Author Archives: mike@standardsmichigan.com

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Sacred Spaces

“We need the sense of the sacred, and the sense that things transcend our grasp.

We need to know that we are dependent on others,

and that the condition of our existence is the existence of others.”

— Sir Roger Scruton

“View of Eton College Chapel” 1834 William Ingalton

Natural Religion

The founding of many education communities is inspired by faith communities.   In many of them the place of worship was the very first building.   College and university chapels are central places of worship for students, staff and faculty, and provide a space for solitude and reflection.  A place for feeling at home in the world.

International Building Code | Section 303.4 Assembly Group A-3

There are several hundred technical standards, or parts of standards,  that govern how churches and chapels are made safe and sustainable.  Owing to innovations in construction, operation and management methods, those standards move, ever so slightly, on a near-daily basis.  They are highly interdependent; confounded by county-level adaptations; and impossible to harmonize by adoption cycle.  That movement tracked here as best we can within the limit of our resources and priorities.  That’s why it’s best to simply click into our daily colloquia if you have a question or need guidance.

The Bible: Silly Stories or Symbolic Wisdom


Richard Miniter observes that the United States was founded as four distinct religious utopias, each originating from different regions and historical periods in England (and the broader British Isles). These groups, shaped by conflicts like the English Civil War, brought competing visions of society, governance, and faith that continue to influence American culture and politics today.1. New England Puritans (from East Anglia): Strict, communal Calvinists seeking a “city upon a hill” with moral oversight and collective piety.
2. Cavalier culture in Virginia and the South (from southwest England): Hierarchical, Anglican/Royalist tradition emphasizing order, honor, and aristocratic values.
3. Middle States (influenced by the West Midlands): More tolerant, pluralistic Quaker and other nonconformist approaches fostering commerce and individual liberty.
4. Appalachian borderlands (from the English-Scottish border): Scots-Irish Presbyterian folkways stressing independence, martial honor, and anti-authoritarian egalitarianism.These enduring subcultures create ongoing tensions over freedom, authority, and religion in America.

Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief | Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Sam Harris

Taylor University | Grant County Indiana

The image criteria of our WordPress theme does not permit many images of college and university chapels to be shown fully-dimensioned on sliders or widget galleries.  We reproduce a few of the outsized images here and leave the complexities of financing, designing, building and maintaining of them in a safe and sustainable manner for another day.  CLICK HERE for the links to our Sacred Space Standards workspace.

Click on any image for author attribution, photo credit or other information*.

Orchard Lake Schools | Oakland County Michigan

Saint Leo University | Pasco County Florida

Newman University Chapel Dublin

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen:

not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

— C.S. Lewis

Vilnius University

Mount St. Joseph University | Hamilton County Ohio

Sainte-Chapelle:pic.twitter.com/B2lPLtWEVx

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) February 12, 2024

Marian University Indianapolis

Wittenberg University

Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem

University of San Diego

Augustana University | Minnehaha County South Dakota

Bucknell University Pennsylvania

Carroll College All Saints Chapel Montana

 

Marquette University Wisconsin

Saint Louis University Missouri

University of St. Thomas Minnesota

Keuka College New York

جامعة الأزهر (الشريف)

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

University of Chicago

Thomas Aquinas College California

St. Albans School | District of Columbia

Princeton University

Yale University

Harvard University

Piula Theological College Samoa

Universität zu Lübeck

Wycliffe College

Universitat de Barcelona

Hillsdale College

Liberty University

Gordon College

 

Colorado University Denver

Walla Walla University / Washington

University of the Incarnate Word / San Antonio, Texas

Pepperdine University / California

University of Kentucky

Loyola Marymount University / Los Angeles, California

Lourdes University

Seton Hall University

Durlston Court Prep School Chapel

Colorado University Denver

Luther College at the University of Regina / Saskatchewan, Canada

 

계명대학교 / Keimyung University Chapel, South Korea

U.S. Coast Guard Memorial Chapel | New London, Connecticut

Saint John’s University | Photo by Paul Middlestaedt

Trinity College / Hartford, Connecticut

Georgetown University Chapel | Washington, D.C.

