semi-chilled Taiwan-style on the table to deal with. I took a sip. Pret-ty good––prettyyyy, prettttyyyy, pretttttttyyyyy, pretty good! At first it tastes like papaya milk but then the aftertaste of ginger fills out the palate and gives it a distinctly noggish kick. I'm going global!

Third, it's winter here and, as we all know "Anthropogenic Global Warming" is turning up the heat. No… wait [LINK1 and LINK2]. As I drove to tutor this morning, it was about 7ºC and on a scooter, with the wind chill, I'd put it at maybe 4ºC (44º–39ºF, for you non-Metrics out thur). And it will get colder. It's all about the sun [LINK1 and LINK2]!

In any case, as we subtropical dwellers face Old Man Winter, I am once again faced with one of my least favorite social drills: the Myth of Cold America. Here's a typical instance:

Well Meaning Taiwanese: "Do you think it's cold?"

Me: [removing my top two jackets and gloves] "Uhh, yeah. I mean, cold is cold."

WMT: "But in America isn't it really cold? Aren't you used to it?"

Me: "Uhh, well, America's really big. Some places are hot most of the time. I'm from Florida...."

WMT: "A lot colder there than Taiwan, right?"

Me: "No, it's just like Taiwan: hot and humid, with occasionally tough winters. Plus, I've been in Taiwan seven years. My blood is thin here. I don't––"

WMT: "So even you get cold?"

Me: [defeated sigh and nod]

Am I not an animal! If you strip me, do I not shiver!

I suppose the equivalent drill in the States for us Floridians is assuring people that we don't have alligators in our backyards and living rooms most of the time without warning.

We don't.

Oh, happy day! Oh, cursed night!

People are taken aback sometimes when I tell them a simple truth about me: I don't like sleep.

That's right. I'm not a huge fan of sleep.

Nothing happens when you sleep.

(Don't talk to me about dreams. My latest campaign to develop my dream-life a few weeks and months ago was another failure. As always, sleep for me is a triptych: lie down and close your eyes, blackness, open your eyes and stumble around.)

You can't do anything when you sleep.

People can drop anvils on your head when you sleep.

And, as is often the case with me, you can miss work when you sleep.

You've heard it all before, I'm sure. "I know I set my alarm."

Well, I know I set my alarm and left my cellphone on. But here I sit, a man in shame.

(Well, no, not really shame, since I already help the boss out so much and, in point of fact, the only reason a sub was needed is because she took the day off!)

So here I sit in groggy shame.

Apparently where I set my phone in my room can entirely cut off its signal, and I guess this afternoon I found one of those sweet spots.

In my beeline to the office, I was mocked by a steady stream of missed text messages and phone calls, all rushing into my pocket now that the gates of digital Hades had been wrenched open.

Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I prayed that prayer many nights with my mom as a child. It seems, however, I need a revised edition pleading with the Lord my soul to wake.

It just goes to show you: don't go to sleep unless you're prepared to die.

(Okay, well, no that doesn't really follow, but I'm a bereaved man, so you have to nod and agree with a thoughtful frown.)

Speaking of death and missing things, enjoy this clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Gym regimen - October 2010

A2: Chest and Calves (TUESDAY): 50 mins
92kg, BMI 26.5

Warmup: calisthenics, stretching, ski machine, bench press, delt flyes

Pullovers: 12, 12, 12 @ 14kg, 18kg, 26kg

Dumbbell flye: 10, 8, 6 @ 18kg, 22kg, 26kg

Seated calf raise: 20, 25, 30 @ 50kg

Incline bench press: 10, 8, 6 @ 50kg, 60kg, 70kg

Bench press: 10, 8, 7** @ 65kg, 70kg, 80kg
[** means I got a spot on the 6th and 7th reps, the 7th being an extra rep my spot urged me to do.]

Seated calf raise (outer and inner angle): 20, 20, 20 @ 50kg

Ski machine: 2 min, 2 min, 4 min

Cooldown:
Bench press: 10, 10 @ 50kg
30 Alternating incline crunches
50, 50 Russian twists

+ + +
I still find the chest my least satisfying workout, probably for two reasons. First, as I've noted before, it's my weakest muscle group. Second, it is a fairly small muscle group. Nothing compares to the awesome pump I get from working my legs and back. Even so, I notice objective gains from last week's A2, so I shouldn't fret too much. Plus, pump or no pump, fun or no fun, it's all about Patience, Humility, and Confidence.

A friend of mine recently suggested I post my workout updates on a separate page, or some such, seeing as clearer divisions in my content would allow readers to focus on, or not have to wade through, theology, or exercise, or philosophy, etc. I've tried running disparate thematic blogs before (technically, I still manage five blogs, or so), but the thing about FCA is, it's The Me Blog: it expresses the natural combination of Fides, Cogitatio, et Actio which drives my life. I think the few people who still bother to visit this blog enjoy that blend. If not, however, they at least don't mind ignoring the posts that don't interest them. Heavens to Betsy, I'm already bending over backwards, as far as FCA's reader-friendliness goes, by doing away with my beloved blacked-out links! :smirking emoticon:

On a different front, I had a very touching experience this morning while teaching. I teach first- and second-graders in the morning and this week we began a new lesson. I only see each class once a week, so I try to make it effective and energetic. The students go bananas singing the song for each lesson, apparently because I add simple dance moves and have them compete in teams. Today we sang "What Color Is It?" I had already introduced the grammar point by drilling them to show one finger to say "It's red," two fingers to say "It's yellow," three for blue, and four for green. During the song they had to do those hand motions while singing along. I was so deeply touched by how rapt their attention was that I nearly broke into tears.

