As promised, here is the nearly completed next-generation swing-set standing proudly on dad's hill. Unfortunately, these aren't action shots, these pictures were taken during a slight drizzle. Note that there are seating options available. That cantilevered section is, I think, reserved for a climbing rope.

As a bonus, check out the "bear-proof" bird feeder that was moved from the farm. Hopefully, there will be no occasion to further demonstrate the bear-proofedness of the feeder in its current location.

Posted by ksmoker at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HP apparently couldn't perfect the "nice personality" feature, so they had to go with this one.

Posted by ksmoker at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I read through last night's post again and I'm not sure I understood my own point, so here is a brief recap:

Crazy Muslims :: Bad.
Pious Muslims :: Good.
What the WSJ thought the Pope said :: Good.
What the Pope actually said :: Not so good.
Leading his speech with a quote about the evil brought by Islam :: Really, really dumb.

Posted by ksmoker at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

So apparently Pope Benedict XVI said something that annoyed a whole lot of Muslims. To be honest, I haven't really been paying much attention to this, because, well, it didn't sound all that surprising to me. But now, I've been asked to comment on the Wall Street Journal's editorial defending the Pope from the brouhaha.

First off, I do not condone the violent zealotry and hate-mongering (not to mention the effigy-burning) that is taking place in reaction to the Pope's comments, but I do think there is some cause for righteous indignation.

The WSJ editorial staff is being disingenuous when they imply that Benedict XVI was primarily addressing the issue of Muslim violence:

This is not an invitation to the usual feel-good interfaith round-tables. It is a request for dialogue with one condition--that everyone at the table reject the irrationality of religiously motivated violence. The pope isn't condemning Islam; he is inviting it to join rather than reject the modern world.

If you dig a little deeper and read the transcript, you will find that the Pope is attacking the core of Muslim theology. Here is the money quote, found in the third paragraph:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Now, he is actually quoting fourteenth century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus. Benedict also sets up the quote very carefully so as to confirm that he is just as shocked as the listener to hear those words. It's not that he's saying Mohammed was evil, it's some obscure emperor who said that. So but then he blithely trips along to his thesis:

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality...Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

Oooh, those silly heathens! It is not Muslim violence that is irrational, it is Islam itself! Christianity, of course, does not suffer from this problem. Or it won't, once the Pope widens the scope of what reason entails.

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur - this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time...It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.

The Pope is right to want to bring all parties to the table, but his appeal should not be to reason, or at least not reason as defined by his narrow positivism. For an alternative view, check out the recent Speaking of Faith podcast on hearing Muslim voices. On the broadcast, guest Seyyed Hossein Nasr observes that while the radical fundamentalists do not represent moderate Islam, neither do the secularists (presumably the kind of rational Muslim that Benedict would like to negotiate with).

Modern Islam does not mean secular Islam...The experience of secularism in the West is unique to Western Civilization...There is a tendency in America to want to convert the world to our view and not a long-term view, but our view of our immediate moment...Christianity resisted becoming simply a Sunday morning phenomenon for many, many centuries...and we expect the Muslims to jump from Dante to Karl Marx and then to President Bush in a five-year period.

The devout (not the fundamenatlist nor the secular) Muslims are the people we are going to need to learn to talk to. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. It would be nice if the pious, peaceful majority could speak up against the 10 million or so that are radicalized.

Benedict should be preaching tolerance instead of reason. And not tolerance of extremists, but tolerance of alternative perspectives. Of course, it's difficult to argue for tolerance when you illustrate your points with quotations from the Dark Ages.

Posted by ksmoker at 1:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My first swing-set as a kid was a little metal store-bought deal with the flat plastic seats supported by the double-link chains that you would pinch your fingers on. As my sister and I grew in size and daring, the whole frame would wobble and threaten to flip off its moorings whenever we got too rambunctious.

Now, of course, this is a situation which my father could not put up with for long. Swing-set v2.0 was constructed from barn-beam timbers with wooden seats and twisted wire cable (with a protective wrapping of thick polyethylene hose). A rarely used chin-up bar was a last minute addition. My sense of scale is probably way off, but I remember this swing as being ten to twelve feet high.

The third family swing was the result of a move across the creek and featured a return to the A-frame style construction of the store-bought swing, but on a scale that Dad could live with. Not quite as tall as the barn-beam swing, but just as solid, this version was built from old steel or iron piping welded together. I was too old by this time to have used this swing enough to remember the details well, but I think chain was back with rubber seats as the new feature. The other reason for my hazy memory is that we moved again about fifteen years ago (the problem with Dad's swingsets is that they don't travel well).

