blake johnson

Well, my first exam is in three hours. We’re starting off with the easy one: French. I can only imagine that it will be downhill from here, since both of my physics exams are coming up on the same day— ouch!

Actually, my quantum test should go fine too. Lene Hau seems to give reasonable questions. Come to think of it, Masahiro Morii gave reasonable questions on our midterm too. That test was just way too long. Well, if I can ever figure out why anyone would ever want to use a canonical transformation, then I guess I’ll be just fine.

It is immoral to pursue monetary claims against the Church for sexual abuse crimes. Don’t get me wrong, I believe these crimes are very serious, but sueing for damages will not accomplish anything. Monetary awards really do little to heal the suffering of a victim of sexual abuse, and the money that these victims would receive would come out of programs that help the poor. Therefore, monetary rewards in these suits have a large social cost to society.

What is really needed is new leadership in the Church which will not try to hide its problems. Now that Cardinal Law has resigned, perhaps new leadership will arrive that can straighten our course.

In Mass on Sunday, M. Chien said that St. Paul’s parish will not be participating in the Archdiocese’ capital campaign this year. M. Chien says that he cannot in good conscience ask the parishoners to give money to the Archdiocese when the use of the money is as uncertain as it is now (there have been reports that Cardinal Law has been considering filinng for bankruptcy to protect the Archdiocese from lawsuits). While I was shocked to hear this annoucement, I am very proud of M. Chien for doing what he believes is right.

I disagree with Sammy’s assessment of the critique of dogmatism. The problem with most dogmatics is their unwillingness to consider counter-arguments. Thus, it is the non-flexible nature of the dogmatic rather than the specific truth they are proclaiming that bothers us. Is my assertion that one needs to consider counter-arguments dogmatic? Perhaps, but I don’t think so. For if you could provide me with a convincing argument otherwise, I would at least consider it.

It seems to me that the current system of voting in the US is broken, or if not broken, it is at least undesirable. No one should ever win an election with less than 50% of the vote. There are many alternative voting systems out there, such as the instant runoff or the Borda count would give significantly more accurate results in terms of representing the actual preferenences of voters.

Unfortunately, vote reform is unlikely to happen any time soon because it would probably benefit democrats more than republicans, since alternative voting systems would allow people to vote for a 3rd party candidate, but still have a preference between the other two candidates if their first choice candidate does not win. Since voters who tend to vote for Green party candidates are often likely to choose a democrat over a republican, a different voting system would give democrats an advantage in close elections.

See this article for more information on alternative voting systems.