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| Does anyone know of classical science books for junior high & high school? |
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Thursday, December 04 2008 @ 10:41 AM PST
Contributed by: deanloew
Views: 966
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When I was at TAC, I remember marvelling how hard the tutors had to patiently work to get modern ideas out of our heads before they could help us examine the ideas for ourselves - whether in math, natural philosophy, chemistry, etc.
My wife and I would really like to avoid having our children soak up modern ideas that just have to be "unlearned" when they finally get to TAC. It's true that I personally valued TAC all the more when, as a student there, I realized what trash I had been fed in the textbooks I used as a youth. But still, I'd rather have our kids learn the right way the first time around. It's not just the unproved theories that pass as "science" in modern science textbooks that bugs me - it's also the way modern textbooks just dish out these "facts" without making the student think them through.
So... I recall someone telling me they knew of some TAC alumni writing junior high or high school science textbooks - TAC style. Does anyone know of any such endeavor? Or failing that, does anyone know of ANY good science textbooks that would make TAC parents happy to have their children use? What do all the wonderful academies that our grads teach at use for science books? And what are all you homeschooling parents' favorite science texts? I am familiar with the MODG curriculum, the Wile series, etc. but I'd like to get other ideas as well.
Thanks!
In Christ,
Dean Loew (07)
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4 comments  
Most Recent Post: 03/02 08:56PM by csryland
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| Did Joseph Doubt Mary - Fr. Brendan Kelly ('85) |
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Wednesday, November 19 2008 @ 04:55 PM PST
Contributed by: alistair
Views: 1000
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We were in a coffee house in Lincoln, Nebraska and I asked Fr. Brendan
Kelly ('85) to repeat his sermon "Did Joseph Doubt Mary" and turned on my
recorder. Here is the transcription.
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If we understand from tradition that Mary was raised in the Temple,
and we have a feast in the Church of her presentation in the Temple,
and in that time from about three to about twelve she received a
Temple education, which means it was on the prophets and the law. So
Mary clearly, as a young girl in Nazareth and on her return home, she
did know the prophecies. So when the Angel Gabriel comes to her and
begins to tell her, "Hail, Full of Grace," she wonders as to what sort
of greeting this might be. And Thomas makes the point, very clearly,
in the Ave Maria, that for an Angel to express reverence to a human
being is never heard of. That here an Angel is giving deference to a
human being because Mary supersedes him in grace. And that is
something she is wondering about and the Angel says she is to conceive
in her womb and bear a son and she is to call Him Jesus. With her
education that already tells her the name Yeshua is the name for the
Messiah, she already knows her name, Mariam, which in one of the
prophecies is the name of the mother of the Messiah, and Yeshua is to
sit on the throne of David and rule over the house of Jacob and His
Kingdom will have no end and all of the prophecies of Isaiah are named
one after the other for the first time. By the end of the greeting
there can be no doubt in my mind that she is being asked to be the
Mother of the Messiah. And her answer, unlike Zachariah, when the
Angel comes to Zachariah he says, "How am I to know that this is going
to happen?" He is in some doubt. And the Angel pulls rank and says
because I am the Angel Gabriel and I've been sent by God to tell you
this. But in Mary's case she says, "How will this happen since I do
not know man?" That is not a question of how babies come about. It is
not her asking how could I become a mother because I have not known
man, that she's still a virgin, but it's that I still do not know man,
it's a sense of ongoing. Click "read more" to continue reading
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| Voting principles |
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Monday, September 29 2008 @ 06:05 AM PDT
Contributed by: ajmonty2
Views: 1020
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Had a pretty good sermon on our obligations as Catholic to vote, and vote properly, yesterday. However, there was one point the pastor made that was wrong, and I think it cast considerable doubt upon his conclusion.
First, he based the obligation to vote on the general obligation to help build the kingdom of God here on Earth. Good starting point, rock solid premise.
Second he pointed out the fact that we live in a democracy, and that places upon the citizens the obligation to govern themselves, and this of necessity implies active participation in the democratic process.
Then he explained how the Church is absolutely clear about how, and why, abortion is wrong always, and that no Catholc (or non-Catholic) politician has a moral leg to stand on to say they support a pro-choice angle. He went further, to show that so fundamental is the right to life that a politicial who can't figure out this basic truth cannot be trusted in any other area of governance - that he is wholly disqualified from office. SO if your choice is to vote for a pro-choice candidate or a pro-life one, you have a most serious obligation to vote for the pro-life one.
However, if both candidates are pro-choice, then you ought to vote for the one who will least damage the community - such a vote is not a vote FOR pro-choice, but a vote to limit the evil. This is exactly what Fr. Frank Pavone and one of the Vatican Cardinal's said on EWTN last week.
Please click "read more" to continue
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| Vatical Library Online Services Expanded Due to Library Closure |
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Friday, July 25 2008 @ 10:17 AM PDT
Contributed by: jlayne
Views: 614
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For those budding (and already budded) scholars among us, I thought that you may be interested in knowing that the Vatican Library has expanded its web presence. The expansion follows the closure of the library while a major restoration project is completed.
The web site includes a catalog of manuscripts. You can even pull up a copy of the condemnation of Luther, records from the trial of Galileo, and other historical documents.
http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/
The Knights of Columbus also houses a collection of over 35,000 manuscripts on microfilm available at:
http://www.slu.edu/libraries/vfl/
Then there is also the Vatican Secret Archives, which preserves the documents of the Church's central government. (Unfortunately for the Indiana Jones fans here, I can find no mention of where the Holy Grail is hidden. I am sure that not EVERY secret is going to be made public):
http://asv.vatican.va/home_en.htm
The Vatican Library has already been closed for more than a year for this restoration project, and it will remain closed until at least 2010.
