God gets up off the couch

I was sitting on the couch, idly listening to the big girls play outside while baby napped in her swing, and thinking about how lazy I felt. Babs came and pounded on the back door, but I didn't move because I knew that a) if it were something important she'd be yelling; and b) Noogs can open the door for Babs if necessary. There's a hierarchy of movement at work here: for a simple knock I stay put, for a certain tone of voice I get up after a minute, for a certain cry I'll get up right then, and then there are the screams that have me setting records sprinting to the door (and nursing pulled muscles a few hours later).

And I was idly contemplating how fortunate we are that God doesn't sit around on the beatific couch listening to our inner two-year-old knocking at the door and think, "This one isn't worth getting up for." No, God stands at the kitchen window of heaven, loading the celestial dish washer (because cleanliness is next to godliness), and watching his children play on the swingset of earthly life. Then, when a mishap befalls, he dashes out the back door of his compassion to comfort and kiss the scraped knees and ant bites as we turn to him and ask, "Can I be good?" And he doesn't get frustrated by that.

And as I was idly turning this over in my mind, Noogs walked in, stark naked, holding a bucket, and slipped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.

I'll ice those aching muscles tonight.

Faith vs. Mystery

Every week on the way to our parish, we drive by a tiny Episcopalian church with a large sign out front that says: "Where false certainty ends... There true mystery begins!"

Now, I try not to go in for a lot of inter-denominational mocking, because it doesn't tend to go anywhere productive, but ever since this sign showed up a year or two ago, it's struck me that it summarizes a lot of what's wrong with a certain brand of Christianity.

Certainly, there are elements of the faith which are beyond human understanding. The trinity. Transubstantiation. The human and divine natures of Christ. These are Mysteries of the faith in the sense that we know of them only through revelation and they cannot be fully understood in human terms. (Which is why they provide fodder for all the juiciest heresies.)

However, some Christians are enthusiastic about are about mystery for its own sake. I've known several very earnest Christians who assert that 'faith' is that set of things which cannot be known by reason. Thus, one gets statements like "You can't 'know' God exists, because then you wouldn't have faith." or "My problem with transubstantiation is that it's so intellectual. We shouldn't have to know how Christ is present in the Eucharist so long as we have faith that he is."

Certainly, we 'know' things by revelation in a different sense than we 'know' mathematical axioms, historical analysis, or scientific theories, but this does not necessarily mean that we 'know' them less. A belief must be a belief in something. We believe certain things to be true -- such as that Christ suffered and died for our sins and was raised up on the third day. I would say that I am more certain of that truth than that Hamlet was written by William Shakespeare or that it really isn't possible for anything to travel faster than 299,792,458 mi /sec -- though certainly these represent different types of certainty.

Perhaps I'm reading far too many of my frustrations with liberal Christianity into a single slogan, but I can't help thinking that whoever came up with that sign would have described Christianity as "one part of the history of the continuing dialogue between God and humanity", as if one day this dialogue will take a sudden turn and God will say, "You know what, fellas? I woke up this morning and realized I've been awfully old fashioned about some things. Let's see if we can move into the modern world on some of these moral issues."

If seems to me like the very purpose of Christianity (and religion in general) is to come into contact with eternity, with those things that are and always will be true, good and beautiful. And, thus, things that are 'certain' in a way that far exceeds the petty certainties of the everyday world. Further up and farther in.

The Energetic Educator

Ah, here it is: one of my favorite stories by Giovanni Guareschi. This one makes me laugh every time I read it.

The Energetic Educator

I knew a savage of a man. He lived on the outskirts of Milan, in a small house, where he had furnished an enormous attic for himself, and there he worked, and sometimes he even slept there, because the children annoyed him, his wife annoyed him, the cat annoyed him.

Everything, in a word, annoyed him. Then too, he would never allow anyone to touch his things, to move a piece of paper, or a pen, or a book.

Like a hawk in its nest, this savage hovered as a constant threat over the whole house. He had a telephone that was connected with the kitchen, on the ground floor, and every once in a while he would lift the receiver and bawl out that he wanted a cup of coffee.

Now this savage had two tender young children: a boy of ten and a little girl under seven, and it was she, above all, who was the victim of his brutality.

This little girl, who was less than seven years old, was small, slight, almost sickly, yet she was forced to climb three steep flights of steps carrying in her right hand a heavy saucer with a cup full of coffee and in her left a huge album of illustrated stories. Ought she to have been bawled out if the coffee, overflowing from the saucer into which, by the force of circumstances, it had become transferred, dripped a little bit on the stairs?

Yet this savage did bawl her out.

The most horrifying scenes usually took place over the paste.

