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Our Christmas letter for 2009 is here. [PDF]

Below are more details. You can jump immediately to photos or videos if you’d like.

Emily’s humor articles at TheChristianPulse.com
• This is a perma-link to all of them including future ones.

The mathematics theses that Gene reviewed in 2009:

• Jonathan Dent, Geneva College, master’s thesis in Education, “Non-Trivial Natural Inclusion of Faith in Mathematics.”

• Richard Rast, Dickinson College, senior honors thesis in Computer Science, “Automated Interpretation of Arithmetic in First-Order Theories.”

Photos:

• Josiah & Anderson DeRosa, Summer 2009, Ocean City, MD. [Gene's favorite photo of the brothers so far.]

• Emily and I help to decorate Simeon’s nursery walls, May 2009, Frisco, TX.

• Emily & Simeon Chase, August 2009, Frisco, TX.

• Anderson DeRosa plays miniature golf, September 2009, Carlisle, PA.

• John & Kelly Chase and John & Eleanor Parke and Gene & Emily Chase, Thanksgiving 2009, Springfield, MA.

• Josiah and Anderson DeRosa visit cousin Caleb Masshardt, New Cumberland, PA.

• Josiah and Anderson DeRosa visit cousin Caleb (second shot).

•
Josiah DeRosa celebrates fourth birthday party, at several places, album.

• Anderson Ross DeRosa, Columbia, MD.

• Gene’s elementary school class when he was in fifth grade, Riverhead, NY. Beginning of a nostalgia trip.

Some of John’s juggling videos

• Juggling fire with his friend Matthew Wright, during an inner-city Philadelphia outreach. Video.

• Juggling clubs with a guy named Peter. Video.

• Juggling fire and other things at Boiling Springs High School, for the annual Labor Day fair, September 2009. This is also a permalink to Gene’s YouTube channel for future videos.

Videos of grandsons:

• Josiah DeRosa’s first soccer practice, Columbia, MD.

• Josiah DeRosa hitting a line drive in T-ball, Columbia, MD.

• Josiah DeRosa playing the drums, Columbia, MD.

• Simeon Chase dancing, Frisco, TX.

Photos of our family getting our houses in shape

• John and Kelly refinish their basement.

• Prisca and Anthony’s new house, Woodbridge, MD.

• Gene & Emily put new carpet down, Mechanicsburg, PA.

John’s paper at an NCTM math conference in Texas

“Increasing textual and spatial literacy through the examination and application of reading strategies utilizing the language of geometry”

It’s now possible to export all one’s Facebook photos. Here supposedly is my link to my photos. It appears to be a link to my whole Facebook site. I’ll try looking at this from another computer before I say that for sure.

Gene Barry Chase |

For Christmas — just as a joke — my brother-in-law Richard, who is politically to the right of me, regifted a T-shirt that he had been given, also as a joke. It said, “I Obama.”

I told Richard, “But I do love Obama. I pray for him. I wish him well.” I have been meaning to follow up on my long post supporting John McCain before the November 2008 election. This T-shirt reminds me to do that. I promise a shorter post this time.

My comments are primarily about the US economy. I will wait to see what kinds of executive orders Obama produces in other areas. I’m already pleased with his keeping his promise to draw on a broad base of leadership in selecting his cabinet.

I’m pleased with Obama’s plan to provide public works projects that will simultaneously address unemployment and shore up our country’s ageing infrastructure.

I’m saddened by all the corruption already evident in how bailout money is being spent. But the lack of accountability falls both on Congress with a (slight) Democratic majority and the Republican administration, and Obama is neither senator (any more) nor administration (yet).

I am disappointed that Obama is not going on record as planning to slash Federal funding for things that I think are discretionary, controversial, and ineffective. I would disband the US Department of Education, eliminate Federal funding for abortions, and until the economy is back on track suspend spurious concerns about man-made global warming — as the president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus explained so well at a conference on global warming in 2008.

But that’s what happens when you love someone. You don’t necessarily agree with them.

“Psychotic” is defined as “being out of touch with reality.” But whose reality?

The Hebrew Bible considers atheism psychotic. Twice the Psalms say: “The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God.’ ” On the other hand, the New Atheists consider theism to be psychotic.

Psychotic_Theism and Psychotic_Atheism are quite different.

Before the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed references to psychoanalytic jargon in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), Freudians used a broader term — “neurosis.” Neuroses included not only distressing breaks with reality but also thoughts that seemed to the analyst to be breaks with reality — whether or not they were ego-dystonic, which is to say personally distressing. Consider William Stekel’s 1922 book Homosexual Neurosis for a view of homosexual ideation as a psychosis contrary to (heteronormative) reality. But in 1973 the APA removed ego-syntonic homosexuality from its DSM.

Ronald Bayer documents in his 1987 Princeton University book
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry that the APA’s motive for the change was political, based on its (pansexual) view of reality.

I’m glad that psychoanalysis is out of favor with psychologists. Freudian analysis is pretentious and overly influenced by the analyst’s world view. Freud’s views are too easily politicized. Not a surprise! Freud is an intellectual child of Nietzsche, who — having abandoned God — was left with merely a “will to power” in making moral decisions.

Take the gulags of Marxist Russia for example, where prisoners were interred for their mental illness, to wit holding views contrary to the prevailing world view of the State. Marx is also an intellectual child of Nietzsche. Robert Heinlein’s 1941 science fiction short story, “They,” is clever allegory for this misuse of psychoanalysis.

Why am I thinking about these things today? Two sources came together for me this week.

I am finishing Arthur Goldberg’s 2008 book Light in the Closet (Torah, Homosexuality and the Power to Change). It argues that a conservative Jew cannot embrace the “gay is good” mantra.

Psychotic_GayIsBad and Psychotic_GayIsGood are quite different.

So are the anthropologists right after all? We must subscript all our terms with our world view.

Almost.

This week I also listened to Pastor Tim Keller’s masterful talk at Google headquarters (yes!) condensing the beginning of his book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. Keller quotes Bishop Leslie Newbigin’s caution about the familiar Feeling the Elephant analogy, here (starting 21 minutes into the talk, and extending for 2 minutes):

We might say that anthropologists are

Right_Anthropology

after all. Humility is required.