Truth be told, this has happened to me a few times the past few weeks. I have had similar emotional rushes over the past seven years teaching middle-schoolers, high-schoolers, and kindergartners, but I think the relatively new experience of teaching lots of young elementary school students every day has reopened that "soft spot" I think all teachers admit they have for "the little ones." I was blown away by how pure their attention and glee were while singing such an otherwise mundane song. They were in the palm of my hand. How easily I could have lashed out at them when their psyches were so open to me, and yet how blessed it is to serve as a teacher and nourish their natural curiosity and animal affections. Partially the experience welled up from the horror and outrage I feel about child molesters––yes, clergy of any stripe included––and partially it wells up from the feeling I have gotten increasingly over the past seven years: God has gifted me as a teacher. Like Eric Liddell (about 45 seconds in), "When I teach, I feel His pleasure."

[ADDENDUM: I should mention that my giftedness as a teacher may only extend to teaching English (et relata) in this culture, or perhaps non-English-speaking cultures. I readily admit I am not a "real teacher" as far as all the red tape, meetings, lesson planning, PTA politics, etc. go for teachers in the USA, and other native teachers. In many ways, it's a piece of cake teaching here, so I don't mean to sound boastful. In many other ways, though, teaching here is very taxing, so I do mean to thank God for making me such an apparently able and appreciated teacher all these years.]

Notes on ESL poetry reader…

Whitman, All of Me

Night Flower

Hughes, A Dream Deferred

West Tower

Ref: In the Palm of Your Hand

Gym regimen - October 2010

A1: Quads and Biceps (MONDAY): 45 mins
91kg, BMI 25.5

Warmup: Calisthenics, stretching, leg extensions, curls, squats

Leg extension: 10, 10, 10 @ 30kg, 35kg, 40kg

Decline leg press: 10, 8, 6 @ 130kg, 150kg, 170kg

Squat: 12, 9, 6 @ 70kg, 80kg, 90kg

EZ Barbell curl: 10, 8, 6 @ 40kg, 42.5kg, 45kg

Incline dumbbell curl: 10, 8, 6 @ 10kg, 14kg, 18kg

Hammer barbell curl: 10, 8, 6 @ 25kg, 35kg, 45kg

Cooldown: Ski machine, crunches, Russian twists, Hindu squats, stretching

+ + +
I was tired of hour-long workouts, so I've switched back to a 4-day A-routine and cut each exercise down to three sets. Plus, my Wednesday has become busy enough that's it's too much of a hassle to stick to a 3-day routine on Monday, Wednesday, Friday/Saturday. So it's actually more economical to do shorter workouts on more days: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, with a whole weekend of rest.

I had a great pump on the incline curls and hammer-grip curls. The squat felt nice too, but I'll have to research about how to protect my lower back. It wasn't sore from my last workout, but I can definitely "feel it" on my last set of squats. The key, I think, is that I must keep my back more erect than forward. It was nice to finish quickly enough that I had time to do some ab work.

Lately, I've been having some interesting, relatively vivid dreams. We've also got a "cold" snap in Taiwan these days, which is a delight. This past weekend I made a concerted effort to sleep a lot, and probably slept at least 24 hours in two days. I find it's very easy to get sick during season changes in Taiwan, and all my teaching hours do put a strain on my system, as always. I just can't afford to get an otorhinopharyngeal infection like I've had a plenty of times in the past. With age comes weakness, no doubt, but also wisdom to counter that weakness. I'm actually healthier on a regular basis these days than I have been in years prior. Finally in a good groove, knowing my limits, giving more time to rest. Adequate sleep makes such a difference. God help me to sacrifice my night-owlish fears (or pride?).

Speaking of Taiwan…

…but not in such a depressing vein as last night. Here's a jolly little video about some friends touring Taiwan. I like to call it home. Who needs virtual reality? You! Are! There!

Random observations…

I think Freud missed his target by a few species. All that stuff about stages of anal and fecal and genital fixation in human children––bah! I've never seen a greater fecal fixation than in my new kitten. I had cats when I was a kid but I never realized how fascinated––obsessed?––they are with their own excretions. Cheetoh may be mewling for food and then ear-deep in the bowl, but as soon as I go over to shovel the piss pebbles and sandy little turds out of her litterbox, she drops everything (as it were, since cats, you understand, don't have hands, and therefore…) to sit attentively by the box, watching my every move. It's as if she hid drug money in there and is waiting to see if I'll discover it this time around. Or maybe she's curious to see what I can contribute to the malodorous little sandbox.

Is this normal cat behavior?

+++
Generally, in Taiwan, if it's open, it's open; if it's not open, it's closed. Shops and restaurants, I mean. Despite having heard Taiwanese people tout themselves on how "green" they are as a nation, it is totally run of the mill to see the doors of a shopping mall or a restaurant wide open to the sun, allowing hordes of cold-air ghosts to gush out. (And don't get me started on how much snoke they produce by burning "ghost money" every few days for lunar events.) Often, restaurants won't even have doors; they'll just have retractable metal security walls that roll up for business hours and roll down for security after hours. As a result, customers will be lined up halfway in and halfway out of the place, as those leaving or those just looking buzz and weave around pillars and the crowd at every angle. As long as the doors are open, the shop is open for business, even if it looks dark or slow from the street. By contrast, in the USA, it is my recollection that every establishment has well maintained doors and that the only way you'll know if it's open or not is if the lights are on and customers are visible. How many times have I (or you) heard this line, "Son, go up and check the hours", to ascertain whether a place is open or not?

