First Word

The Musical Instrument Museum would be easy to miss on a first trip to Berlin. But all that are interested in classical music (especially keyboard) or fine cabinetmaking should consider making a stop here. (more…)

My colleague will be back… I’m quite sure. But here, we can see the basic problem. (more…)

Paul Schneider was a German Reformed minister whose early ministry coincided with the ascendancy of the National Socialist movement in the 1930s. His critique of the folk’s movement in view of the Word of God as well as a series of stands for the independent rights of the church vis-à-vis the state led to continual conflicts with Party functionaries, and penalties of increasing severity. At length, the conflict culminated in consignment to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, where his life ended. (more…)

Everyone expects me to say “Predestination” or something. But that’s so far down the list that I’ll forget to even mention it.

There are three things that prevent me from becoming a Methodist. (more…)

During WW2, a british freighter is sunk by a U-boat, at the same time the U-boat is destroyed. Several survivors of the freighter, plus the German U-boat captain manage to clamber onto the only surviving lifeboat. This group, thrown together into such cramped quarters in the middle of a vast sea, have to figure out how to eat, drink, deal with a gangrenous infection, and sail toward some definitive goal. (more…)

This is a detective story set in a fictional pair of towns straddling the US-Mexican border. The car of a rich man is blown up. By chance, Mexican federale Vargas (Charlton Heston) is honeymooning in the town, and somehow ends up on the case in parallel with Quinlan (Orson Welles), the rotund, cigar-chomping local cop.

Quinlan works by hunches and intuition, while Vargas works by strict legal procedure. The problem is, (more…)

A. J. Ayer’s view of ethical judgments, often dubbed “emotivism,” is that ethical statements are neither true nor false and therefore are without significance. Behind this stance is his empiricism. In order for a statement to be meaningful, it must lend itself to some sort of verification. Without any possible means of verification statements fail to have to express anything. But Ayer does distinguish ethical judgment from other meaningless talk such that of speculative metaphysics or theology in that the former have at least a semblance of meaning since they display the attitude of the speaker toward certain types of actions. When one says, for example, “treason is wicked,” he is, on Ayers view, not uttering a statement with any cognitive content, but is, displaying his strong disapproval of treasonous behavior. (more…)