This brutish man was both intolerant and impetuous and, when he looked for his jar of paste and couldn't find it, turned into a madman.

He would not admit that either for pleasure or for profit a child might like to collect those agreeable colored pic­tures, of a historic, geographic, or philatelic nature, which these days constitute one of the chief prides and joys of children. The pictures are supposed to be pasted into albums made for this purpose, and of course, paste is essential. But this savage despised all such things. All he wanted was his jar of paste. And he wanted it at once; every moment of waiting brought forth a fresh howl.

One day a shriek was heard: "The paste!" And the brutish man descended like an avalanche into the kitchen. The little girl was sitting on the floor, working on her collection of pictures. The man hurled himself like a beast upon the paste jar, but when he had it in his hands, an inhuman cry was torn from his throat: "It's empty!"

The mother, who rose with the dawn, had done all her heavy housework and was now allowing herself a few moments of relaxation with an innocent little murder story. She raised her head.

"It's empty!" shrieked the man. "The jar of paste is empty! And I have two hundred clippings to paste up! And today is Sunday! It's empty!"

The mother attempted to calm the demented man with a word of wisdom. "It would be empty," she observed, "even if today were Monday."

"If today were Monday," shouted the man, "the stationery shops would be open and I could buy another jar!"

Still in the voice of a man possessed he turned on the little girl.

"This time," he howled, "you're going to get a lesson

you'll remember the rest of your life!"

Then a terrible thing happened.

The man unbuckled the heavy leather belt he wore and drew it slowly from his trousers: slowly, because he wanted to prolong the sadistic pleasure he derived from the infamous act he was about to perform.

He doubled the belt, so as to render it shorter and heavier, and dealt a blow of bestial force. The buckle struck the table, shattered a porcelain ashtray, and dented the wood.

The man dealt another blow at the table, breaking the other ashtray and a vase. It was at that moment that the truly irrevocable thing occurred: the man's trousers slipped down.

The mother raised her eyes from her book.

"You'll have to get some new underwear," she remarked. "Those shorts are worn out."

The man drew up his trousers and put his belt back on.

He looked fiercely around the room. In one corner stood the broom. He grabbed it with both hands and broke the handle across his knee. Brandishing the stick, he advanced slowly on the little girl. But suddenly he stopped and turned to the mother.

"Look at her!" he shouted. "That wretched creature is laughing!"

"Naturally," said the mother. "When you pulled your trousers up, you left your shirttail out."

At this the man was seized with a murderous fury. In one villainous stroke of the stick, he smashed the vase on the mantle. The stick flew out of his hands, so he advanced on the gas stove and kicked it.

The little girl, in her corner of the room, went on arranging her pictures.

"That's what I'm going to do to you!" the man shouted at the little girl. "I'll teach you to touch things that belong to me!"

At this he remembered the paste again and banged his fist savagely on the table.

"An empty paste jar! Two hundred clippings to paste up! And the stores closed because today is Sunday!"

The little girl looked up from her pictures for a moment.

"Actually, it's Saturday," she said, "and the stationery store is open."

The mother got up.

"You've done an unworthy thing, Giovannino!" she cried. "You've accused your daughter of its being Sunday."

The man stood confused for a moment, then lost his temper altogether.

"Never mind!" he shouted. "That's the way she learns, even if it is Saturday!"

"Children don't learn through brutality," Margherita said coldly.

The man headed sullenly toward the stairs.

"And tuck your shirttail in," said Margherita.

"I want my paste!" said the man.

"You'll get it," Margherita said. "We'll go out and buy it now. Then you can paste up your silly newspaper clippings."

Twenty minutes later the man telephoned down from his lair. The little girl answered.

"My paste!" cried the man. "Has it come yet?"

"Yes, but right now I'm using it for my pictures," she replied, putting down the receiver.

The Lady and the "E"

Here's another story by Giovanni Guareschi -- this one dedicated to our oldest daughter Eleanor, who too struggles with "E".

The Lady and the "E".

The Pasionaria is struggling with "e," and the struggle is titanic. For one thing, her notebook paper is poor stuff and keeps wrinkling up like the face of a laughing octogenarian. For another, her pen has a nasty point that keeps sticking through the paper. And her ink, in addition, has only to glimpse a patch of white to begin to spread like a black cloud.

Then too, besides the fact that "e" is a cowardly opponent and capricious as well, it must be borne in mind that the Pasionaria began school unencumbered by cultural paraphernalia. Last summer someone put a pencil in her hand and a notebook in front of her and tried to persuade her to copy some lines-but she did not lose her head. She laid the pencil down on the desk and closed the notebook.

"I can already read the lines," she said. "And when I go to school, I'll learn how to write them."