+++
I saw Predators last week and loved it. It really brought back the old rush from the original. I was a big Predator fan, though I never got into the sequels. Plus, hey, the original was AN AHNOLD MOVIE!

I also watched Session 9 last night, having heard rave reviews of it at, of all places, Dr. Feser's blog, and hoo boy was that creepy, even despite the fact I was on and off busy sorting and haging clothes, warding off a curious kitten from the keyboard, and other such bacheloristic diversions. It's currently available for viewing at Youtube (in nine parts, aptly enough) and I highly recommend it. I'm about a third the way through The Ninth Configuration, for which I have seen many very positive reviews from some friends and Internet-acquaintances. It is surreal and gripping, but also plain funny. Sort of like Catch-22 meets My Dinner with Andre. I understand it ultimately deals with some very profound religious matters, such as evil and suffering, and it was written by Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, and by all accounts a very devout Catholic. Also highly recommended, and also (again, in nine parts!) available for viewing at Youtube.

Time for coffee.

My Achilles' heel...

No, no, I mean it: my Achilles's tendon was feeling it last night as I tried to get to sleep. And why did I have so much time to notice my Achilles' heel last night while trying to sleep? I got duped once again by the wonderful drink industry here.

I have taken to drinking wheat germ and milk here, when I want a small meal between meals, as part of my fitness regimen. Yesterday, not being a full-on gym day, was also a lower calorie day. I figured a cup of wheat germ milk and a few shishkabobs (chicken hearts and bacon-wrapped scallions!) would be a nice, light, protein-rich semi-meal an hour or two before bed. It only dawned on me this morning that the reason I couldn't sleep till maybe 2AM was because I had ordered a wheat germ milk tea, not simply a wheat germ milk drink. Tea drinks tend to have tea in them, as you might know, and caffeinated tea tends to have caffeine in it, so I tended to get a fresh blast of caffeine in me at almost 10PM last night. The "health nut" impulse in me fixated on the wheat germ and milk and just took the "tea" in the name to be a social custom. "Rice" is the catch-all word for "food" in Chinese and I often treat "tea" that way as well. Sitting to "drink tea" doesn't strictly mean you sit and imbibe tea; it just means you sit with someone in tea-imbibing-like setting, and may drink juice or coffee or not much at all. When I'm on my guard, I will ask two or three times whether the drink I'm ordering has tea in it--does it have caffeine in it? Maybe I was too tired, or, then again, too optimistic about wheat germ, and I let my guard down. So I tossed and turned another night. No more caffeine after 4:30PM!

Much of the reason I was so tired, and my Achilles' tendon was so sensitive yesterday, is because I went for another jump rope session yesterday afternoon when I got an early afternoon off. I picked up a slightly longer jump rope yesterday for under US$6 (a JEX swivel-handle rope with a fiberglass core in the rope... I dunno, it says that on the box... so... it seems cool and durable), since my Bobby Hinds Lifeline rope seemed a bit small for me. Once I did some research I discovered the Lifeline rope is in fact not too short, but I am just too insecure and maladroit. Once I realized it's me and not the rope, I took it in stride and adapted to the Lifeline. Even so, it was nice to have a more cozy perimeter in which to build my skipping skills. And I am happy to report I saw marked improvement yesterday! My standard jump increased in speed and I was able to complete a few sets of 100 revolutions without as much trouble as just a day before. It helps me immensely to watch my feet in a mirror lying against a wall on the floor. I also figured out how to do the left-right-left jogging skip, which was a sweet victory. What worked for me is this: begin with one foot slightly forward against the other foot and then just do some skips in that position; then when you feel comfortable, switch the feet once and skip a few more times in that position. Practice this midair switch a few times, in fewer and fewer skips, and almost immediately you'll find yourself switching feet on every revolution. It was also nice to confirm I can do the slalom skip with little difficulty. They say that 10 minutes of skipping rope is equivalent to 30 minutes of jogging--a 'fact' my mom said she has heard, too--and I have no reason to doubt them. My pulse was easily 180 beats per minute while skipping and my calves and quads were feeling a nice little burn by the middle and end of my 30-minute workout. I warmed up well and threw in some jumping jacks and three minutes of isometric stone pinching for each hand (cf. video illustration of harder core gripping exercises), and then made sure to stretch the rest of the evening. And then the rest of the rest of the evening. And then the rest of the rest of the night.

Tonight I've got a quads and biceps workout after tutoring (sigh). In about 30 minutes I need to be referee for a kindergarten match between "Germany" and "Ghana." I have my yellow and red cards ready at hand, the children's stupefied tears be damned!

It dawned on me that you (and I?) can probably best make sense of my perhaps weird combination of intellectual and athletic fervor by seeing me as Zorbatic--a tough little Greek, after all--albeit Zorbatic in a relatively more chaste and measured way. You might even say I fancy myself a Zorba of the inner world. But that seems like a topic for another post....

By the way, please pray for my dear little nephew. He got a little contusion on the head and went to the hospital for extended observation. It looks like he'll be fine--tough little Greek!--but it's still a good time to pray for his health and his parents' flourishing, both physical and spiritual.

