from Roth's American Pastoral

And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget about right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that-- well, lucky you.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone.

Finis

So in America when the sun goes down ... I think of Dean Moriarty. For I had walked thus far with my lady on the hill, and I didn't know what came next; all I saw was the rift. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her. Yet my eyes decieved me; she turned suddenly and said: "I must go in, the fog is rising." She left me with my lighted expanses. I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth. But then I heard a strangely familiar voice retelling: "They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way." Just so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. But that is the beginning of a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended."

New Aeijtzsche time, new Aeijtzsche channel

Hello dear fellows.

I have started a blog that I hope will become a clearing house for my creative endeavors. Feel free to visit and read the first essay I have written exclusively for my blog. Feel free to comment on the subject as well as the quality of the actual writing.

Here's the link

http://aeijtzsche.blogspot.com/

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Rick hoped that one day he could call her...his girlfriend

Nostalgia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRln0IEIBFE

Sad News

Christian Skoglund, one of my Wheaton friends and a Blackhawk pilot died today in a crash in Italy. Please pray for his family and his sister who was one of our Wheaties as well. He was my mentor and we shared some great times together in Iraq / Kuwait.

On the other side of things, I just arrived home. My mom is doing a great job at getting me back to health. I am on a variety of medications and drugs and I am just really swollen for the most part.

Spirits in the Material World

Hello friends.

I'm still very unfortunately here in Michigan, where I have had plenty of time for contemplation.

Much of my contemplation has been centered upon trying to figure out how I fit into the world. The more I've thought about it, the more trouble I'm finding picturing fitting in with the normal, expected life that modern society expects.

What ever happened to the"Former T6 family and friends experiemental living commune" [FTFFELC] idea? Weren't we going to go in on a large property somewhere and start an intellectual co-op where we all live off the land and each contribute our unique abilities, all the while contributing professionally to our fields, but on our own terms?

Tha sort of thing is very appealing to me: intentionally living below the poverty line, having a close community, and having plenty of time for artistic pursuits because income wouldn't be as important.

I wish I had a lot of like minded friends willing to give this a try, because I'm at the end of my rope. I just don't think I can lead a "normal" life.

TTFN

Aeijtzschey

Stanley Fish and Theodicy

There are a few of you to whom I owe email responses or other signals that I continue to live and breathe. Especially Adam, who wrote to me before his trip to Italy and is still waiting for a response. Unconscionable, I agree. Alas, I am finishing (read: writing from scratch, or re-writing) the first chapter of my dissertation this week, to be submitted to various members of my committee on Friday, so I won't be communicating much this week. But, by Saturday, I'll be back in action.

In the meantime, you might be interested in reading Stanley Fish's latest blog post on "Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God." The post is actually an extended review of two forthcoming books, Bart D. Ehrman's (a Wheaton and PTS grad) God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer and Antony Flew’s (not even close to a Wheaton grad) There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

Both books take up Epicurus's old question: “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence, then, evil.” As you might expect from their titles, they come to different conclusions on the matter. An interesting read.

Dave Update #1423

First a few words from Andrew at this exact moment in time:

"Is this a camel Daddy?" "I fix it"
Mom [walking in with Isaac]: "Flying naked baby! ... Wow! Did you draw something on here Dave?"
"Yeah, I drew a camel."
"Wow, he's coloring it in exactly."

Nice. My boy's got skills. Earlier this week he actually drew a recognizable face inside the circle I had drawn for him. Two eyes, a mouth, two ears, and a neck. He can count to fifteen (on a good day), say the ABCs, and, of course, translate the majority of Cicero into the most beautiful of French.

What does that have to do with the fact that we are about to go and find out if we are going to be able to buy a house? I'm glad you asked. Absolutely nothing. But yes, we are just about to leave to witness a little town lottery for a low income housing option that is selling six units in a new Hamilton townhouse development for under a third of the regular price. I'll let you know.

And yes, the rumors are true; I'm leaving here a semester early (with just one M.A., not two) so that I can start web-programming full time. Who'da thunk? But there it is. Maybe Logemann's close behind! Some day we'll start our own little online education mecca. Coye, you in? No? Shoot. Well, you can at least have a regular Fishesque column.

I just noticed that little "add video" icon up there. Man, am I behind the times or what? These days, I have to rely on Andy to keep me up to date on all the technological news. I mean, I'm a web developer now, not a tech-nerd like the rest of you.

Well, that's about all I have time for. Nice chatting. For those of you hiding in the bushes [I can see you on Google analytics!] come out and tell us what's happening; otherwise we'll keep forgetting about each other. And it is good to remember each other. And, it would be good to talk from time to time : )

Obama and the Fam

OK, this is either a commentary on the unhinged nature of our political system, the unbelievable strength of coincidence, or, my favorite option, proof that the Masons really do have a nefarious plot to rule the world. It is, in a word, bizzare.

From the Chicago Sun Times: "Barack Obama is related to both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney." Yeah, that's right. Related. The brief article continues: "Obama and Bush are 11th cousins" because "they share the same great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents -- Samuel Hinckley and Sarah Soole Hinckley of 17th century Massachusetts."

And the Cheney connection? "Obama is related to Cheney through Mareen Duvall, a 17th century immigrant from France. Mareen and Susannah Duvall were Obama's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents and Cheney's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. That makes Obama and Cheney ninth cousins once removed."

Oh Let Not Time Deceive You

Hey everyone

I'm currently spending the month in the great state of Louisiana,
flying and doing other things while support an infantry combat brigade
as they go through combat validation at Jrtc. I gave in to Jobs and
purchased an apple iPhone, something that I will admit was definitely
worth it! I'm still enjoying army life. I still live in TN. On Nov 6
I will be having my jaw surgery and will have a somewhat different
looking face. I will be spending that month at home. My mom will be
flying up to make sure I'm ok for the first week or so. I can't wait
to get these braces off though.