And now she's struggling with "e," and the struggle is titanic.

When she reached the fifth "e," she paused to recover her breath. Margherita was stretched out on the sofa, asleep. The Pasionaria gazed at her for a moment and sighed.

"While I work," she said, "she sleeps."

"But she," I said, "already knows how to write `e."'

"You do too," replied the Pasionaria, "but you're not sleeping."

"A question of temperament."

"And you help me sometimes," the Pasionaria went on. "You fix my toys when they break, and all that. But what does she do for me? . . . Sometimes," she sighed, "I could just die."

I felt anxious.

"How many times?" I asked.

She raised three ink-stained fingers.

"Oh." And I handed her a couple of caramels, which she began to chew.

She returned to her task with a will, took up her pen, dipped it in ink, and bent over her notebook. But the pen got stuck in the paper, then skimmed over to bury itself in the wood of the desk.

"Stay there," she cried, "lord and master!" And she turned to me.

"What good is it?" she demanded furiously.

"What good is what?" `E.

"It's essential. We'd be lost without `e.' Could you say `sheep,' for instance, without `e'?"

"I know how to say it. It's the writing that's hard. They could make it less complicated at least. I like `I'!"

I told her "e" was the basis of everything. And she took up her pen again, but before returning to the struggle, experienced one more bout of rebelliousness.

"And meanwhile she," the Pasionaria cried, "she goes right on sleeping!"

"We could exchange her," I said, "perhaps get one that's younger and nicer."

The Pasionaria had resumed her life-and-death struggle with the hostile "e." With a shrug of her shoulders, she murmured: "For the time being let's hold on to her. But one of these days, you'll see, something awful's going to happen!"

Fire From Heaven

Catholic SF/F author and would be evangelizer looses fire from heaven on Jehovahs Wittnesses.

Tim Powers is, for my money, one of the best fantasy and science fiction authors out there -- though perhaps that's not a fair comparison since he increasingly writes in his own very offbeat genre, not in the sometimes derivative world of modern F & SF. If you haven't read Declare, you should.

Engineering for Self Service

I spent a few hours this weekend turning the newly acquired Mauser into a pile of greasy parts sitting in a paint tray in the garage. There are about 25 separate parts in a Mauser, and you can take the whole thing apart using nothing but a Swiss Army Knife, a small hammer and a finishing nail (you could even skip the finishing nail if you were willing to use the firing pin to knock the pins that hold various parts together out -- you could also skip the hammer if you were more into personal brute force than I am).

Now, I've taken the rifle down a bit farther than your standard field strip, because I need to thoroughly clean and reblue it, but even so, German soldiers were expected to be able the take the rifle down pretty completely for thorough cleaning when in barracks. And although I've made my share of beginner mistakes (which might have been avoided with a better set of instructions than I'd been able to find online so far) it's really not that hard to do at all. Compared to the computer hardware industry where I work (though as a marketing analyst, not a tech) the Mauser is a miracle of user friendly engineering.

And now I think about it, it had to be. Germany turned out millions of these rifles during WW2, and the ammunition available at the time required fairly regular disassembly and cleaning to prevent rust. So one of the essential elements of a successful rifle design was that it be easy for a soldier to take apart, service, and put back together again fairly quickly and without too much training. (Rifles that weren't simple to use and service tended to be failures. The Russian SVT-40 was a semi-automatic rifle which was possibly a decade ahead of its time in design, but the Soviet army was never able to successfully train their troops to service and use it, so it never saw much action compared to the bolt action rifles that had been standard since before World War I.)

In modern civilian life, many of us own technology that we don't know how to service. I certainly can't take apart and clean my car. And although I can strip down and replace parts on my computer, most computer users can't. However, although it can be really annoying not to have a car or computer for a week, the results are unlikely to be fatal, or to cause our country to be overrun. So we accept the inconvenience of having to take our technology in to a central repair location in return for the convenience of being able to adopt technology at will without having to learn how to service it -- and without the manufacturers having to go to the expense of making a product which is simple enough to be serviced easily while still being functional.

All of which may seem like a pretty thin insight to spend four paragraphs on. But it seemed significant at the time...

Now I think about it, perhaps another factor is that in the computer hardware industry companies like the one I work for expect to make a lot of money selling service contracts (same with cars) and you can't do that if you make it easy for users to service their own technology...

The youth of today

Darwin and I are feeling rather worn out lately with the girls. They're both going through a stage of disobedience (why doesn't VeggieTales have an obedience-themed episode?) that involves tantrums. not listening, playing cute, and my favorite: dissolving into giggle fits as the parent becomes sterner (and more frustrated). Plus we've had a rash of "incidents" caused by forbidden behaviors, such as getting in the fridge, climbing up the shelves in the closet, jumping on a bed on which Baby is sleeping, playing in the sink, pulling down clothes that have been hung up, etc.