Gym regimen - June 2010

29 June 2010
88 kg, BMI 25-25.5
30 mins
Core/cardio "sprint"

Warmup: 60 jumping jacks and stretching

Cross-country ski mill: 15 mins (150 pulse)

Leg curls (hams): 15x 15x 15x @ 30 kg

Seated leg press (+calves): 20x 20x 20x @ 180lbs

Seated oblique twists: 30x 30x @ 35kg 30x @ 30kg

Lever back extensions: 12x 12x 12x @ 50kg

Ab crunch machine: 15x 15x 15x @ 30kg

+++

This is a "surprise" entry in my bodybuilding log, since originally I was going to wait until Wednesday to hit the gym. My plan is a 4-day split on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. But by the time class was over, I was itching for at least "a quickie," so I scrambled out of the school, bought some cheap gym shorts and a towel (since I hadn't packed my own), and dashed to Central for what was a lovely little sprint workout. I was reading online during my dinner break tonight, looking for a basic four-day split routine to get me started, and I read how Arnold said the last few reps were the key, because those were when you could push yourself into the pain, or, of course, you could ease back and "try again next time." That's a little of what I felt on the leg curl machine: grunting my last few reps, knowing I'd have that much more of an edge the next workout. I also read in The Education of a Bodybuilder how he learned from his first real mentors in Germany not to dally between exercises. He was accustomed to spending 3-5 hours in the gym and was perplexed why his German mentors kept buzzing from station to station. They said there's no reason to spend all that time in the gym if you can rip your muscles in less time. That's the buzz I felt tonight doing three sets in under 30 minutes. Woot.

Here's a cultural observation: tonight there were a handful of much bigger guys than I had seen my first day there. Initially impressed, I also took it with a grain of salt when I saw many of the guys' form: terrible! Just yanking on the grip for high rep, low range of motion. What I call "bodysculpting" versus bodybuilding. Just getting mass on their bones without really altering the physiology of their muscular tissue, says I (well, I and Arnold and plenty of others). I was also bemused to notice at least three of the bigger guys ended their workout by smoking a fag or two outside. Does that happen in the USA? I'm genuinely curious.

In any event, I didn't mention it in my longish post yesterday about fitness (though I have gone back and edited that post to "make it so"), but one of my great intellectual and spiritual role models, Fr. Stanley Jaki, told me in our one encounter, less than three months before he died, that he had rowed in high school (in Hungary). He was much more robust than I had anticipated when we met, so his background in crew made sense of his well known and evident vitality.

I also failed to mention that another lasting factor in my development as a "jock scholar" was my dad's many years of running. I don't remember a whole lot from my childhood (unless, I suppose, I were to start cataloguing what I do remember, at which point it might seem like quite a lot...), but two constants about my dad were his love for movies and his commitment to running. I don't know how many years he did the River Run (in Jacksonville, FL), but I vividly recall seeing all kinds of running paraphernalia in the house. Love for movies and love for physical fitness have become lasting impressions from my dad, an inheritance which finds its perfection in the fact that he introduced me to Chariots of Fire.

Dismembered fish…

Went to pick up a bag of laundry tonight after class. The "boss," whom I gather is the elder brother of the woman I took to be the boss when I dropped off my first bag of laundry there a few weeks ago, stood up from his white, plastic lawn chair when I pulled in on my scooter. He dragged from his cigarette and gazed at me with one eye, as I asked, "You remember me?" He nodded, dragged again, and ambled over to the shelves to retrieve my bag. It was only one bag, and smaller than I recalled. "Just one bag?" I asked. He gazed with one eye and nodded a few times. We shifted over to my scooter for the transaction, but when I asked if he could break a thousand, he dragged on his cigarette and said, "Just pay when you come next time." I paused, partially giving face, partially calculating the odds of me returning: they were good. I nodded and he said, "Just pay next time." I thanked him and asked, "You guys close about 9:30, right?" He glanced over at the bowl on the gas burner, in which a dismembered fish sat in shallow soup. Or maybe he was glancing over at the fifth of hard, clear liquor on the washing machine. "Depends if I'm drunk or not. If I'm drunk by 8:30, we'll close then!" He laughed and dragged on his cigarette. His skin was orange like a Halloween pumpkin in the fluorescent light. I chuckled and nodded, limply hoisting my curiously small bag of laundry. "If not," he went on, "about 9:30," which is the time his sister, more reasonable, as all women are compared to alcoholic brothers, had told me. "That speed?" I ventured. He broke into a fit of smoky cackles. "That standard?" I ventured again. He laughed and nodded at me with his stump of a cigarette. He sat down as I swung my leg over the seat of my scooter to be on my way. I waved at him from the throttle of my scooter, but he didn't notice me. He was glancing at the dismembered fish in the bowl. Or maybe at the unfinished bottle of clear, hard liquor on the washing machine beside him.

ESL or English game...

Useful for any two-class or compare contrast and rank topic.

Have been teaching about animals, insects, spiders, zoos, etc.

After establishing vocabularies (i.e., specific animals, etc.), set them up into a (numbered) hierarchy. E.g., cheetahs eat ostriches, zebras, fight cheetahs, wolves eat zebras, giraffes fight wolves, etc.; or: people eat animals, animals eat spiders, spiders eat insects, insects eat fruit.

Use flash cards (randomly drawn) or dice to pit one class of animals against another for competing teams.

Cue prompt/phrase as winning answer.

A lot of fun.

There they sit…

There they sit for catechesis. One class had it this morning while other classes were rehearsing for the graduation performance. Then another class sat for it this afternoon, perhaps just for piety's sake. The catechesis in question was a video about the not-too-distant environmental apocalypse facing Taiwan, and the world. Somber wide-pan shots of icebergs and rivers which as they go the way of all flesh. Closeups of unsuspecting animals chewing cud and staring from long grasses. Meanwhile the teacher drones on about how imminent and absolute the doom is going to be. "We are all going to die. … Look, in foreign countries they will die too. … In ten years it will all be gone, we're going to die. See?" (Cue high-speed flood over CGI cityscape or some such.) In the same meanwhile, of course, the kids go on chattering about how cool the ice and flooding looks. Any religion teacher from centuries past knows the feeling: trying to pass on Great Truth while kids piddle with idle hands and tongues.

