I’m Daft at Medicine, or Why I Don’t Do Drugs.

Valerie has accused me, on occasion, of being against doctors. This is a grave and serious crime for someone who is marrying a person who wants to **be** a doctor. I have assured her that this is not the case. The problem is not that I don’t like doctors, it’s that I’m not very good at the physical realm. Give me metaphysics any day. I’m very inclined to be one of those Manichaen types who call the physical bad, the spiritual good, and have done with it. Alas that I am addicted to truth and know that it cannot be so. God created the physical realm, and called it good, and it has ever been so. Nevertheless, I’m not good *at* the physical realm.

I am, however, decent in economics, and I hate the insurance industry. By my keen understanding, it looks more like a cartel than an industry to me. Case in point: It’s my understanding that my place of work pays an average of about $15,000 per year per employee for medical benefits. What we have is supposed to be really good coverage. I couldn’t tell you the difference. But I can tell you that $15 K is 60% of my wages. I’m getting married in 2 months. I’d love to take a gamble have them give me half of that $15,000 and waive the insurance. I’m not at risk for cancer or heart disease. Seven thousand dollars would be a lot more useful to me than to visit a well-paid man in a white coat so he can tell me I’m not sick.

I did visit the nice man in the white coat, by the way Continue reading “I’m Daft at Medicine, or Why I Don’t Do Drugs.”

Education, Doctrine, Culture, and Apologetics

Pres. Bush delivered a [great commencement speech](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050521-1.html) at Calvin College this weekend.

Two thoughts:

+ This is **exactly** what I’ve been trying to work toward.
+ Now how come we couldn’t get a guy like this to come speak at *my* commencement?

Actually, I know why. No community can extend itself very far beyond it’s own culture. Valerie’s commencement speaker was the president (or dean, I forget which) of the Charlotte branch of [Union Theological Seminary](http://www.union-psce.edu/), which is housed on the Campus of Queens University. UTS is a [PCUSA](http://www.pcusa.org/) Seminary, and I’m sure he gave a speech that was very moving to the modern liberal view, but it left something lacking for the evangelical Christian. On the other hand, Bush is evangelical, and it shows. He presents a worldview that allows for the individual, and calls for community which supports that which is right.

I think it was at my baccalaureate that it really clicked that I was probably in the wrong school, despite the wonderful wife I’ve acquired there. Continue reading “Education, Doctrine, Culture, and Apologetics”

RSS Reader

One of [WordPress’s](http://www.wordpress.org) coolest features is officially dead as far as I’m concerned. The [links-update](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/23457) feature is what used to control the order and formatting of the links in the sidebar on the right of this page. Links would be listed in the order of most recently updated, and links updated in the last 24 hours would be listed in bold. For over a month, according to wordpress, nobody has been updating anything. After the upgrade to WP 1.5 , it only kept track of maybe 4-5 sites. Now we’re down to none. And yesterday (finally) I gave up. They’re listed in simple alphabetic order now. So sad. Hopefully one day they’ll fix whatever kinks are up and I can reimplement this feature. It’s the first time WordPress has ever let me down.

Probably the saddest part is that, up till yesterday, I was still using my sidebar as a substitute for a genuine RSS reader. For a whole host of reasons, a nice neat list was really all I wanted. But since links-update has been broken, my nice neat list had me sporadically clicking every person on the list just to see if they had updated (I’m sure their hit counters were loving it).

Well, no more. I went a searching and found an online reader that seems to do pretty much everything I want (which is to say: nearly nothing). So I’m officially recommending [News Gator](http://www.newsgator.com/) as a good online RSS reader. The only disadvantage is that I now have to add things to my list of sites twice. Once there and once here. The good news is that now I’m reading up on all kinds of interesting things I had been missing out on.

For instance: Continue reading “RSS Reader”

Free Web Design

I’ve been doing some thinking recently, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I really enjoy web design. It’s become a mildly obsessive hobby of mine. Valerie says I’m actually pretty good at it (though she says my sense of what actually looks good could use some work). I think, for the most part, **this** site is as “designed” as it’s going to get for the time being, but the bug to tweak things is still on me. I’ve *heard* that you can actually make good money doing this, but I’m still amateurish at it.

So, in an effort to up my skills, I’m going to put an offer out there and see who bites: I will do your web site for free. Continue reading “Free Web Design”

Education

As the prospect of marriage approaches, I’m beginning to think more and more about children. Children are pretty important to me. In fact, there was a point I thought I might actually want children more than a wife! I’m not so far gone as that anymore, but I am convinced that, once you have them, raising those children properly should be the absolute highest concern in the way you order your life (it takes second place, of course, to loving and honoring God, but since raising your children right is pretty high up there on God’s list too, I won’t make much of a distinction).

Valerie and I have already addressed the questions of “how soon” and “how many” that seem so pressing in today’s society (the answers are “as soon as possible,” and “lots!”, respectively). But the question of how to educate them (which seems so… academic …to some people) has been bearing down on my mind. Because we moved so often when I was growing up, I have been through nearly every concievable kind of school. Hands down, homeschooling won. I don’t mean just that it was the most fun, but I genuinely think I got the most education in the least amount of time.

Valerie and I are confident that we’ll be in the best imaginable position to homeschool our kids: She’s a biology major who intends to get a medical doctorate. I’m working on my MDiv degree. She can cover the sciences while I look after the humanities. We’ll be great.

But as I hear more and more at church and work about how horrible the public school situation is, the more guilty I feel. Continue reading “Education”