Kings College Chapel | Auckland, New Zealand

Brigham Young University / Idaho

Newman University Church / Dublin

Our Lady of the Lake University / San Antonio, Texas

Southern Methodist University | Dallas, Texas

Southern Methodist University | Dallas, Texas

St. John’s College Oxford

United States Naval Academy Chapel

Wellington College Chapel

Fitzwilliam College Chapel Cambridge

Sorbonne Université

West Point | US Army Cadet Chapel

Hebrew Union College

Tuskegee University Chapel

The Spring Hill College Chapel | Mobile, Alabama

Boston University

University of Tennessee at Chattangooga

Wake Forest University

Auburn University Chapel

Davis & Elkins College

University of Tulsa

Randolph College Chapel

 

Sewanee | The University of the South

King’s College Chapel | University of Cambridge

Hope College | Holland, Michigan

Duke University | Durham, North Carolina

Christ’s Chapel | Hillsdale College, Michigan

Basilica of the Sacred Heart | University of Notre Dame | South Bend, Indiana

Three Faith Chapels | Brandeis University

University of Wroclaw | Jesuit College | Wrocław, Poland

Alma College Chapel | Alma, Michigan

Stanford Memorial Church | Palo Alto, California

Universidad Adventista Templo | Buenos Aires, Argentina

St. Thomas of Villanova University Chapel | Villanova, Pennsylvania

St. Paul’s Chapel | Columbia University | New York City

Scotch College Chapel | Melbourne, Australia

Princeton University Chapel

United States Air Force Cadet Chapel | Colorado Springs

Chapelle Sainte-Ursule de la Sorbonne | Paris

Memorial Chapel | Glasgow University | Glasgow, Scotland

Alice Millar Chapel | Northwestern University

Bowdoin College Chapel | Brunswick, Maine

Loyola University Chapel | Madonna della Strada Chicago

Heinz Memorial Chapel | University of Pittsburgh

Madonna University Chapel | Livonia, Michigan

Vassar College Chapel | Poughkeepsie, New York

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Student Chapel | Cambridge, Massachusetts

St. Ignatius Church | University of San Francisco

Church of the Resurrection | Valparaiso University | Valparaiso, Indiana

Baughman Center | University of Florida

Exeter College Chapel | Oxford University

 

More coming.

*404 ERRORS and Page Not Found messages are common as webmasters move content.


More

CLICK HERE for bibliography

 

 

 

“The Masters”

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Blueberry Pancakes!

University of Maine Wild Blueberries
Blueberry pancakes have deep roots in the American Midwest, blending Native American traditions with 20th-century agricultural innovation. Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region had long used wild blueberries — abundant in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois — as a nutritious food source, mixing them into cornmeal flatbreads and porridges. European settlers adopted these berries into their pancake recipes by the 19th century. However, blueberry pancakes as a widespread breakfast staple only emerged in the early 1900s. The breakthrough came after 1916, when commercial highbush blueberry cultivation began in New Jersey and quickly spread to Midwest states.

Blueberry Pancakes

Chemist Isabel Bevier pioneered innovations in home economics

Standards impact industrial growth

CEN and CENELEC Strategy 2030

The Pilgrims and Modern England: A Repeating Cycle

The Pilgrims—English Separatists who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620—left not solely for religious freedom, though persecution under James I was real. Fined, imprisoned, or driven from homes for rejecting the Church of England’s enforced conformity, they first fled to tolerant Holland. Yet by 1620 economic realities dominated: low-wage factory toil in Leiden aged their children prematurely, Dutch culture eroded their English identity and faith, and they craved land, self-sufficiency, and a stable society free of Old World constraints. England’s 17th-century pressures—population growth, land scarcity, rigid class structures, and state religious control—made daily life untenable. They sought a “new” England across the Atlantic.

Those same pressures have re-emerged in 21st-century England, imported through decades of high-volume immigration, much of it from Third World countries (non-EU Asia, Africa, Middle East). Net migration peaked at 944,000 in 2023 before falling to 204,000 by mid-2025, still historically elevated and overwhelmingly non-European. Unlike earlier skilled or culturally proximate inflows, recent waves include large asylum, family, and low-skilled cohorts whose origins feature high fertility, clan-based social norms, weak institutions, and often Islamist or tribal worldviews incompatible with Britain’s secular, liberal order.

Socially, the parallel is stark. Just as state religion once policed belief, today multiculturalism policies have fostered parallel societies. Enclaves exhibit grooming scandals, honor-based violence, FGM, Sharia patrols, and Islamist extremism—phenomena alien to historic English norms yet tolerated under “diversity” doctrines. Native Britons in cities like London, Birmingham, or Oldham report feeling culturally displaced, their children minorities in schools, Christmas sidelined, and free speech chilled by blasphemy sensitivities. Social trust has eroded; riots in 2024 exposed fractures. The Pilgrims feared Dutch assimilation erasing their identity; modern natives fear imported identities erasing theirs. Integration failures are empirical: certain groups show persistently lower employment, higher welfare dependency, and segregated outcomes decades later.