I call this a catechesis without a hint of irony. Like any religion, the Eco-Gospel has a creation and fall myth, a ring of prophets and an official hierarchy, and a robust eschatology. Granted, it should be called an anti-gospel, since it is a message of doom, not of hope––a katangelion, not an euangelion. I wish I could score another neologism by calling the target of this post envirovangelism, i.e., environmentalism with enough depth to be religious, but the term has a pedigree, according to Google. I like "envirovangelism" not only because it's snappy (and apparently unclaimed), but also because of the hint of "viral" popularity it conveys about environmentalism. If nothing else, environmentalism has "gone viral" and now feeds on itself as a positive feedback loop of media generativity.

In any case, the Eco-Gospel's creation myth is basically Darwinian evolution, which is fine as far it goes. Its fall legend is, of course, the Industrial Revolution, but may extend as far back as the implicit misanthropy of a lot of environmentalism would carry it, namely, to the rise of human interests in nature. The ring of prophets and priests are none other than the likes of Thomas Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, and the coterie of scientists populating the Climate Research Unit, and other great envirovangelists. There is even a fairly elaborate code of piety that extends to which kind of car a Green Person may drive, which foods she may or may not eat, what kind of people she may or may not associate with (if only for the good of her own Green Consciousness). It might even count as a sacrament of confirmation to buy a hybrid-engine car and surely a good contender for communion would be the tending of one's compost pile.

It is the eschatology of the Eco-Gospel, however, which most caught my eye today. My own students were being dutifully filled with fear at the doom coming to mankind if we do not repent. The "good news" is that there is hope of a splendorous heaven awaiting us if we reduce our carbon footprints, buy green, and vigorously clamp down on population growth (which our less inhibited and freer thinking ancestors would recognize as colonialism and genocide in slow motion). Enemies of the katangelion are enemies of the true good of mankind and should be opposed as heretics. Everyday the words of the prophets are confirmed: We are all guilty of the sin of hurting our Mother in Earth and we must all turn from our corrupt, industrial ways–– must all return to Eden from Nouveau Jerusalem. Eventually, the darkness will be overcome, whether by a redemptive treacly pastoralization of humanity or by a just damnation of humanity to eternal extinction by Mother Nature and her demiurge the Selfish Geneie. Until then, however, terrestrial Nature––Nature "dwelling among us"––suffers like a paschal lamb for our endless sins against Life.

Richard Dawkins is known for, among other things, accusing religious parents of child abuse for raising children under a faith system. The fear of hell and the (putative) scorn for rationality amount, in Dakwins' lidless eyes, to actual abuse of children. For my part I have to wonder which is more cruel, though. Filling children's heads with fears of fire and brimstone, while giving them heartfelt assurance and explicit instruction in how to avoid such a fate (the Sinner's Prayer, the Sacraments, etc.)––or filling their heads with dread of ice, flooding, famine, and extinction without giving them any assurance "there is a way out" nor any explicit instruction about how one can be saved. After all, what can a typical 5-year-old do about melting ice caps and dying frogs in the Amazon? Nothing, except risk a slow descent into environmental melancholy and a sense of impotence in the face of the coming doomsday. There is a reason religious people have shaped the world more than non-religious people: they ignored a creeping sense of futility and acted as if God were literally on their side.

Moreover, is "Our Father in Heaven" really less abstract and misleading to a child than "carbon-based global warming" and "rampant extinction"? As a child grows up, certainly his grasp of complex ecological concepts will improve and he will get a more realistic, more defensible view of envirovangelism. But the same goes for a traditionally religious child: Our Father in Heaven coalesces into the Being of All Being in a way that salvages forgivably crude childhood catechism while also meeting advanced criticisms in an abstract mode.

My claim is that evangelistic environmentalism is strikingly like a religious phenomenon. I would like to note that some environmentalists are explicit about the religious burdens and blessings of environmentalism, invoking the Spirit of Gaia, the Spirit of Humanity, ancient Pagan Wisdom, and the like as a direct challenge to the alleged anti-environmentalism of mainstream religion (viz., Christianity). Nor am I the only person to have pointed at the religious air of environmentalism. Consider:

Is Environmentalism a Religion?
by David Boaz

Novelist Michael Crichton said that environmentalism had all the trappings of a religion: “Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday.” Atwood is filling it out with saints and hymns.

Environmentalism as Religion
by Michael Crichton

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism.

Environmentalism as Religion
by Paul H. Rubin

Consider some of the ways in which environmental behaviors echo religious behaviors and thus provide meaningful rituals for Greens:

• There is a holy day—Earth Day.

• There are food taboos. Instead of eating fish on Friday, or avoiding pork, Greens now eat organic foods and many are moving towards eating only locally grown foods.

• There is no prayer, but there are self-sacrificing rituals that are not particularly useful, such as recycling. Recycling paper to save trees, for example, makes no sense since the effect will be to reduce the number of trees planted in the long run.

• Belief systems are embraced with no logical basis. For example, environmentalists almost universally believe in the dangers of global warming but also reject the best solution to the problem, which is nuclear power. These two beliefs co-exist based on faith, not reason.

• There are no temples, but there are sacred structures. As I walk around the Emory campus, I am continually confronted with recycling bins, and instead of one trash can I am faced with several for different sorts of trash. Universities are centers of the environmental religion, and such structures are increasingly common. While people have worshipped many things, we may be the first to build shrines to garbage.

