Final Exams and the Playoffs

An idea struck me as the MLA faculty discussed various end-of-semester events over lunch this week. We noted that some students begin the semester in a lackadaisical fashion (failing to turn in assignments, skipping class, and performing poorly on exams), and then try to turn things around late in the semester by studying intensely, asking for extra credit work, etc. The funny thing is that many of these students are confident that they can get their desired grade by this last-minute outburst of energy, as though what happened earlier in the term is irrelevant to the final outcome.

I wonder if these expectations stem in part from our sports-saturated culture. In the age of the soundbite and diminished attention spans, some sports leagues at the college and professional levels have responded by instituting end-of-season playoffs or tournaments to determine the league champion. What is so silly about the process is that often the standards for admission to these events are laughably low. For example, wildcard teams in the NFL sometimes get into the post-season with an 8-8 record. NBA teams with .500 records can get into the playoffs as well.

What this does is to make the regular season in these sports almost meaningless. Every mediocre team conceivably has a shot of making it into the post-season, and a hot streak at that time could give that team the league championship.

Is this the mentality that university students bring into the last couple of weeks of the semester, that any grade is possible no matter what has transpired over the first fifteen weeks of the term? Many of my students over the years have been sadly disabused of this notion. When the final exam is 30% of the course grade, even a 100% on that exam will not bring a student up to a B average if he has been performing at a D level the whole semester. Competent work over the entire semester is necessary to achieve good grades.

Another Blow to Modernism?

The growing field of geomythology.

"'If you had asked me 10 years ago if there was value in local myths I would have said "not a lot",' added Nunn. 'Since then I have had a Pauline conversion.'"

Christianity and Architecture

As a contrast to the earlier post regarding the architecture of the mega-church, here's a review of a book describing the subtleties used by Huguenot architects who had been employed by Catholic nobility and royalty to build churches. In protest against the persecution of Huguenots, they inserted Calvinist stuff into the structures. For example: "Scripture verses would often be included on the interior of a building. Calvinists did not expect Catholics to complain about the verses because it would be a complaint against the Bible itself. However, Calvinists were careful to use verses that reflected their perspective. Fellow Calvinists walking into the building would recognize that a Huguenot had built that structure."

Structural modifications were made as well to put forward the Huguenot point of view. Art means something!

Debunking the Pilgrims

Some malcontent has decided to rain on everyone's Thanksgiving parade by exposing THE TRUTH about the Pilgrims. Among the horrors that are revealed are that the Pilgrims believed the Indian depopulation of the area preceding their arrival was providential and that the Pilgrims insisted on church membership as a prerequisite for a seat on the General Court that governed the colony.

The scales have fallen from my eyes! I repent of ever having had the slightest shred of respect for these people. From now on, I will condemn anyone having the nerve to celebrate Thanksgiving who has not first ritually secularized the holiday and denounced the Pilgrims as evil, genocidal maniacs. Singing a hymn to nature on behalf of the Indian victims could even make the celebration a virtuous act.

Oh, and apparently the transatlantic crossing took eighteen years, since we're told that the Pilgrims boarded the Mayflower in 1602 and arrived in America in 1620. That's some voyage!

Yankee Secessionists

The decentralist paradigm has spread beyond the old Confederacy, it seems. Here's an article about the Second Vermont Republic, an organization trying to get Vermont to secede from the United States. God bless 'em; at least they can't be smeared as being simply apologists for slavery and/or racial segregation. The article cites Don Livingston of Emory at length. Livingston argues for "the politics of the human scale," a localism derived primarily from Aristotle and classical republican theory.

Ethics and Natural Law

"I conclude that . . . the answer to our question is no; ethics cannot be derived from nature." So says an ethics professor at George Washington University. He's thrown down the gauntlet; are you Aristotelians up to the challenge?

Lisbon and Voltaire

Today is the 250th anniversary of the famous Lisbon earthquake, which is thought to have killed tens of thousands of people and left many thousands more homeless. Coming as it did in the context of rising skepticism among the "Enlightened" elites of Europe, the earthquake became a rhetorical weapon in the arsenal of deists, agnostics, and atheists.

Voltaire made use of the earthquake in Candide and also referred to it in several of his letters. Here's one from just a few weeks after the quake.

It's interesting, although not surprising, to see the unbelievers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina trot out the same arguments as Voltaire and the other philosophes: "If there is a God, how could he allow such a catastrophe to take place?" It's just another example of how the study of the past sheds more light on the present.

