This is scary!

The following was taken from http://change.gov/americaserves/

America Serves

"When you choose to serve -- whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood -- you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream."

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.



How is forcing people to work for free the American Dream?! I am also predicting that you will not be able to choose where you work, but you will have to work at a government approved "volunteer" site. I would not be surprised to see Christians required to do community "service" at abortion clinics. I am all for community service and volunteer work, but if it is not on your own terms its not volunteer or service. Since when did the American dream mean that the Government forced states, individuals, and schools to work for free? Last I checked the American dream entailed being able to come to America work your ass off for a better life for you and your family and if you're lucky you might have some left over to leave your kids. The American dream is not working for free so that other people can benefit from your time and talents. I have the right to pursue happiness, that is what the American dream is. It is not a duty to make sure other people have a chance.

I am not against helping people. I think being generous with time and talents is a very important part of life, especially the Christian's life. Once this 50-100 hours of required community service starts where will it end? These things always progress into something worse.

Maybe I will be able to organize my thoughts better later. Everything about this plan from Obama strikes me as oppression by the government.

Getting into a Routine

I have been here for almost two months now and I am starting to get into a rather nice daily routine. I am amazed that my time here is rather stress free and I am still learning a lot. I really like how it all works here. A lot less time in class and a lot more time dedicated to studying. Even the classes are better because the lectures are not bogged down by one or two people who ask the same question for 40 minutes or a professor who decided that it is a good idea to talk about the meaning of one word for 50 minutes and neglect the rest of the subject material. It is nice to sit in a lecture that has been well thought out and planned before hand. They are really more like presentations than classes.

Anyhoo, the following is a typical day for me:

1. Chapel 8:30 - 9:00
2. Breakfast 9:00-9:30
1. except on Wednesdays when I have a class at 9:00 and then go to the Buttery (a coffee shop) after class and have an English Scone and a cup of Coffee.
3. Class 10:00 - 11:00
4. Lunch 12:00
1. Many times a welcome skype date with Kali happens here and goes into reading time.
   
5. Read/study 1:00 - 4:00
   
6. Break or Run 4:00 - 5:00
7. Dinner 5:30/6:00ish
   
1. Except on Tuesdays when I have Latin from 5:00 - 6:00. Dinner generally falls around 7
8. Read 7:00 - 9:00

That is the basic pattern that has developed. Fridays I do not have classes so I review my lectures from the previous week and then read and read and read.

Barak Obama not a natrual born US Citizen??!

Why haven't I heard about this before? I keep up to date on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, and occasionally drudgereport.com. I heard about this through twitter. Watch the video, this is a real court case. Whether or not this accusation if valid or bogus one would think that a federal lawsuit brought against a candidate for president would make the news. In anyevent this is the article, and there is a video near the bottom of the page. Seriously, watch the whole video.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/this_could_be_the_game_changer.html

Pedagogy at Cambridge

Some people have been asking me about what the education system here in Cambridge. I must admit that I am still kind of learning as I go and that what I have learned about the system so far is not exactly what I expected coming in. In any event I shall give the best explanation I can.
First you do not sign up for classes per say. You sign up for papers. These are generally not papers in the traditional American sense of the term, rather they are exams. However, for me they are actual papers. I do not take the exams I write a final paper. So I sign up for a paper. I will use my Pauline Epistles - Paper B4 - course as an example. The description of the paper is as follows, Major exegetical paper on a pericope, topic or theme from the corpus of Paul's letters. So for this "class" I take one lecture a week from the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University during the first two terms of the year (Michaelmas and Lent). I also take supplementary classes/lectures at the Westfield House at various times during the year. Then, during this whole time I work my way through the reading list, which basically is a 5 page long bibliography of books that pertain to the subject of the paper. Then during the Easter term I write my paper. So right now I am attending classes and thinking about what I want to write a paper on. What I decide to write my paper on has an impact on which books I choose to read from the reading list.
There are several things I like about this system. 1) The classes/lectures are not merely Lutheran Theology information download time. 2) I get a good broad education on the topic at hand from the lectures and readings I select. 3) While getting the broad education I am also able to choose where I want to really dig in. This is where the flexibility of the reading list really helps. I am not trying to keep up with assigned readings and thus just skimming most material and not letting it sink in adequately. I have time to really focus on the things that are of particular interest to me. So for the Paul paper I have a couple ideas in my head for a topic. 1) A overview and critique of the so called "New Perspective on Paul." 2) The relationship between Paul's Theology and the teachings of Jesus. (There are several people who call themselves scholars out there who claim that Paul is the true founder of Christianity and no Christ.) 3) What are Lutheran's to do with Romans 9, which allegedly points toward double predestination. (I don't think that I shall choose this topic because a clasemate has already shown extreme interest in it and I don't want to write a duplicate paper.) 4) An examination of Israel through Romans 9-11. 5) Were Paul and James at odds? I will hopefully nail down a definitive thesis some time at the end of this term or early next term.
In any event that is the education system as I understand it at this point in time, and I love it.

