Dumb jock + god

Hey religious America: Do you want to know why some people get uncomfortable when you start talking publicly about your belief in god and jesus? It is because you sound stupid to intelligent people and they feel embarrassed for you.

I don't quite get what Tim Tebow is all about. Does he believe that an omnipotent and infinitely good god is helping him win football games yet doesn't cure cancer, free political prisoners, or prevent natural disasters? People tell me they pray for lottery winnings and even for a downtown parking space. Believing that a god with the power to answer prayers is helping you with your petty shit is downright presumptuous and mean spirited.

However, I don't know that Tebow believes god directly meddles with football games. He clearly credits god for making him who he is and giving him the opportunity to play. But even if this more moderate position is difficult for me. Why would god expend spiritual energy to make Tebow special and but leave the guy with pancreatic cancer alone?

Whatever the case, Tebow sounds like an idiot when he credits god with his athletic success.

Christmas Discontent

I think the last time I enjoyed christmas was when I was a materialistic child. I'm no no longer a child or materialistic, and I'm squarely secular. Also, a member of my family is acutely mentally ill and for whatever reason not interested in treatment. Even without him, my christmases would be a chore. But he has made sure they have been outright miserable. Luckily he was out of the picture this holiday and my christmas was one of mere managed discontent.

One way I managed my christmas discontent was to attend a UU christmas morning service. I did this for nearly the same reason I attended a service on the 10th anniversary of 9/11: I felt a difficult mix of bad emotions and I figured it might be helpful to be among people. Also, I wanted to be around people for a short while who are not members of my family..

The service was simply a good performance with stories and music. I felt a good emotion emerge from the wintry mix of discontent. I felt that one of the biggest gifts my parents gave me was Unitarian Universalism. How nice it is to have this religion that I don't feel at all conflicted about. I have at times envied believers in the conventional religions, assuming they feel deep comfort where I only have awkward uncertainty. But except for the stupidest of unquestioning believers, most of these folks seem confused and conflicted about their beliefs.

Hitchens Dead

Upon the death of a fellow atheist, Kurt Vonnegut took pleasure in saying, "He's in heaven now." And it is funny, because it reveals how there isn't much useful secular language to explore the meaning of death, or even just to mourn without speaking religiously. It would be easy to say Hitchens' soul lives on in those he inspired, but that is purely figurative.

I didn't pay attention to Hitchens until his final years, when fighting religion seemed to become his full-time gig. And what a pleasure it was to watch him unload his anger, brilliance, irreverence, and dry humor on religious folly.

His writings didn't inspire me much. He wrote a sort of William F. Buckley, erudite mush that he seemed all too happy with. But as a speaker and debater, he was engrossing. I've spent many hours watching his interviews and debate appearances. I'm saddened that there is now a finite number of those.

I think he would have made a terrific old man--perhaps even more hilariously cynical, skeptical, and impatient.

College Magic

I have always found colleges to be a magical place. Even when I've lived in a college neighborhood but had no formal affiliation with the college, I've fallen squarely on the gown side of the town versus gown divide. To learn a thing or two about campus design, I picked up Paul Turner's Campus: An American Planning Tradition from, of course, my local college library.

I'm moved by Thomas Jefferson's idea of an "academical village". He designed the University of Virginia campus in a way that he thought would promote family-like relationships between students and professors. He considered such relationships with professors to have been key to his own college experience. His plan alternated houses of students with houses of professors and their families around village green. The first floor of the professor's houses was to be classroom space. But after the University opened, sharing space between the professors' families and students just didn't work out, and classes had to be held elsewhere. And now, after generations of explosive growth at the University, the academical village is but a small fraction of a current megacampus whose design has little to do with Jefferson's original plan.

I certainly don't have anything against megacampuses. These schools, typically the bigger private universities or state flagship campuses, are magic. With tens of thousands of students, many of them living on campus, they are cities in themselves. And they provide a unique educational experience. As research universities that grant Ph.Ds in their major programs, undergraduates enjoy the energy of professors and graduate students on the cutting edge of their field, and graduate students interact as teaching assistants or even teachers for the vast undergraduate population.

But the size of these schools can make it a challenge to find the intimacy Jefferson sought to foster in his design. The UK's Oxford and Cambridge Universities, however, with their division into many semi-independent colleges, may be one solution.UC Santa Cruz was designed with a modern take on this organizational system. Its several semi-independent colleges are spread out through its wooded hillside campus. The idea of course is that the experience for all will be more intimate when the megacampus is broken into these smaller units.

It seems that the book was written too soon for the design failings of newer campuses to be apparent. For example, the University of Illinois at Chicago's raised pedestrian walkways and sunken amphitheater are discussed as innovations of the 1960s to address circulation and the need for social spaces at an urban campus with a large proportion of commuter students. But these turned out to be failed elements of the design that the school demolished after the book was first published.

I would very much love an updated version of this book. My 1995 paperback update doesn't seem to have 1995 updates. We now of a strong body of knowledge about what can be achieved through campus design, leaving few excuses for further bad design. Innovation, always welcome, should be informed by the catalog of success and failure in campus design.