It's the Greeks, not the Mayans

Although this essay is written from a secular perspective, it's refreshing to see writing not bound by the canons of multiculturalism:

"I don’t care if the Maya civilization did collapse. I don’t think we should shed a single retrospective tear. It might be interesting to know how or why it fell—whether from war or drought or disease or soil exhaustion—but I don’t much care about that either. Because quite frankly, as civilizations go, the Mayan civilization in Mexico didn’t amount to much."

The Architecture of the Mega-Church

I didn't know whether to laugh or weep at this article and slideshow about mega-churches. Apart from the monstrosities in the photographs, consider these quotations from the article:

"The desire of congregations to make their place of worship a part of everyday life rather than a place apart is admirable, and one can sympathize with the wish to avoid the traditional ecclesiastical symbols that have been pretty much co-opted by mainstream religions."

"It doesn't look like a place of worship, but what does it look like? A performing-arts center, a community college, a corporate headquarters?"

"Paul Goldberger once observed, 'The Gothic cathedral was designed to inspire awe and thoughts of transcendence. Megachurches celebrate comfort, ease and the very idea of contemporary suburban life.' "

"[M]ost contemporary megachurches are resolutely secular in design."

"The arena seating, the mainstream decor, the profusion of lighting and television broadcasting equipment, as well as the surrounding lobbies and vestibules, are distinctly secular. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

"[T]he abstract forms and louvered windows make this graceless building look more like a power plant than a cathedral."

Can you think of a better example to illustrate the identity crisis in which mainstream Christianity has floundered? The Christian mind and the culture it produces are AWOL.

New Book on Helen of Troy

There's a new book out on the woman whose face launched a thousand ships; it bears the arresting title Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore. I'm not familiar with the author (Bettany Hughes), but the book appears to be a standard deconstructionist work stressing an "ambivalence towards the ideal of female beauty." On the plus side, it looks like Hughes allows the possibility that Helen was real person.

A London Times review of this and another new book on Hercules can be found here.

The Reliability of Pre-modern Sources

I recently saw a link to an article which described an experiment proving that the "legendary" death ray of Archimedes could have been real. The account prompted me to reflect on the deep skepticism with which most moderns view ancient and medieval accounts of all sorts.

I suppose it is post-Renaissance arrogance and disdain for the past which leads to the dismissal of stories of advanced technologies and supernatural events. We [the MLA program] reject modernism as well as post-modernism, or say we do, but I wonder how many modern prejudices are still ingrained in us. Would I have countenanced the possibility of Archimedes's death ray in the absence of this new "scientific" account? I don't know.

What degree of faith or skepticism should we have when we approach documents produced in a different age, when the standards to which we are accustomed did not apply?

The Continuing Relevance of the Ancient Image

Back in May, the BBC ran a television series called "How Art Made the World." The producers discovered (gasp!) that most modern images have antecedents in the ancient world! What revelation will we be treated to next by these geniuses?

Pagan Tourists and their Modern Counterparts

Someone named Tony Perrottet has written a book entitled Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists. The first chapter is online here. Anyone doubting the resurgence of paganism in our day should consider that the big attraction at Pompeii, as Perrottet shows, is the various depictions of male genitalia found on walls throughout the ruin. (I believe Dr. Woods had to ask specifically that his group of students not be shown that side of things during his visit to Pompeii last summer.) In this article, Perrottet says today's New York City is analogous to ancient Rome. According to him, that's not a bad thing.

It gives one a better idea of what Paul was talking about in Romans 1, doesn't it?

Odysseus's Home Found

According to this article in the Madera Tribune, the home of Odysseus--yes, that Odysseus--has been located on the island of Kefalonia off the west coast of Greece. Maybe we can arrange a field trip . . .

Introducing the Faulkner University MLA Weblog!

Despite our neo-Luddite tendencies in the Master's of Liberal Arts program, we do recognize that most technologies, when used wisely, can further worthy objectives without undermining them. This is true even of the "blogosphere," despite the tremendous amount of silliness that can be found there. Thus we have created our own weblog.

The purpose of this site is to help the faculty and students of our program share thoughts and keep each other up to date on matters related to the Great Books and the Christian mind; we will be posting relevant news articles and essays, as well as inviting discussion on these topics. We hope that prospective students and other "outsiders" interested in the program will get a useful glimpse of what we are about here.