Soaking in Cambridge

It seems me that time moves at a much faster pace than people expect or desire. I look back at my 3 years at CSP. It feels now as if those three years took but an instant. Three of my 24 years of life (that's 12% of my life) seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye. This summer is another great example. Living with Matt and Josh was a blast but those two months feel as though they never even happened. I mention this because I know that the same fate awaits my year here in England. In a couple years I will be talking about that flash of an instant that I spent in Cambridge. So what do I do? While I still desire to accomplish all my goals from the previous post, including if not especially becoming a better student, I do not want to waste the whole year with my nose in a book. Lets face it I can put my nose in a book and read anywhere in the world. (Quite frankly if I am going to miss out on the culture and wonder of a city because I do nothing but school work it seems that St. Louis is really the best place to be.) I think the answer rests in little things (which I have been trying to employ) such as not biking to and from the University as fast as I possibly can. Perhaps King's College Chapel is always worthy of a second or third glance. I think getting lost in the City Centre and not particularly trying to get back on track right away is a good way to soak in the city. I simply cannot let this year be experienced primarily in a 10' X 8' monk cell of a room. At the same time my education is the reason I am here. This is not just some big long vacation. It would also be an injustice if I did not put everything I can into my learning while I am here. This is why I am trying to find the little things that can make my stay more meaningful and less likely to become a jumbled mix of memories that seemed to have taken place in a single moment.

Goals for the school year

My goals for this year are as follows:

1. Become a better student.
• Let's face it I did not go to the best undergraduate school and the Seminary in St. Louis does not exactly keep students accountable to deadlines and such. So while I am here I would like to use the time to study hard, write good papers, not procrastinate and do other things that good students do.
  
• This includes improving my Greek A LOT.
  
2. Spend a significant ammount of time in London
• To me a significant time would be a good number of weekends and maybe a week of vacation.
  
3. See other sites
• Stonehenge comes to minds, I am sure there has to be some others.
4. Go to Germany and Ireland
• I already have a room booked just outside Dublin for St. Patrick's Day!!!
5. Go to a Football match
   
6. Go to a Cricket match
• This would include attaining a working knowledge of the sport, which could take a lot of time in itself.
  
7. Meet people outside of Westfield House and Resurrection Lutheran Church.
   

If anyone has suggestions as to how I should spend my free time while I am in England and where to spend my vacations in Europe please do post a comment and let me know.

The new blog

Welcome to my new blog. While a certain part of me is sad to see the old site go, I am even more excited to get this new site underway. I think that it is appropriate that I start this new site during a new and exciting part of my life in Cambridge.
Anyhoo, I was walking through Cambridge today looking for free internet because the internet at the Westfield House went down. I made the mistake of walking into a bookstore. I say mistake because I rarely walk out of a book store without something in my hand. If I do manage to leave without something I must at the very least walk through the entire store. I did manage to leave without buying anything however I took a walk through the Christianity section, or should I say Christianity shelf. I noticed something that I did have not noticed before. In England all of the anti-Christianity books are in the Christianity section. This may be the way it is in America but its would not be as noticeable because these anti-Chritian books do not make up half the Christian book section. What I noticed about this is that all the anti-religion books were in the Christianity section and most of them were attacking Christianity. There were no anti-Buddhist books in the Buddhist section, there were no anti-Judaism books in the Jewish section, and no anti-Islam books in the Islam section. It seems that this culture at least and I would say the anti-religious culture in general is more concerned about attacking Christianity and Christians than it is about actually trying to prove or explain their own philosophy. Then this Dawkins character starts going off about how he doesn't understand why Christians get so hostile when their religion is supposed to be a religion of love and forgiveness. In any event I find it interesting that of all the religions that had their own section at the bookstore I went to only Christianity had anti-religion books in it.