When I Grow Up
Last night in short-stories, a group presented on M. Laurence's The Loons.
That's not the important part (Laurence isn't exactly my favourite prairie writer...)
What surprised me was a slide in the presentation talking about the biographical fallacy, which included this picture:
The presenters found the image on GIS, so they had no idea what this amazing book actually is.
I've decided that, after I'm done researching the complexities of chivalric codes dealing with life, ethics and spirituality, my next calling in life is to teach children how to use logic. Or maybe just to convince a future wife to do that teaching for me. In any case, teaching logic to children looks like it's a lot more fun than teaching logic to my fellow university students.
I've also been thinking about Pastor Rick's sermon on Sunday (which he based on Ps. 127.) Apparently, a large quiver from "the days of yore" could hold 35 arrows. I'm assuming that this quiver would be for the use of a chariot or horseback archer. What sort of family is analogous to a chariot archer? (Back when I played Age of Empires, I would always use them against enemy priests. Hmmm...)
Red Herrings aside, Pastor's argument is compelling: the number of relationships in a family increases exponentially with the number of children you have. This might seem like a backward way of thinking about family structure at first, but I'm convinced that the possibility of multiple good relationships among siblings neutralizes the potential for multiple antagonists.
Case in point: I've got four siblings, and I love them all dearly. My perspective might be a bit different if they were all older than me, but I don't think that Zeke has any major problems relating with the rest of us. Maybe I should ask him the next time he's taking a break from WoW...
Anyway, I've determined that the optimum number of relationships within a nuclear family is 20, because it's a nice, round number that has a pleasant sound in most languages. This means that the optimum number of children is 4.667. It might be possible to round that out and assume that, since the dinner table is so large, some members of the family will be non-relational at any given point in time, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
I've decided that, after I'm done researching the complexities of chivalric codes dealing with life, ethics and spirituality, my next calling in life is to teach children how to use logic. Or maybe just to convince a future wife to do that teaching for me. In any case, teaching logic to children looks like it's a lot more fun than teaching logic to my fellow university students.
I've also been thinking about Pastor Rick's sermon on Sunday (which he based on Ps. 127.) Apparently, a large quiver from "the days of yore" could hold 35 arrows. I'm assuming that this quiver would be for the use of a chariot or horseback archer. What sort of family is analogous to a chariot archer? (Back when I played Age of Empires, I would always use them against enemy priests. Hmmm...)
Red Herrings aside, Pastor's argument is compelling: the number of relationships in a family increases exponentially with the number of children you have. This might seem like a backward way of thinking about family structure at first, but I'm convinced that the possibility of multiple good relationships among siblings neutralizes the potential for multiple antagonists.
Case in point: I've got four siblings, and I love them all dearly. My perspective might be a bit different if they were all older than me, but I don't think that Zeke has any major problems relating with the rest of us. Maybe I should ask him the next time he's taking a break from WoW...
Anyway, I've determined that the optimum number of relationships within a nuclear family is 20, because it's a nice, round number that has a pleasant sound in most languages. This means that the optimum number of children is 4.667. It might be possible to round that out and assume that, since the dinner table is so large, some members of the family will be non-relational at any given point in time, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.
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