Class Meme

From Lutherpunk and Anastasia:

Bold all statements that are true.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college

Sidebar--My mother would answer these questions like I would. My father wouldn't bold any of them.


5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18

11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed
Close enough.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school Oh yeah. Run by Quakers. So it was a religious school with a completely different dynamic from Lutherpunk's high school.
17. Went to summer camp

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. (And camping, bed and breakfasts, and cottages. And extremely dirty motels in South Carolina.)

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child Provided that originals of editorial cartoons and my uncle's artistic photography count.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home. My father is one of the most enthusiastic homeowners on the planet.
25. You had your own room as a child
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course. Mainly for ethical reasons.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college. Does owning stock count?
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. I've flown on airlines that no longer exist. Like Piedmont. I had a passport as an infant.

31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. Um, no, I was quite familiar with the size of the heating oil bill. That's why those ads offering poor people in the Northeast Venezuelan heating oil burn me up. Our own government really should be doing more.

Il Papa E La Sapienza (E La Scienza)

Through a couple of episodes of the narrative, Michael Flynn has suggested in his recent novel, Eifelheim , that heresy trials are the aitia of academic peer review. In the first, a brilliant physicist is accused by the chair of her department of trying to use physics to justify young earth creationism whereas her ideas about slight variations in the speed of light and the quantization of the observed galactic red shifts stem from the desire for elegance and simplicity in an area of cosmological mathematics. But all the while she notes how much the encounter feels like a heresy trial. In the second, William of Occam indicates his disdain for Durandus of Mende and excoriates him especially for sitting on the tribunal that condemned some of his Commentary on the Sentences , to which a colleague replies, "Peer-review is the the fate of all philosophers worth reading."

Flynn's suggestion brings insight into Benedict XVI's disinvitation from Universita La Sapienza in Rome as mentioned in places such as Entangled States . I need to go off to work soon, but let me quickly sketch the tensions. The Pope is very much an academic, but his present office theoretically is unaccountable to earthly critique or authority and claims a potentially universal and perpetual jurisdiction over truth. Moreover, those who sought to disinvite him are clearly disturbed by his justification (through another philosopher, Paul Feyeraband) of Galileo's condemnation for heresy as supremely rational and just. Feyeraband, I should note, is chiefly known as a proponent of "scientific anarchism," in which science proceeds not by falsification or logical positivism but by ad hoc procedures that aim toward a particular consensus about the beautiful and the good (which is not necessarily beautiful or good.) Theology, I should add, might as well be a science in Feyeraband's critique. So as far as I can tell, Benedict XVI is being criticized by Italian physicists for viewing science as fallible on the same grounds on which theology might be considered fallible, yet suggests the theological community in the form of the Roman Catholic Church thus had the right in the 17th century as now to assess the fallibility of science without any consideration for the fallibility of theology and certainly without any peer review. Goose meet gander, I suppose.

Such a man must be allowed academic freedom so that his risibility may be exposed to the world entire. Shame on you, physicists of Italy.

History Meme

It seems that all memes die with me, so if you want to do this meme, count yourself as one of the seven.

I always have been interested in social history, so I've never been obsessed with one particular historical figure (such as Ben Franklin) as others I know have been. I was going to do my history meme on a geologist, but I just had a better idea.

Link to the person who tagged you. (that would be Derek of Haligweorc
List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.

The historical figure I'm going to choose is William Smith (not the geologist...common name):

1. William Smith was hired as the first provost of the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania.) His major qualifications were an essay he had written on education amd a degree from the University of Aberdeen. Only the former really mattered to Ben Franklin, who essentially hired him. But this was a good thing, because he was not a graduate of the University of Aberdeen. Talk about lying on your resume.

2. Though this theory probably appears nowhere in the historical literature, I'm fairly sure that William Smith left Aberdeen without a degree after four years, because he was an Episcopalian and was thereby disqualified from teaching school or being ordained according to the penal legislation that went into force after the '45. Oddly enough, many of his new bosses (Trustees) were Presbyterians.

3. In America, Smith did not stay out of trouble with the law and was imprisoned in 1758 for seditious libel. He lectured students from his jail cell.

4. Smith preached the inaugural sermon of St. Peter's, Third and Pine, in Philadelphia. Utterly insignificant to you, but I was baptized there.

5. Smith founded Washington College in Chestertown, MD and St. John's College, Annapolis as part of the original University of Maryland.

6. Smith was elected the first Bishop of Maryland but was not confirmed by General Convention because he was (sadly) a rather notorious alcoholic.

7. Given #1 and #2 (ironically enough), it's even more surprising that Smith received an honorary S.T.D. degree from the University of Aberdeen in 1759.