• Environmentalism is a proselytizing religion. Skeptics are not merely people unconvinced by the evidence: They are treated as evil sinners. I probably would not write this article if I did not have tenure.

In a blog post about Rubin's essay one anonymous commentor wrote this zinger, "In the Christian Bible there is one character who says 'Worship me and I will give you power and authority over all the kingdoms of the Earth'. The modern environmental movement has taken this an turned it around: 'Worship the Earth and it will give you power and authority over evil'." Touché!

In "New Religion of Environmentalism," Robert H. Nelson writes:

When Earth Day started in 1970, few people would have expected it to become a globally observed religious holiday with its own ten commandments, including “use less water,” “save electricity,” “reduce, reuse, recycle,” and “spread the word.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants people everywhere to “commit to action” in defense of the Earth.

America’s leading environmental historian, William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin, calls environmentalism a new religion because it offers “a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action, and judges human conduct accordingly.”

In an article at the website Beyond Atheism, the author writes with a refreshing measure of frankness:

Let's face it: sometimes it's pretty lonely being an atheist. Everyone else in town gets all gussied up and gets together in church while we sit at home or roam the empty streets in search of open businesses. As much as we criticize them, folks who belong to religious communities get a lot out of it. …

What's an atheist to do? As I described in the Further Than Atheism article To Church or Not To Church, some atheists choose to go to church even though they don't believe, … [but for some atheists] that's a little difficult to stomach, so we're left on our own.

A great alternative for atheists is to join non-religious activist groups. Activism is like religion in that it is based in groups of people that come together because of shared ideals, but it's unlike religion in that it doesn't demand absolute allegiance or an abandonment of critical thinking (at least in the best activist groups - I'll admit that there are some activist communities in which unthinking devotion is a basic requirement of membership).

Environmentalism is particularly ideal for atheists because it isn't based upon a short-term objective. The environmental problems our world faces are so immense that we can all be pretty sure that environmental organizations will be needed for generations to come. Environmentalism is also fantastic because it's compatible with a secular humanist perspective. … Almost all atheists assume that this world is all we've got, so it makes the best sense for us to work to preserve its integrity.

Note the last few sentiments. A secular religion inevitably latches onto "something Greater", some unseen, undying, metaphysical Principle of Unity and Order (such as "Humanity" of "the good of future generations") which explains an individual's predicaments, prospects, dreams, and duties.
But perhaps the atheist environmentalist should wary. This video captures just how profoundly religious (or "enthusiastic," in Knox's sense of the term) environmentalism can be. It speaks for itself.



It might be objected that this is an unfair exhibit in my case, since it is clearly an extreme eco-group and therefore an outlier among real eco-friends. By my lights, though, I don't see the point of environmentalism––an Ism––if it doesn't have room for this kind of mania. The basic complaint of most environmentalists, as I understand them, is that too many people care too little about the Earth. Ergo, the cure of environmentalism is to make more people care more about the Earth. It logically follows that the fewer people care too little, or the more people who care enough, are environmentalist victories. But what would "caring enough" look like? Anything close to a naturalist shrug ("It's Nature, shit happens, gotta roll with it––evolution, the circle of life") is obviously far short of that to which what environmentalism calls us. The environmentalist must by definition exceed shrugging naturalism if she is going to do all she can, and convince all the people she can, to "save Earth." Hence, the clear-minded environmentalist will be drawn closer and closer to the behavior in the Earth First! video. So it is in the eco-spiritual life: to stand still is to fall behind.

A final objection may be that I'm right––but it doesn't prove as much as I think. In other words, perhaps a winning rejoinder is to admit my––and others'––analysis of environvangelism is basically correct: environmentalism is religious, but then deflect the blow by saying "religious" is just a limiting term for the larger category of "anthropological." Meaning, it may be a small price to pay to admit environmentalism is religious in nature, since the objector might want to re-situate religion itself in the larger arena of "evolved human behavior." That is the tack Crichton seems to take in the lecture I linked above. Religious structures of behavior are universally and irrepressibly human, so it's natural to see environmentalism fill in the space for those structures. Hence, the objection goes, envirovangelism is not wrong for being religious, because religion is not right: it just is, it is "just something people do to get by." At that point, however, I think the debate quickly dissolves into irrationalism, for if envirovangelism is, like religion, just an evolved survival mechanism, then why defend it as a scientific ideology? If environmentalism is inherently, or at least inevitably, religious, is it "pure science"? And if it is pure science, why is it, by all appearances, so remarkably religious?

Or might that not be a great clue itself? Perhaps the religious impulses of "scientific environmentalism"––as well as the equally profound and equally marginalized scientific impulses of religion––point to a higher synthesis in which humankind can assume its full stature as naturally religious beings. To find "pure religion" and "pure science" arching back to meet other again and again is to see a great clue about reality: both endeavors are deeply human efforts to know the Creator of both the heavens and the earth. A core tenet of Christianity, in most cases, is that humans are naturally, instinctively drawn Godward. It turns out a major tenet of evolutionism says the same: we are just as naturally and adaptively religious as we are scientific. Otherwise, we are no more rational in science and in religion than any other creatures in their own adapted animadversions. A high price indeed to pay for Scientific Rationalism.

To build a fire...