Every now and then we wonder, "Are we doing something wrong? Are everyone else's kids behaved like this?" So, here's your chance to let the world know about your children. If you have a story of misbehavior, disaster, testing -- anything that makes you want to tear out your hair -- feel free to share it here. If you have a good strategy for coping with the young miscreant, post that too. If your child has learned how to unlatch your fridge, I really want to hear from you. And if you can't leave your children alone to go to the bathroom without some sort of massive destruction taking place, let's just forget the blog and go to lunch together.

Help me out, parents! Let us know that we're not the only ones!

Pushing the Boundaries

Maggie Gallagher has a post up on IMAPP about the NY Times' recent love affair with polygamy. The article she references is from the Arts section and consists of showing several women from real polygamous relationships in Utah the first episode of Big Love (the new HBO series about your friendly neighborhood polygamists) and getting their reaction to it. (They think, among other things, that it focuses too much on sex and not enough on the importance of religion in the polygamous lifestyle.)

Maggie's point is an interesting one: For many intellectuals, the next logical step in any given progression is always a point of intense interest. Thus, the NY Times elites, having some time ago settled on the idea that many 'non standard family' configurations such as gay marriage make sense, now find it intriguing that polygamy may also be a viable lifestyle. This doesn't necessarily mean that they are actually in favor of polygamy. (And the Mormon fundamentalist polygamists they're interviewing probably aren't in favor of many of the cultural innovations that NY elites support.) But they do find the idea that polygamy might be another valid lifestyle interesting.

However, cultural standards are essentially that set of standards which no one thinks it makes sense to question. In 1900, there was a cultural standard against unwed motherhood because almost no one was willing to even imagine it as a moral or cultural option. By the '60s and '70s, voluntary single motherhood was becoming imaginable, even though most people tried very hard to avoid it. However, a generation after it became imaginable, it now isn't considered all that surprising for a woman to intentionally have a child out of wedlock.

Gay marriage as a lifestyle first become imaginable in the '80s. Much before that, not only was it not imagined by the culture as a whole, but so far as one can tell it wasn't even particularly desired by active homosexuals themselves, who celebrated their freedom from straight relationship standards.

Now the idea of polygamous or multi-tiered family relationships seems intriguing to some cultural elites. And without any generally accepted cultural standards of what a marriage or family is at an essential level (other than 'a relationship of people who love each other') there is no reason why the idea of 'multi-marriage' might not also become unsurprising in certain segments of society.

Which goes to show, you need to be careful what ideas you play with.

The High Notes

Here's a demographic you don't hear much from these days: the castrati.

Castration before puberty (or in its early stages) prevents the boy's larynx from being fully transformed by the normal physiological effects of puberty. As a result, the vocal range of prepubescence (shared by boys and girls) is largely retained, and the voice develops into adulthood in a unique way. As the castrato's body grows (especially in lung capacity and muscular strength), and as his musical training and maturity increase, his voice develops a range, power and flexibility quite different from the singing voice of the adult female, but also markedly different from the higher vocal ranges of the uncastrated adult male. (From Wikipedia.)

This BBC article includes a 1902 sound clip of the only castrati ever to be recorded: Alessandro Moreschi, who directed the Sistine Chapel Choir until 1913. (Moreschi also recorded an Ave Maria.) His voice is odd and freaky and gives me the shivers, frankly -- I can't really be comfortable listening to it, knowing how the bizarre vocal quality was obtained.

H/T Whispers in the Loggia

If You're Not Outraged...

One of Amazon's newer features is a discussion thread for users to discuss each product -- even products that aren't available yet. So when I found Ramesh Ponnuru's book (below) I noticed there were already several discussion threads, even though the book won't be out for another month.

It turned out most of the commenters were liberals absolutely furious over the title of the book and the except from the jacket flap printed on Amazon. It's one thing to disagree over abortion, seemed to the be general sentiment, but writing a book titled "The Party of Death" debased political discourse and was unnecessarily inflammatory in an already divided country.

Now goodness knows, I can see worrying that our national house is becoming too divided to stand. But at the same time, those who take the "why are you pro-lifers so angry?" tack always strike me as vaguely clueless. I had a coworker a few years back who was big into politics. In most economic issues, he was very slightly on the Republican side of moderate, but on social issues he was a definite liberal. "Why don't those people just take a year off?" he wanted would demand every so often. "I'm tired of every election being sex, sex, sex, abortion, abortion, abortion. How about if everyone just agrees not to talk about the issue for a year?"

