Love, Reasons, and Desire

This essay defends subjectivism about reasons of love. These are the normative reasons we have to treat those we love especially well, such as the reasons we have to treat our close friends or life partners better than strangers. Subjectivism about reasons of love is the view that every reason of love a person has is correctly explained by her desires. I formulate a version of subjectivism about reasons of love and defend it against three objections that have been made to this kind of view. Firstly, it has been argued that the phenomenology of our focus when we have reasons of love does not fit with subjectivism about those reasons. Secondly, it has been argued that the phenomenology of our motivations when we have reasons of love does not fit with subjectivism about those reasons. Thirdly, it has been argued that subjectivism about reasons of love has deeply counterintuitive implications about what our reasons of love are. I argue that none of these objections succeeds

The combinatorics of associated Hermite polynomials

We develop a combinatorial model of the associated Hermite polynomials and their moments, and prove their orthogonality with a sign-reversing involution. We find combinatorial interpretations of the moments as complete matchings, connected complete matchings, oscillating tableaux, and rooted maps and show weight-preserving bijections between these objects. Several identities, linearization formulas, the moment generating function, and a second combinatorial model are also derived.Comment: [v1]: 18 pages, 16 figures; presented at FPSAC 2007 [v2]: Some minor errors fixed (thanks Bill Chen, Jang Soo Kim) and text rearranged and cleaned up; no real content changes [v3]: fixed typos, to appear in European J. Combinatoric

Higher order matching polynomials and d-orthogonality

We show combinatorially that the higher-order matching polynomials of several families of graphs are d-orthogonal polynomials. The matching polynomial of a graph is a generating function for coverings of a graph by disjoint edges; the higher-order matching polynomial corresponds to coverings by paths. Several families of classical orthogonal polynomials -- the Chebyshev, Hermite, and Laguerre polynomials -- can be interpreted as matching polynomials of paths, cycles, complete graphs, and complete bipartite graphs. The notion of d-orthogonality is a generalization of the usual idea of orthogonality for polynomials and we use sign-reversing involutions to show that the higher-order Chebyshev (first and second kinds), Hermite, and Laguerre polynomials are d-orthogonal. We also investigate the moments and find generating functions of those polynomials.Comment: 21 pages, many TikZ figures; v2: minor clarifications and addition

The Implications of New Historicism for Evangelical Bible Interpretation: An Evaluation

The twentieth century has seen a rise in recognizing the Bible not only as historical or theological work but also as a piece of literature, and the natural progression of this idea is to apply the same methods used for literary texts to the biblical text. However, many movements in literary studies seem antithetical to evangelical ideas of interpretation, as the goal of evangelical interpretation is always to find God’s intended meaning for the text. This thesis will explore the features of one literary theory, New Historicism, as presented in Practicing New Historicism, and ask if this theory can be made compatible with evangelical presuppositions, or even offer any unique insights for biblical interpretation

Stavrogin: The Anti-Christ of Demons

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Demons is much more than the story of a political murder; it describes the clash of ideas in 1860s Russia as Russia battles between retaining its past national identity, rooted loosely in Eastern Orthodoxy, and Western ideas, rooted in atheism. It is a clash of politics, but even more it is a clash of religion. However, the opposing sides in the battle of religion appear far from balanced, for even Shatov, who supports Russian Orthodoxy, does not truly believe in God. Atheism seems to win out as all characters reject real, vital faith in God in some form, and havoc ensues. At the center of it all lies the enigmatic, fascinating, horrifying character Stavrogin. Though Stavrogin often lies in the background, rarely doing anything and often fading out altogether, his subtle yet powerful influence over the other characters drives the plot of the novel. Through it all, Demons sets Stavrogin up as an anti-Christ figure, hammering the dreadful consequences of replacing God with man

Once Upon a Time on Mango Street

Undergraduate Textual or Investigativ

Nettle and Mellado\u27s Small matters: How churches and parents can raise up world-changing children (Book Review)

A review of Nettle, G., & Mellado, S. (2016). Small matters: How churches and parents can raise up world-changing children. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. 185 pp. $21.00. ISBN 978031052103