The book recently for my smallest students has been about the weather, so I've had the chance to further damage my vision by demonstrating "the power of the sun" with a magnifying glass and assorted petroleum-based objects. In one class, the game today was to say, "The sun makes fire," when I pointed to that picture. The other two pictures were to prompt "The sun is hot" and "The sun is toooo hot," but since two grammar patterns was too much for most of them in a game, the fire pattern devolved into "The sun is fire." Which got me thinking. The fire created by the beam through the magnifying glass really is the sun's heat. It is a way of concentrating the literal flames of the sun into a small enough space to ignite what would ignite at much closer distance to the sun. But my quandary is this: which flames of the sun are actually causing the ignition under the magnifying glass? It's not the flames erupting "right now" as I hold the glass, since the energy from those flames won't reach earth (and my lens) until eight minutes later. But if it is the flames from eight minutes before, can we really say those flames were emitted in order to create a small ignition on earth in a kindergarten playground? My point is that at the time they erupted from the sun, the solar rays which eventually started my little fire did not have as one of their causal functions (or causal ends) "to ignite waxy paper 93,000,000 miles away." At the time those rays left the sun, they lacked the causal power to ignite the paper under my lens, since the paper and the left wouldn't be in hand in the sunlight at that time. The lens and paper would only be ready for ignition eight minutes after the rays began their flight. And yet clearly it is nothing less than those rays which cause the ignition on earth. So the question is, how large is the sun? It seems that it's causal powers extend well beyond its 'immediate' solar dimensions (qua "the sun"), since its energy causes ignitions eight minutes away in spacetime.

I intend to write more about this when I get a chance to sit down, but my main concerns for the moment are 1) in what spatiotemporal frame of reference should we consider the rays as they pass through the lens, 2) in what spatiotemporal frame of reference should we quantify the sun, and 3) how should we understand the causal powers of solar rays if they can assume unpredicted new powers outside their own spatiotemporal so to speak frame of existence? At the moment the rays were emitted, there was no way an observer could really say they 'contained' the power to ignite Teacher E's waxy paper on earth, since, at that time, the waxy paper etc. were not 'there' to 'participate in' the solar rays' causal impact.

The pig says...

The child says...

Teacher E.: "Who likes juice?"

Various Students: "I like juice!"

Max: "I don't like Jews!"

+ + +

Teacher E.: "What's this?"

Various Students: "Cut!"

T.E.: "Well, no, this is SLICE." (rubs blade of hand along palm in a slicing motion) "SLICE."

V.S.: "Sly!"

T.E.: "SLIIICCCE."

V.S.: "Slice!"

T.E.: "Slice!"

V.S.: "Slice!"

T.E.: "And this?" (chops blade of hand into other palm) "This is CUT."

V.S.: "Cut!"

T.E.: "Good! Slice."

V.S.: "Slice!"

T.E.: "Cut."

V.S.: "Cut!"

T.E.: "Slice!"

Erin: "Teacher, look, slice!" (rubs blade of hand down crotch along zipper) "Slice go bye bye!"

T.E.: "No, don't slice that. Not in this culture."

+ + +

Teacher E.: "Erin, stop playing with her hair. She's not a toy. ... Even though her name is Barbie."

Engrish for the Day!

"He eats his teeth every morning."

"She brushes her breakfast every morning."

"I can eat three bowls of Tokyo every day."

It's funny because it's true.

Middle, bottom, top, middle...

[HT to the last verse of this Roots jam for this post's title.]

I live in central Taiwan. Have for nearly the last seven years. Last weekend I went to Kenting, which is in the far south of Taiwan and this weekend (yesterday only, in fact) I went to Taipei, the capital, in northern Taiwan. I'll be in Taipei again this Tuesday for some teacher training and then again, God willing, two weekends from now for a little meeting and maybe some free Japanese tutoring. Even aside from these social and semi-social excursions south and north, I'm a bit of a pinball these days, as I teach at three schools in both Taichung and Changhua (about 15km south of Taichung). As I wrote last week, my visit to Kenting was wonderful, even though, perhaps as a result of the trip, I had a hoarse voice and nagging fatigue last week. My visit to Taipei was just as invigorating, albeit in different ways, and I seem to be mostly over my hoarse throat and am feeling more energy again.

I tutor on Saturday mornings, so I can only make it to Taipei in the late afternoon or early evening, and then I'd have to also pay for a room Saturday night. I find it better, by and large, just to take the high-speed rail (HSR) early on Sunday (the 6:30AM train is 35% off!), go to Mass at Holy Family in Guting, then see whom I need to see and ride a late HSR back and (the worst part of all) drive my scooter all the way back to Beitun from Wuri. It's definitely a "full" day, believe me, but I'm a busy guy and I figure covering so much distance (social and geographical!) in one day is worth the effort sometimes.

So, yesterday morning I took the 6:30 HSR and got to the Main Station at 7:30, whereupon I took the MRT (ahh, how I love the MRT!) to Guting and had a nice fifteen-minute walk to Holy Family. It was much cooler and windier in Taipei than in Taichung and it turns out yesterday morning was the national postal service recruitment exam, so dozens of people were cramming, poring over obscure sheets of data and multiple-choice questions on the HSR and MRT. Vendors were selling snacks, pens, rulers, pencils, etc. outside NTNU (National Taiwan Normal University), and I assume there were other testing areas throughout Taipei. Despite the wind, trash seemed to be frozen in place, like leftover props from the previous night, or as if the trash hadn't yet woken up. A sandstorm clogged much of the air yesterday, another meteorological gift from northern China. I went to confession at Holy Family--with an 81-year-old very jocular and pastoral priest from mainland China--and the Mass was "dead on" as far as my soul and the readings went. I prayed the Rosary, finishing just as the next Mass began. I then made my way by foot to the Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT station and rode a couple stops to Andong St., whereupon I walked to Bade Rd. in search of Lin Dong Fang Beef Noodles. I was scheduled to meet good ol' Mr. Liu, "my Taipei friend," whom I hadn't seen for many months. Indeed, I had not been in Taipei since August 23 last year, just shy of my first brother's birthday. Fateful day? Methinks aye.