But this kind of thinking only makes sense if you either believe that abortion is no big deal, or that it's absolutely impossible for the political process to achieve any progress on the issue one way or the other. Otherwise, life advocates will never 'shut up' because being silent in the face of over a million deaths each year is impossible. And abortion advocates will never 'shut up' because if abortion is just another medical procedure which stands to make millions of women happier and healthier, then restricting it is clearly just plain cruel.

On the one hand, I do often wish that our political arena didn't so much resemble a cultural cage match. On the other hand, when we disagree on such basic and important topics, one can't expect people to 'shut up' on them unless one expects people to abandon their principles and be quiet in the face of a major perceived injustice.

Coming Soon...

Ramesh Ponnuru, for my money by far the smartest of the National Review set and a solid Catholic as well, has a book due out on April 24th: The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life

History Comes Knocking

Our friendly neighborhood UPS man came by yesterday and left two heavy, long packages with Darwin's name on them. I'm told the girls wanted to open them themselves, but Mommy prevented them, and so the contents were not discovered until evening.

The contents consisted of a German K98 Mauser and a Russian 91/30 Mosin Nagant rifle, both manufactured in 1942 (the Russian one I'm sure on, the date is stamped on it, but the German one might have been manufactured in late 1941, I'm still researching) -- and since the Mauser is one of the few made with an enlarged trigger guard to allow a soldier wearing gloves to fire it, it's probably a good bet that both were headed for the Eastern Front around the time of Stalingrad.

They need some good cleaning up, but both appear to be in pretty good condition. The girls are thrilled -- perhaps a little two thrilled as the first thing they asked me early this morning was: "Where are your guns, Daddy? Can we see them again?"

I've informed girls that guns are locked away until the weekend when Daddy will work on cleaning them. Good to seem them showing and interest, but there's a definite limit how much interest in guns a 2.5 and 3.5 year old should have...

I'm thinking the 1-2 year goal is to get one each of the combat rifles issued by the major powers in the European theatre in WW2, which means I still need an Enfield and an M1 Garand. We shall see.

The Dirt on my Floor

Since I posted about carpet yesterday:

1. The girls broke an egg on the kitchen floor (a farm-fresh egg at that) and tried to sweep it.

2. The girls, while washing their hands in the downstairs bathroom, decided to fill containers with water and ended up soaking several sections of the living room carpet.

3. The girls wanted a snack and so fetched themselves Cheerios, which they ate on the wet area of the carpet.

That wood floor is sounding real good to me about now. As does thirty days of solitary confinement with a good book and an unlimited supply of tea.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

A few days back Pontifications linked to a piece by an Anglican comparing and contrasting visits to a local Catholic mass and a Orthodox liturgy. In some ways, it's a very surface oriented analysis: The Orthodox church had tapers lit under each icon, while no votive candles were available in the Catholic church. The Orthodox liturgy was sung, while the Catholic mass was spoken with occasional hymns interspersed "like commercial breaks".

As often seems to happen, the comment thread eventually sinks into an Orthodox vs. Catholic sand kicking contest over whether current problems with Catholic liturgy prove that there must be something much deeper wrong with the Church. One often hears the same sentiment from traditionalists of one stripe or another, who point out that even poorly educated Catholics could pick up certain basic elements of theology and piety simply by experiencing the Tridentine liturgy, which the Novus Ordo liturgy (at least as celebrated in the average suburban parish) is much less overtly supernatural in orientation, and so teaches less. Lex orandi, lex credendi.

Now, I can't exactly be classified as a traditionalist per se. I've only attended 10-20 Latin masses in my life. I somewhat prefer the Latin Novus Ordo high mass to the Tridentine. The sign of peace doesn't give me fits (though between the ages of four and six I refused to give or accept the sign of peace because I figured that if Jesus gave me peace I'd never have adventures like in Star Wars), I receive communion under both species when given the chance, and I often mess up Latin responses in mass by using the classical Latin pronunciation rather than the ecclesiastical (or nasty, modern, barbaric pronunciation, as we enthusiastic classics students call it). But I do firmly believe that mass should be firmly vertically focused. We should experience, both architecturally as we enter the church building and liturgically though the ritual of the mass, a profound sense of otherness -- that we area treading on ground that is only half of our world, and experiencing something that is not fully within our comprehension. And this is certainly well within the powers of the Novus Ordo when celebrated properly. Back before MrsDarwin and I were students traveling Europe on the cheap, we attended Easter vigil at the Brompton Oratory in London. (outside, sanctuary)