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| Abraham Lincoln |
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Monday, May 19 2008 @ 11:05 AM PDT
Contributed by: alistair
Views: 1176
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When I first came to the US, I had the vague notion that the Civil War was fought because the North was abolitionist and the South viewed slavery as a necessary evil. I suspect most people hold that view.
As one learns more, that scenario simply doesn't hold water. I eventually read the one must-read volume on the Civil War, James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom." Marvellous read and highly recommended. It showed me it wasn't the North that was abolitionist and the South that viewed slavery as a necessary evil. Rather, it was the North that viewed slavery as a necessary evil and the South that viewed it as a good thing.
Keep in mind that the Republican Party was not formed to abolish slavery, it was formed to prevent the expansion of slavery beyond the boundaries the Founding Fathers had placed on it.
Keep in mind that Stephen Douglas, after debating with Lincoln, went to the Democratic convention in 1860 in Charleston, South Carolina and was kicked out. Why? Because he said the same thing he had said during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, "You could vote slavery up or down, it doesn't matter." That would be equivalent to a female politician going to a NOW convention and saying, "You could vote abortion up or down . . . ". They'd kick her out because they view abortion as good thing which should be voted up.
Keep in mind that committees were set up by the Congress and the Senate to advise on how to get Southern Congressmen and Senators back to Washington after they decided to secede. And both committees independently of each other proposed that slavery be enshrined in the Constitution. The people who knew them best knew that a Constitutional amendment would bring them back. The abolitionists, who were about 10% of the American population, put their foot down and the recommendations did not go through. But the majority of Northerners were willing to countenance a Constitutional amendment to include slavery.
I also viewed Ken Burns PBS documentary, "The Civil War," and thought it very entertaining and well worth watching. But both James McPherson and Ken Burns leave one with the impression that Lincoln was something of a racist who viewed blacks as second-class and cared more about the Union than about slavery, in fact would have kept slavery if it had helped preserve the Union. And I kept searching until one day I saw Allen Guelzo on CSpan's BookTV speaking on Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. It shed floods of light on Lincoln. It is, in my opinion, the single best thing on Lincoln out there. Every American college student should be forced to view it at gunpoint. I was also surprised to hear him quote Aquinas at length in another talk on Lincoln, "Prudence and Politics." Aquinas vs. Kant and Aquinas comes out on top. If you looking for a Great Brooks education in half-an-hour, this is it.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln and Prudence
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3 comments
Most Recent Post: 08/28 10:24PM by alistair
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| Mike Augros 92 letter to Connecticut Bishops |
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Monday, November 05 2007 @ 06:39 PM PST
Contributed by: alistair
Views: 851
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http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=866
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| Descartes Root Finder |
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Tuesday, June 26 2007 @ 10:19 PM PDT
Contributed by: euclid14
Views: 1528
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How does the "Instrument YZ" of Descartes find roots?
In Descartes' Geometry there is a drawing of a complicated gadget made of rulers that slide along each other as an angle is opened. (cf. p. 46 of the Dover ed.)
A pair of rulers ZY, YX is hinged together at Y. A third ruler BC is fixed to YX at right angles at B. As the angle ZYX opens, ruler BC, while lying astride the angle ZYX, nudges with its free end the foot of another ruler CD, which is attached to YZ in such a way that CD remains perpendicular to YZ at C as C slides out toward Z.
Furthermore, there is another ruler DE attached to YX at right angles but which similarly is being nudged by the free end of CD.
The free end of DE nudges another ruler EF, which in turn nudges FG nudging GH, and so on.
I have heard that this gadget can be used to find roots other than square roots. How?
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2 comments
Most Recent Post: 07/17 02:38PM by euclid14
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| Analysis of Modern Scientific Method |
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Friday, May 18 2007 @ 12:43 PM PDT
Contributed by: andrewmlang
Views: 1748
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I was wondering if there are any good Thomistic/Aristotelian books, websites, blogs, senior thesis's, etc. which provide an examination of the modern scientific method? Thanks.
-Andrew Lang
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4 comments
Most Recent Post: 06/04 11:16PM by stangrove
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| Annulments |
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Tuesday, May 08 2007 @ 04:24 PM PDT
Contributed by: euclid14
Views: 1797
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What is an annulment, exactly?
I was looking up a local protestant church's policy on marriage, and it considers annulments to be the same as divorces. At one point its policy states:
Q. Can I remarry if I had my marriage annulled?
A. No, an annulment will be viewed the same as a divorce. There is nothing in the Bible about the ability to dissolve a marriage so that it never legally existed. Jesus said what God made one, let no man separate.
(cf. [pdf] http://www.journeyon.net/pdfs/divorce-and-remarriage.pdf)
This church considers an annulment to be the dissolution of a marriage with retroactive legal effect. This strikes me as confused.
So tell me if this is right: An annulment is not a dissolution of a marriage, but a declaration by a competent authority that what had appeared to have been a sacramental marriage is not and never was sacramental to begin with, even if the marriage was recognized by the state.
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13 comments
Most Recent Post: 05/14 06:03PM by Wendy-Irene
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| Five First Saturdays |
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Sunday, April 22 2007 @ 02:13 AM PDT
Contributed by: euclid14
Views: 1703
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Now that there are 20 mysteries, how are we supposed to do the Five First Saturdays? The rubrics say we need to spend 15 minutes meditating on the 15 mysteries of the rosary - does this mean we now need to spend 20 minutes on 20 mysteries?
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1 comments
Most Recent Post: 04/25 05:55PM by LBolin
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