Economically, rapid population growth—driven almost entirely by immigration—mirrors 17th-century land and resource strains. Housing shortages have worsened; a 1% population rise from migration correlates with 1% higher house prices, pricing out young natives. NHS waiting lists balloon, schools overflow, and welfare costs mount for low-skilled arrivals and their larger families. Fiscal analyses show negative lifetime net contributions from asylum/refugee routes due to low employment and high inactivity. Low-wage competition depresses pay in care, retail, and construction. The welfare state, absent in Pilgrim times, now subsidizes dependency that 17th-century England’s poor laws could not sustain at scale. Britain’s per-capita GDP growth lags while aggregate GDP is artificially inflated—echoing the Pilgrims’ frustration with toil yielding no security.

Uncontrolled Third World inflows re-assert these conditions because the source societies export their unsolved problems—poverty traps, religious authoritarianism, demographic momentum—into a high-trust, high-welfare host society lacking assimilation enforcement. Post-war policy abandoned selective, small-scale migration for volume and “compassion,” ignoring cultural distance and labor-market fit. The result: natives face the very intolerance, economic precarity, and cultural erosion the Pilgrims fled. England has, in effect, recreated the Old World it once escaped—only this time the pressures arrive by jet and dinghy rather than royal decree. Without course correction toward skills, numbers, and integration, the cycle repeats.

English for Technical Professionals

IEEE English for Technical Professionals is a 14-hour online learning program designed to provide non-native English speakers with a working knowledge of English techniques and vocabulary that are essential for working in today’s technical workplace.

 

IEEE English for Technical Professionals

“It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts: and if this be just in what is odious and blameable, it is more strongly so in what is amiable and praiseworthy. Here emulation most effectually operates upon us, and inspires our imitation in an irresistible manner. A good man therefore is a standing lesson to all his acquaintance, and of far greater use in that narrow circle than a good book.

But as it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way; the writer may be called in aid to spread their history farther, and to present the amiable pictures to those who have not the happiness of knowing the originals; and so, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern…”

— Henry Fielding “The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham” (1742)

 

Electropedia: The World’s Online Electrotechnical Vocabulary

Standards January: Language

History of the English Speaking Peoples

Michigan Central

Since so much of what we do in standards setting is built upon a foundation of a shared understanding and agreement of the meaning of words (no less so than in technical standard setting) that time is well spent reflecting upon the origin of the nouns and verbs of that we use every day.   Best practice cannot be discovered, much less promulgated, without its understanding secured with common language.

Word Counts

2024 Alumni Awards

Cambridge: English language education in the era of generative AI

Root Beer Olympics

Sober Fun

North Dakota

“Standard Root Beer” is typically made using a combination of ingredients that include water, sugar, sassafras root or extract, and various other flavoring agents. Here’s a general overview of the process:

  • Sassafras Flavoring: In traditional root beer recipes, sassafras root or extract is a key ingredient. However, it’s important to note that sassafras contains safrole, a compound that has been deemed potentially carcinogenic. For this reason, commercial root beers often use a safrole-free sassafras flavoring.
  • Sweetener: Sugar is commonly used to sweeten root beer, although some recipes may use alternatives like corn syrup or honey. The amount of sweetener can vary based on personal preference.
  • Water: Root beer typically starts with plain water as its base. The water is heated to dissolve the sweetener and other ingredients.
  • Flavorings: Besides sassafras flavoring, root beer can include a range of other flavorings to create its distinct taste. These may include wintergreen, vanilla, anise, licorice, molasses, or other herbs and spices. The exact combination of flavors varies among different root beer recipes.
  • Carbonation: Carbonation gives root beer its characteristic fizz. This can be achieved by using carbonated water or by introducing carbon dioxide gas into the mixture. In commercial production, carbonation is typically added during the bottling process.
  • Yeast Fermentation (optional): Some traditional homemade root beer recipes involve a fermentation step. Yeast is added to the root beer mixture, which consumes the sugar and produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct. This creates a natural carbonation in the beverage. However, this step can also increase the alcohol content, so it’s important to be mindful of the fermentation duration.
  • Bottling and Aging: Once the root beer is prepared, it is typically poured into bottles or kegs and sealed. Some recipes may recommend allowing the root beer to age for a certain period to develop the desired flavors.

It’s worth noting that the commercial production of root beer may involve different processes, as well as the use of artificial flavors, stabilizers, and preservatives to ensure consistency and shelf life. The specific recipe and production methods may vary among manufacturers.

Standards North Dakota

 

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