In this sense, liturgy is very important in fostering belief. With our modern issues in catechesis, the mass may be pretty much all the instruction that many Catholics get in their faith. However, lex orandi, lex credendi is not all there is to the story by a long shot. While the Brompton Oratory is a model of both liturgical and pastoral success, we stopped in at many cathedrals throughout the continent where beautiful masses were being celebrated in beautiful cathedrals, with almost no congregation except a few gawking tourists. Perhaps they put on a show for the tourists, and actual parish liturgies in Europe are more disappointing. But at least from what we saw I would say that the liturgies we attended there were far superior to most of what you can find in the US. We often hear, however, that the church in Europe is in many ways in far worse shape than the church here. Clearly, it takes more than the availability of good liturgy and beautiful architecture to create a thriving laity.

Still, I find myself much in agreement with what Bearing Blog said the other day, about feeling a certain sense of anger that the two generations before my own saw fit to throw out much of the Catholic culture they inherited, leaving those of us who come after to try to rebuild from the scattered stones.

The Dirt on Carpet

I'm going to come right out and say it now: I hate carpet. In particular, I hate the carpet in our house. Once an off-white cheap Berber, it's now a mottled gray, worn, smelly, disgusting cheap Berber with a real attitude problem. Some of this is due to the children, who are under the impression that somehow they alone of all youngsters have the coordination and grace that exempts them from the rule that "NO CHILDREN MAY HAVE DRINKS IN THE LIVING ROOM". Some of this is due to the cat, who is just stupid. But frankly, I just think carpet stinks.

A week or so ago, I found myself vacuuming the stairs with the hand-held vac, and so getting an up close and personal look at the carpet. "This carpet is repulsive!" I thought. "What kinds of vile life-forms might be living where the vacuum can't reach?" Well, DarwinCatholic exists so that you, the reader, don't have to do this kind of research. Here's what I came up with after a brief Google search of "carpet allergen asthma":

A BBC report gives us the lowdown on dust mites:

Dr Warner said up to 100,000 dust mites can live in just one square metre of carpet alone.

The droppings of these tiny creatures are believed to stimulate asthma and other allergic responses.

Carpets also harbour material from pets such as cats and dogs which is also thought to be a leading cause of allergy.

Dr Warner told the BBC: "House dust mites like to live in dark and damp environments and we find a lot of them at the base of the carpet.

"When you consider that each one of them produces 20 faecal particles every day, and that is where we find the allergen then there are an awful lot in a house full of fitted carpets."

Here's a little Q & A from the Carpet and Rug Institute FAQ Page:

My child has asthma, I want carpet but what do I look for?

CRI is not aware of any published scientific research demonstrating a link between carpet and asthma or allergies. Look for green label carpets and cushions, plan for good ventilation during the installation process and plan for routine vacuuming with a green label vacuum. We are not aware that any particular product is better than any other.

I have dust and pollen allergies, I want carpet but how will this affect my allergies?

People that have allergies should vacuum their carpet at least twice a week and have their carpet cleaned the way the manufacturer specifies approximately every 12 to 18 months. Carpet is an asset for allergy sufferers as it traps the dust versus a hard surface where dust lays on top of the surface to be kicked back into our breathing zone. We recommend using a vacuum with good dust containment and performance properties such as those in our green label vacuum program.

A article at Care2, an environmental website, recommends against wall-to-wall carpet:

"Wall-to-wall carpets are a sink for dirt, dust mites, molds and pesticide residues. I much prefer smaller washable carpets of natural fiber," says Philip Landrigan, M.D., director of the center for children's environmental health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Washing in hot water kills dust mites, microscopic creatures whose plentiful droppings are a top asthma and allergy trigger, Dr. Landrigan explains. Another benefit: you can also regularly clean the floor underneath, defeating dust buildup. Just be sure to put a non-slip pad under area rugs.

I was already prejudiced against carpet, but I'm glad to find my suspicions confirmed. In fairness, however, I must note that a doctor in the BBC article stated that beds harbor far more dust mites than carpet. Yeah, but I like my bed! I'd rather get rid of the carpet.

Here's what I really want:

Constructivism and Education

FredK of Deep Furrows has a post up about the 'constructivist' theory of education. Constructivism, it seems, is the theory that 'knowledge' is a construction inside one's head based on a combination of observation and one's own experiential and cultural biases.

