Last night we finally had our first family dinner of 2008. We were sitting around eating and chatting about our upcoming summer vacation to the Black Hills and Yellowstone. I told the kids that we would be in the van for many, many hours, and thought that maybe we could make productive use of the time by listening to lectures from The Teaching Company. I said the oldest three should be able to get something out of the lectures, and maybe the fourth oldest, if we picked the right subject.
They were respectfully mortified, so I started going through the most-recent catalogue: "How about Jewish Intellectual History: 16th to 20th Century?" They thought I was serious, which was perfect, because then I could make real suggestions: "History of the United States?" They actually looked halfway interested, until I told them the lectures were 42 hours long.
We settled on A Brief History of the World. I've been trying for years to instill a historical sense in my children (nothing mortifies me more than to hear an adult ask whether Mohammad came before or after Jesus or ask why the Roman Empire allowed the U.S. Civil War to occur--alright, I'm making-up the latter, but the former is not uncommon). Jack (11) is a little excited, Alex (14) is resigned, and Abbie (13) isn't sure what to think. She's a bright girl, but she has the typical interests of a teenage girl (clothes, American Idol, and clothes). After we settled on this lecture course, she asked a bit apprehensively and sincerely, "Dad, I'm not saying this would happen or anything, but will we get in trouble if we fall asleep?"
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Best quote I saw this weekend comes from across the pond: "In reality, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail [whose "history" is the "history" of The Da Vinci Code] was pure pseudohistory. Laura Miller, writing for Salon in 2004, described its technique: 'A preposterous idea will first be floated as a guess, then later presented as a tentative hypothesis, then still later treated as a fact ”¦ The miasma of bogus authenticity becomes impenetrable; you might as well use a rifle to fight off a thick fog.'"
The theme of the article, incidentally, is that all sorts of pseudohistories are now being written, published, and widely sold, thanks to the remarkable success of The Da Vinci Code's pseudohistory. (Link to Ignatius Insight, where I found the article.)
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The question will come up: Why is Easter so early this year? The answer is simple (sounds hard, but it's so simple even the Wikipedians got it right): Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox is the first day of spring. The tricky part is knowing when the full moon occurs, but that's Mr. Moon's business. For us, we just need to know the formula so we look cool at cocktail parties.
