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What Do Women Want? Part 1

Book Review of Erin Maglaque, Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body. Astra House (2026), 320 pp., and Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, Look Like a Lady: Five Visual Tropes of Womanhood and How to See Ourselves Differently. Brazos Press (2026), 256 pp. Virginia Woolf named a paradox about women in the past. On the one…
October 21, 2026
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Wordy Professors, Woodland Elves, and the Wisdom of Tolkien

Modern (digital) life feels like drinking from a firehose. There’s so much content to triage. It was bad before the onslaught of generative AI. Now, the digital dam has burst. Our tendency to “give our two cents” about every issue—already increased by social media—has been further amplified by the AI-driven capacity for supercharged content creation.…
October 20, 2026
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Computers and the Good Life: Learning from Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry was a prolific writer, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. His recent passing encouraged me to reread some of his works and consider how they could be applied to my work in the field of computer science. If you know Berry’s work and life, you will already be aware of his refusal to…
October 19, 2026
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College Students Want Confidence: But Is It a Virtue that Can Be Taught?

Many of our students lack confidence and want more of it. For example, our research team gathered goals from almost 2,700 students nationwide from 14 institutions, for almost 6,500 goals. One clear longing they expressed was a desire for confidence, articulated in their goals such as the following:  “Improve my self-esteem/confidence.”  “Build my confidence.”  “Be…
October 16, 2026
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Frolicking in new Fields with AI

I had a question: could artificial intelligence (AI) help me visualise the textual form of my thoughts and help me re-work them in a picture. That way I could look at them again in a different light and also have a different medium through which to explain them to other people? I’m reasonably competent at…
October 15, 2026
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Freud and Suspicion

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856. This year, then, is his 170th birthday year. That’s not a significant marker, but having come across that fact, I was reminded of all that I read about Freud during the 150th anniversary, in 2006, when we were given many anecdotes about his life. Here is one that stuck…
October 14, 2026

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Blog

Test Everything

“…but test everything; hold fast what is good.” — 1 Thess. 5:21 (ESV) I teach computer science students how to program computers, and testing is a crucial component of learning to program. In fact, the modern approach to software engineering advocates a Test Driven Development where testing is simultaneously intertwined with the writing of code.…
September 16, 2025
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Higher Education’s False Egalitarianism

One of the strangest features of contemporary higher education is its false egalitarianism. Teachers and students, by definition, are not equals with respect to the practice in which they are engaged, though of course they may be equals in other respects. If the student were on the same level as the teacher, he wouldn’t need…
September 15, 2025
BlogReviews

A Review of David I. Smith, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom

David I. Smith’s most recent book, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom, represents yet another of his significant and vital contributions to Christian education. Commencing with an invitation to wisdom for teachers and their students, Smith offers philosophical insights along with practical strategies for authentically integrating faith into teaching practices.…
September 5, 2025
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A Call to (Christian) Excellence

One way to understand the evolution of popular management publications over the last 50 years is to see it as beginning with a reaction to the struggles of American manufacturing in the 1970s. Shocked by the oil embargo and an invasion of cheaper, more efficient foreign imports, US car manufacturers attempted to adapt quickly but…
September 4, 2025
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Are You Trying to Create Experts or Mentor Students toward Excellence? The Two Are Not the Same

One factor behind the recent populist revolt in North America and other parts of the world stems from an increasing distrust of various experts (esp. medical scientists, journalists, and general scientists). There are numerous reasons for this distrust—some of them consistent with a Christian theological perspective, but other reasons have led to a problematic undermining…
September 3, 2025
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Not a Prize to Be Sought,but a Calling to Be Lived (A Response to Paul R. Yost)

With God are wisdom and strength, he has counsel and understanding.” —Job 12:13 I greatly appreciate Paul Yost’s poignant and generous review of The Crucibles that Shape Us.Gayle D. Beebe, The Crucibles that Shape Us: Navigating the Defining Challenges of Leadership (InterVarsity, 2024). He accurately amplifies what I hoped to identify and communicate while noting…
August 29, 2025
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Not a Prize to Be Sought, but a Calling to Be Lived (A Review)

The Crucibles that Shape Us by Gayle Beebe is an important addition to the Christian leadership literature on the challenges and growth that leaders will experience over the course of their careers. The book fills a missing space between books for secular business leaders and Christian ministry leaders. This book is written for Christian leaders…
August 28, 2025