As with many theories, it seems like there is a certain core of truth to this. It is true that our knowledge of the world (there are after all things we can know without reference to the world -- mathematical knowledge, for example) is filtered through our ability to correctly understand what we observe, which in turn is affected by our personal and cultural biases. Yet, the value of this mental construction of the world is the degree of similarity it bears to the real world which does indeed exist outside of us. Focusing on the importance of building one's own model while ignoring its degree of semblance to the real world makes the whole concept of knowledge irrelevant, as this article Fred links to points out:

Accordingly, most constructivists are relativists (although some disclaim it). For relativists there is no truth, only "truth"-truth in quotes-"a rhetorical pat on the back," as one noted relativist philosopher has explained-a compliment accorded that which is agreed to in some community by that community, but no more than that. Hence there is no robust connection between science and some universal, external reality. To a social constructivist,42 in particular, there can be no "knowledge"; there are only knowledges. Not only "Western" science, then, knows the physical world; science is no better a way of knowing it than many other, very different ways of knowing.

That is the force of the statement that "science is a mental representation constructed by the individual." Outside the individual, in other words, there is no independent reality to which "knowledge" or "truth" corresponds. Knowledge of the world is in each human mind, where it is constructed from prior and current experience. Some constructivists insist that they are not anti-realists-they do not reject reality; only "objectivism" (often misidentified by philosophic amateurs with "positivism"), their label for claims that knowledge can be free of personal and cultural bias. For a serious constructivist, there is no knowledge free of cultural bias. To which, then, the last of these quotations is the appropriate conclusion: that the history of science is no more than "the changing commitments of scientists . . . . [which] forge changes commonly referred to as advances in science." Meaning: there is no real progress toward truth about the physical world. Over the centuries, there have been only changing opinions about it, reached by negotiation and power shifts among contending parties. Scientists just use the term "advances" to label any changes to which they are finally agreed.

Exploring this bizarre amalgam of postmodernism, epistemological relativism, and old learning theory, the astounded layman may well ask, "How can anyone teach natural science under a theory of science so hostile to its purposes, so blind to its practices and achievements?" The full answer is more than "Well . . . they don't teach it," although that is a part of it.

All in all, it sounds like constructivism has some very useful ideas, but (especially when combined with our current culture's tendency towards relativism and self-esteem worship) can also lead in intellectually destructive directions.

And the number of the day is... Jihad

Belmont Club had a very interesting post the other day about numerology, Islam, and jihad. Mohammad Reza Taheri Azar is under arrest for trying to do the will of Allah by running over students on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill earlier this month. Here is some of what he has to say for himself:

I am a servant of Allah. I am 22 years old. I was born in Tehran, Iran. My father, mother and older sister immigrated to the United States in 1985 when I was 2 years of age, and I have lived in the United States ever since. ... I have decided to take advantage of my presence on United States soil on Friday, March 3, 2006, to take the lives of as many Americans and American sympathizers as i can in order to punish United States for their immoral actions around the world. In the Qur'an, Allah states that the believing men and women have permission to murder anyone responsible for the killing of other believing men and women. I know that the Qur'an is a legitimate and authoritative holy scripture since it is completely validated by modern science and also mathematically encoded with the number 19 beyond human ability.

Belmont links to an Islamic website's explanation of the significance of 19:

The number 19 possesses unique mathematical properties, for example:

1-It is a prime number , only divides by itself and one.

2-It encompasses the first numeral (1) and the last numeral (9), as if to proclaim God's attribute in 57:3 as the "Alpha and the Omega".

3-Its {numerals} look the same in all languages in the world.The numerals (1) and (9) look very much the same in , for example Arabic and English.

4-It possesses many peculiar mathematical properties. For example, 19 is the sum of the first powers of 9 and 10, and the difference between the second powers of 9 and 10.

5-Number 19 is the numerical value of the word "ONE" in all the scriptural languages, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic. The number 19, therefore proclaims the First commandment in all the scriptures: that there is only ONE GOD.

The word "ONE" "Wahid" in reference to God, in the Quran, is used 19 times. Is it a co-incidence?

The number 19 itself has no power and has no holiness, and can lead you no where. It is the Miracle that is based on this number that has the significance. This significance is explained clearly by God Almighty Himself in 74:30-31.

"Over it is nineteen." " We appointed angels to be guardians of Hell, and we assigned THEIR NUMBER (i.e.19) (1) to disturb the disbelievers. (2) to convince the Christians and Jews (that this is a divine scripture), (3) to strengthen the faith of the faithful, (4)to remove all traces of doubt from the hearts of Christians, Jews, as well as the believers, and (5) to expose those who harbor doubt in their hearts, and the disbelievers; they will say," What did God mean by this allegory ?" God thus sends astray whomever He wills, and guides whomever He wills, None knows the soldiers of your Lord except He. THIS IS A REMINDER FOR THE PEOPLE." 74:30-31

This kind of thinking sounds strange to modern ears, but similar arguments were not uncommon in the West just a few hundred years ago.