Since I got to Lin Dong Fang much earlier than I had expected, I had an hour to kill while Mr. Liu made his way there for lunch, so I strolled to a Dante Coffee shop to do some lesson planning and maybe even reading. I ordered a blueberry-apple vinegar drink and a small tuna burger. Seated next to me was an older, business-man-looking man reading a Japanese magazine. We kept sort of glancing towards each other, he curious about my English books, I curious about his Japanese articles. As I mentioned, I have begun learning Japanese and I had finished lesson 15 of Pimsleur's Essential Japanese I on the way from Holy Family to Ba De Rd. The man noticed I watched certain stories on the news more intently than others, so he asked me in Mandarin, "Do you understand?" I answered, "Yes. Do you speak Japanese?" He said he did and then we had a nice conversation. He was from Taipei but, until about 15 months ago, had not been in Taiwan for over twenty years. Sometime after college he went to Arizona for graduate school and then lived and worked in Silicon Valley as a software engineer for over twenty years. He had also been doing business in Japan every few weeks for the past five or six years. His girlfriend is Japanese, and a teacher of nearly seven years at Global Village in Taipei. He taught me some Japanese, mostly tweaking my pronunciation on small points, and warning me that Japanese always has "new phrases," even after years and years of study. Certainly not a little depressing, but he congratulated me both for having an ear sensitive to pitch and accent and for being able to read and write hiragana and katakana. We exchanged "biodata" and are looking to meet again in a couple weeks. (That's where--when I meet him and his girlfriend--the possible free Japanese lesson comes in!)

Enough time had passed so I made my way back to Lin Dong Fang, bought some flash cards on the way, and waited for Mr. Liu outside a Lin Dong Fang that did not open that day. So Mr. Liu rode me on his scooter in search of other grub. Finally we settled on Han Ji Noodles, a new place that had replaced a Lao Dong Beef Noodle shop he recalled was there before. (Suffice to say that I and Lao Dong have a long and humorously frustrating history...!) We enjoyed some clear broth beef noodles and caught up after nearly a year apart. The usual: Taiwan, China, history, occasional politics, cultural developments, etc. Then he drove me to the Xinyi area and we chatted more. We swapped English and Chinese notes and caught up yet more on other fronts. I was supposed to see a movie with some friends later at the Xinyi Vieshow theater, so we had a couple hours to kill. We walked--or leaned, against some gusts of wind--to Taipei 101 and I went to the Page One bookstore, an old haunt I hadn't visited in probably two years. I found some very appealing Japanese materials, about the fate of which I shall say nothing, and then we headed back to Vieshow. He walked on to drive home and I did yet more waiting--reading and doing some light gong fu, this time, amidst the shopping clatter--until my friends arrived. We had some snacks and made small talk and then got into the theater. The film was Nodame Cantabile, the penultimate "episode" in a popular Japanese mange-made-TV-series. I fell in love with Nodame Cantabile, despite myself, two or three years ago when a dear friend introduced it to me. Nodame Cantabile is about idiosyncratic music students and teachers in Japan. The main plot arc is actually about the tortuous growth of love between the tender, quirky Megumi Noda, or "Nodame," and the brilliant, fiery Shinichi Chiaki. (Secret confession: I tend to associate very strongly with Shinichi. Someone else I once knew reminds me all too much of Nodame haha.) The show is appealing on many levels: it is weird and humane and deceptively touching, peppered with arch slapstick comedy, and bursting with great music. The movie did not disappoint (even though I watched it in Japanese with Chinese subtitles, which wasn't so bad, I guess, since that's how I had watched the TV series!), and, truth be told, it moved me powerfully, even to tears. Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and personal memories (from childhood, from Taiwan, etc.) will do that to a sentimental wolverine like me. Grin, shurg.

After the movie, I took the MRT back to the Main Station and caught the 10:30PM HSR to Wuri. The ride home, all the way up Huanzhong Rd., felt annoyingly and bizarrely long and was actually pretty chilly by the time I reached home. But home I did reach. And I slept, in my nicely cleaned room (thanks to a cleaning frenzy the day before). Thanks for reading this far. Stay tuned for more actio-adventures!

Aware of the risks...

I am fully aware of the risk of being charged with sanctimonious hypocrisy (along the lines of the Pharisee in Luke 18), but I still want to go ahead and thank God that I am, as far as I know, not someone whom people--especially strangers--want to punch within five minutes of being around. The guy in the restaurant just now, however, was someone I wanted to punch about three minutes after he walked in. Why? I would like to think the mouth is best used for eating when in a restaurant, not for blabbing on and on about seemingly every possible inane topic that springs to his springy mind. "Hey, last time I was here I had dadada, do you still have it? Oh, there it is, on the menu! ... What kind of wallet lasts for ten years? Look at my wallet! I test wallets by smelling them, that leather smell, before I buy them. Look at this wallet. ... Hey, why are you cooking the curry like that? Isn't it a bit weird to add onions to curry rice? Why do I think it's weird? ... Hey, I remember, I think I remember, last time I ordered this, you guys put a big piece of meat in it, but where is that big piece of meat now? Gosh, I still think it's weird to put onions in curry, or is that just me? ... Hey, this soup looks good, what is it? Oh, riiiight, egg drop soup-- I see the label now!" One of those time I wish I didn't understand Chinese. Meanwhile, of course, the guy is getting up and sitting down every thirty or forty seconds, flipping through a magazine, digging in his pockets. Crack head? Or just way too "chipper" a fellow? Sadly, there are zipperheads and motormouths in every language.