Now, finally, after a handful of barely mentionable tree swings, a new generation prepares for Swing-set Mark IV. I didn't have my tape measure, but I think that is four-inch angle iron welded to a truck wheel base and braced by pipes also welded to truck wheels. Unfortunately, I don't have any action shots; the ground was too soft to bring the back-hoe in to hoist the posts and cross-beam into place. The next report will show either the finished product or photos of the construction in progress.

Posted by ksmoker at 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So I lost the first game of the fantasy football season this year by only three points. The league is based on a salary cap rather than a draft, which means that I basically get to pick a new team every week. Usually this is a Sunday morning activity for me.

Except this past week. I totally forgot about picking a team and instead spent the morning watching a mostly dull Man U.-Tottenham soccer match that I had recorded on Saturday. By the time I realized my error, I only had the Sunday night and Monday night games to choose players from.

Not too bad, considering.

Posted by ksmoker at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Best listened to with headphones in a darkened room. Scotch optional.

John Adams resists the terms "requiem" or "memorial," calling this piece a "memory space." Whatever one calls it, it is a fitting tribute to the tragic events of 9/11.

Posted by ksmoker at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

by Mark Eberhart

When considering the history of human endeavor, specifically the human habit of the crafting and building of things, it is clear that breakage is of critical importance to mankind. We have continued to improve our understanding of how things break and over time, and we have learned how to design our tools and buildings to take account of the breaking habits that the materials we use might possess.

This book proposes that although we have paid great attention to the how, we have only recently begun to ask why things break. Written for the the non-technical reader, this book provides a basic understanding of materials science. Reading this book, you will learn:

• How adding tin to copper creates a metal (bronze) much stronger than either of the two.
• How the Titanic sank because its steel hull was made brittle by the contamination of the iron ore with sulfur (there was also something about an iceberg).
• How Corelleware and Pyrex, when they do break, break in really slivery and sometimes explosive ways.
• How our cars and airplanes are constrained by the material used to travel at only a limited speed.

There's lots of interesting discussion of how chemical bonds create the properties of toughness (think Kevlar) or hardness (think ceramics), but not much discussion of why the chemical bonds work the way they do. The last couple of chapters begin to delve into this area, but that's where my eyes only just started glazing over. This is apparently the puzzle that scientist are currently still trying to solve. If they are successful in unlocking this secret and also are able to apply it to the manufacture of new materials, we will see a revolution in the products we can create and consume.

Posted by ksmoker at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

People often ask about how quickly Ben is picking up English. It's been seven months now and he's talking like a native speaker. He still has some issues with tenses and, strangely, gendered pronouns (he consistently mixes them up), but otherwise, to hear him, you'd never know that English wasn't his first language.

However, like any four-year-old, he doesn't have a firm grasp of the finer points of etiquette. For instance, Ben doesn't yet understand why a beer-bellied man might be offended when asked if he's carrying a baby in there. We're also having to watch our reactions to some of his comments. When frustrated, he's taken to saying, "Pete's sake!" and just this past weekend, Kari got a "Whatever!"

In general though, we're proud to say that he's a pretty polite kid. Luckily, he's also got other role models besides us. For example:

The downside is that Ben is losing his Chinese. We wanted to encourage him to keep it up, but when someone tries to speak Chinese with him, he clams right up. He seems to have no interest in speaking a language that we don't understand (which he's actually come out and told us). We hope that he will be able to pick it back up quickly. I wanted to through the Pimsleur audio training, maybe Ben can help me on my pronunciation.

Posted by ksmoker at 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's too late to be posting this, but if you worked today, you need to be whacked upside the head with a wooden spoon.

Posted by ksmoker at 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Or at least it could be, the space is great, the bands are great, they just need the crowd.

That's how it seemed to me on Friday night when I met Greg, Seth, and Christine at the Clarissa Room (formerly Shep's Paradise) to hear the Mike Melito quartet. Maybe it was the Labor Day weekend, or maybe there were other things going on in town, but the attendance was a bit sparse. It was nice not to have to deal with the crush of the RIJF crowd and the noise common at the Crowne Plaza gigs, but the music certainly was worthy of a larger audience with Melito, Mike Dubaniewicz, Bob Sneider, and Phil Flanigan providing a steady stream of quality jazz.

Keep an eye on the jazz@rochester postings and get out to hear some great music in a great setting.

Posted by ksmoker at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)