Given the apparent fascination of certain elements of Islam with the number 19, one must wonder: Was it just happenstance that there were 19 hijackers on 9-11, or was that part of the message, to those who could understand it?

NFP in the Local Paper

I had to go to Fructus Ventris to discover this article on Natural Family Planning from our hometown paper. (That's because we subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, not the Austin American-Statesman.) It's a fairly balanced look, although there's certainly an effort to stress on how hard it is to abstain:

"A lot of my patients use other (birth control) methods during the fertile time, because the reality is that at the time women most want to have sex — it's difficult to abstain because of the surge in hormones," Ryan says. "It's a biological urge to create babies, and that's the flaw in the thinking of those who advocate abstinence during the fertile time."

Abstinence, it appears, is the Achilles' heel of natural birth control. Contraceptive Technology, a manual for health care providers, says that in "perfect use," natural methods are 91 percent to 99 percent effective — as effective as the pill. But in the real, nonperfect world, natural methods are only 75 percent effective. Most people who teach natural family planning say that reflects the challenge of abstaining from intercourse during risky times.

Ryan says a number of her natural family planning patients have become pregnant, but almost always because the couple ignored signs that the woman was ovulating. McCaslin says the FertilityCare Center sees between five and 10 unplanned pregnancies out of 200 new users each year, but "very rarely do we find one that doesn't have an explanation as to why it occurred."

Mary Cullinane, a nurse practitioner and director of patient services at Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region, says the majority of Planned Parenthood patients who use fertility awareness are educated, interested in natural health, and are in stable relationships with a partner who is willing to abstain. But, she says, she can count on one hand the number of these women she sees in a year.

"Any method that requires a lot of user thought and preparedness, or cooperation from the partner, is going to be less effective than the methods where you don't have to do anything — where you just take a pill every day, or you put an IUD in and it lasts for years, or you get implants in your arm. It takes a lot of motivation, education and cooperation, and not everybody has that in their relationship or their life," she says. (emphasis added)

I foresee new ads:

The Pill! Perfect for the couple who can't be bothered to communicate!

Less talk, more sex! A condom a day keeps discussion at bay!

Give yourself an IOU on committment! Use an IUD!

Or maybe not...

Neighborhood watch

DarwinCatholic -- always looking out for our readers.

Here's a site that will map out all registered sex offenders near your home. A little house marks the location of your home on the map, and the little colored boxes pinpoint the addresses of the offenders. If you click on the boxes, you get a picture of the person, his address, and his crime.

I'm pleased and relieved to note that the Darwins seem to live in a fairly safe area -- reassuring as I'm about to head out for a walk with the girls.

It's rough to be first

For whatever reason, I was trying to remember what had happened to Laika the other morning. You may have read about her. She was the first dog to make orbit around the earth -- on Nov. 3rd 1957 aboard the Russian Sputnik 2 space capsule.

I thought that I remembered that (in typical Soviet fashion) Laika's trip was a one-way stunt, and she died in space. Looking it up, it seems I was right, though the plan had been to put her down quietly via poisoned food. Unfortunately, the Soviets hadn't yet got space capsule construction figured out very well, and she died a few hours after launch of stress and overheating.

The American Ham the chimp had better luck in January 1961, when he flew in a Mercury space capsule and was returned safely to Earth via parachute and splash landing -- just like the later Mercury astronauts. While in orbit, he performed a number of trained tasks in response to stimuli like blinking lights and negative reinforcement from electrical shocks to his feet. (Now I think about it, negative reinformcement from electrical shocks to the feet might have been useful in reigning in Mercury astronauts from our own species who ended up in Congress...)

Ham lived 22 more years after his flight and is buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in New Mexico.

However, it turns out that Ham had a number of less lucky cousins who get less press coverage. The first American monkey in space was named Albert and flew on a modified V2 rocket in 1948. He suffocated during the flight. Albert 2 (couldn't they come up with a new name if they were going to keep wasting monkeys?) survived his flight on a V2, but died on impact. Albert 3 died when his V2 blew up in flight. And Albert 4 died on impact. (It doesn't say if there was any attempt to have the V2 land differently than its military cousins in WW2.)

Yorick, another monkey, survived his flight on an Aerobee rocket along with 11 mouse crewmates in 1951, but he died two days later. Alas, poor Yorick.

In 1958 a squirrel monkey named Gordo (and nicknamed Old Reliable) successfully flew on a Jupiter rocket. Unfortunately, his vehicle was less reliable and he died as a result of parachute failure on re-entry.

All together, it seems to have been a brutish and short life being a space animal in the 50s. Still, perhaps we have them to thank for having had relatively few human deaths in the early space program.