Towards Perpetual Peace

I am in the early stages of designing and proposing my own Rhetoric course here at UT. The standard convention is teaching a course named "The Rhetoric of..." fill in your topic here. It will come as no surprise to you that I am thinking of teaching the rhetoric of political violence. My interest will be pushing the concepts of peace, war, oppression, security, violence, retribution, resistance, revolution, protest and the like. (I am also thinking about the practices of war and peace, national security and civil rights, captial punishment and torture, peaceful protest and revolution.)

I have ulterior motives in telling you this. I want to exploit you as resources. I am wondering what kinds of texts-- poems, novels, songs, films, essays, etc-- you might recommend for giving undergraduates a conceptual vocabulary to think and write about violence in the political sphere-- particularly violence that is framed as necessary and/or instrumental. A text that justifies violence could be as useful as one that presents my own personal pacifist views (although I will, of course, appreciate that kind of suggestion). Particularly, does anyone know of fitting texts by MLK or Ghandi?

[My second choice might be a rhetoric of profit, so if you have any great ideas in that direction...]

Bonhoeffer's Ethical Imperative

Thought for the day:

"If we want to understand God's goodness in God's gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshipping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God's blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us." (From A Testament to Freedom, p 197.)

“The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.”

This blog (with the probable exception of Coye—in fact, that’s mostly the reason why we keep you around, Coye, to smash up the normativity of our assumptions. Or something.) is populated by fans of the range of apps Google has developed and made freely available. I myself use Google’s Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Notebook, Docs and Spreadsheets, oh, and that little-known search engine they cobbled together. Siva Vaidhyanathan is not one of these, and he’s working on a book called The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce and Community—And Why We Should Worry. An interesting sample:

“The damage Google has done to the world is largely invisible. Google got big by keeping ads small. It carefully avoided pinching our marketing-saturated nervous systems and offered illusions of objectivity, precision, comprehensiveness, and democracy. After all, we are led to believe, Google search results are determined by peer-review, by us, not by an editorial team of geeks. So far, this method has worked wonderfully. Google is the hero of word-of-mouth marketing lore. Google guides me through the open Web, the space that Microsoft does not yet control. Yet Google must get bigger to satisfy its new stockholders. It must go new places and send its spiders crawling through un-indexed corners of human knowledge. Google’s mission statement includes the rather optimistic and humanistic phrase, “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” But Google co-founder Sergey Brin once offered a more ominous description of what Google might become: “The perfect search engine would be like the mind of God.””

[h/t Alan Jacobs]

The Hastert Center

Coye has got us started in this spirit of channeling Dusty in his absence (where are you Dusty, when so many interesting things are happening at our alma mater?), and in just a casual search for something I might contribute to this spate of Wheatoblogging, I discovered a very interesting fact. Do you happen to know the fate of our beloved MSC? The former home of CPO, the Stupe, and various coffee house performances featuring our own Dave Jones as frontman for the AKP is slated to become The J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy.

According to the press release, "In recognition of the large number of Wheaton graduates in public service both in Washington, D.C. and at the state level, The J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government, and Public Policy at Wheaton College will advance the study of market economies and representative democracies, both within the campus community and in the general public. The Hastert Center will affirm the values, institutions, and policy interests that characterize the Honorable J. Dennis Hastert’s career in public life. Specifically, the activities of the Hastert Center and the holder of the Kvamme Chair will uphold the principles and qualities evident in Speaker Hastert’s career as teacher, coach, state legislator, and Member of Congress."

Saga

I know it might seem like a bit much, but this girl I see sometimes heard this on the radio and pointed it out to me tonight, and I couldn't resist adding another item under our shiny new tag:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14748873

It is, after all, in the byline of our blog's title. Remember student appreciation dinners?

V. Raymond Edman

Here's a news story a friend of mine in the Episcopal seminary here in Austin pointed out to me.

Dusty hasn't given us any Wheaton news of late, so I thoght I'd go ahead and post it.

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/news/571549,3_1_EL24_A4ANGLICANS_S1.article

Alzheimer’s: Type 3 Diabetes?

I am an avid (even voracious) consumer of news and cultural commentary, much of which is daily delivered to my Google Reader. The upside of this is that I usually know a little bit about a lot of things. Emphasis on a little and a lot, in the right proportions (reverse those positions and you have a dissertation project). The downside is that few things surprise me, and even fewer make me stop everything else I'm doing to pay attention.

This story did just that. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that Alzheimer's disease has a lot to do with how the brain processes insulin, and that the disease itself may be productively considered as a form of diabetes. Add this to the nearly overwhelming incidence of Type II diabetes among the world's population, which is projected to effect nearly 1/3 of America's population in the next few decades, and you have the most pressing public health crisis of the 21st century.

In case you're too lazy to click the link (you know who you are), a few highlights:

"Now scientists at Northwestern University have discovered why brain insulin signaling -- crucial for memory formation -- would stop working in Alzheimer’s disease. They have shown that a toxic protein found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, rendering those neurons insulin resistant. (The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an ADDL for “amyloid ß-derived diffusible ligand.”)

"With other research showing that levels of brain insulin and its related receptors are lower in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, the Northwestern study sheds light on the emerging idea of Alzheimer’s being a “type 3” diabetes.

"The new findings, published online by the FASEB Journal, could help researchers determine which aspects of existing drugs now used to treat diabetic patients may protect neurons from ADDLs and improve insulin signaling in individuals with Alzheimer’s. (The FASEB Journal is a publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.)"