Simplicity in the Torah

This is one of my favorite religious stories (for the moment). It may sound familiar as the bible has a similar passage. Hillel was a Rabbi who was born one hundred and ten years before Christ. Shammai was another Jewish leader who was born fifty years before Christ. Here's the story:

Once there was a gentile who came before Shammai, and said to him:
"Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot."
Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding.
The same fellow came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying:
"That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it."

It's all ____'s fault.

Because surely "we didn't start the fire."

The other day I got to triple dip by going to a lecture called "I don't believe in Atheists." Which when I first found out about I was left thinking: "Religious studies credit for three classes? My life is complete."
Before you start accusing me of being atheist-intolerant let me get to my point:

Hedges' talk was about the New Atheist (think "The God Delusion", etc.) movement and the Christian Right.
He made some valid points as to why these groups are hurting America and the World. Three of my favorite were:

1. They both treat groups of people as the enemy. With the New Atheists it's those who are religious as can be seen be the major work to take religion out of everything these days. With the Christian Right it's the "sinners" - today this can easily be seen in the homophobic to the point of denial of the existence of homosexuality attitude of many in Christian Right states.

2. Because of this belief the two of them tend to claim that if the "problem" of the people's attitude (sinners saved or religious people becoming existentialist, etc.) were solved that we could miraculously reach a utopia and people would be wonderful.

3. The reason why this Utopia cannot exist is that the problem lies neither within religion or within a specific group (like the gay community) rather the problem lies within the inherint ability of men to do wrong.

I'm not saying that I think that he was totally correct, but he made some dang good points.
(As well as one really flawed one that they debated about during the Q&A section - at which points someone got so mad they asked him "Do you have trouble with English?!")

This all seems to fit well with the "Doctrine of the Mean" by Aristotle which I've recently discovered and really liked.

Anyway, just thought I'd talk about it.
It's interesting to me particularly because I've been trying to find a good piece of atheist literature, but all of the Atheists on Goodreads hate the four New Atheists and call them out on their poorly formed arguments.

On a side note: I really do like the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" and sometime soon I want to go through and read up on all of the events in the song because while I do know about some of the events/people (Cola wars, Ben Hurr, Eichmann) the number of ones I don't is kind of pathetic (children of thalidomide, Nasser aand Prokofiev, Edsel is a no-go.) It should be quite the learning experience... all of the things I should know. Plus - I'll finally get down to reading "Catcher in the Rye."

Quite the Wise Decision

So I find this fascinating -

Technetium, element 43, was discovered in 1937. To produce it scientists are required to bombard Molybdenum-96 with an additional neutron causing it to become Molybdenum-97 which then loses a negative beta particle and becomes Technetium.
(96Mo(n, γ)99Mo → 99Tc + β -)

Because it can only be produced synthetically and was the first element to have that qualification there was a huge controversy over whether or not it should be included in the Periodic Table of Elements (even though there was a predicted spot for it.) The decision to allow it and all of the following synthetic elements in wasn't made for ten more years and that was only after the scientists could study fallout from atomic research.

There are twenty-four elements that have been produced that absolutely cannot be found in nature (as it turns out, traces of Technetium can be.) There are over fifty more that some say that we could possibly produce.

Wow.

Can you imagine how quickly it could've thrown science off to refuse to include synthetic elements in the Periodic Table?

It's mind boggling and makes me wonder if we've done anything as incredibly stupid (or at least what seems incredibly stupid to the little Freshman) as this that has set science years behind. We probably have. It'll be really interesting to see what the things that we don't quite understand now ending up being discovered as scientific errors in the future.

Why Honors?

Honors Program sounds like something that you'd be forced into by some parent because "it'll look good on a resumé."
Honors is, however, a wonderful thing.

Why? (I'll tell you why!)

Without Honors I don't think I would've fully embraced the ideas of education for the self (in contrast to education for a career.)
Sure, I would've read a bit, but there's more to it than that. College is not about classes.

College is about having the opportunities to do expensive things for less or for free. (BB King, Wicked, Shakespeare Festival, Madame Butterfly, etc.)
College is about having someone help you to find the best professors with the smallest agenda.
College is about telling your teachers what you want out of class and what you want to do in their class.
College is about taking trips random places outside of the classroom that you may learn more from and getting credit for going.
College is about going to lectures on topics you never had heard of and, sometimes, not understanding them, and other times finding a new passion.
College is about getting a few teachers that scare you because they're a little too "out there" to be as sane as they seem to be.
College is about going to a few events that don't spark your interest because you need to get so many points for a class. Then, afterwards, finding out you really don't hate all of them. (But.. ugh.. the Opera.. blegh.)
College is about getting way too much reading, insisting upon reading nearly all of it, and then going to class feeling prepared and being overwhelmed by the brilliance of your teacher and fellow students - suddenly realizing just how little you know.

The Honors Program is all about every one of those things and more.
These are the things you really can't get from College without putting major effort into searching for each one. In honors they fall in your lap without you saying a word and sometimes you forget just how lucky you are.

That's why.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." - Oscar Wilde

I was looking at a book by Harold Bloom the other day (yes, I'll admit it, I was looking because I'm becoming more and more of a book snob) that was called "How to Read and Why", which sounds a little like the type of book a parent would get to convince their kid to pick up something, anything. Which it isn't, I'm assuming, since it is Bloom. (Who, I've never actually read, by the way.) :)

Anyway, this book made me remember a weird thing about myself.. ready?

I don't read because I have some sort of intrinsic love for reading.

Don't get me wrong, I like to read, but I don't read because reading is an end in and of itself. I'll read because I like having read. Because I like knowing different things and being annoying by being able to say things like "Well Huxley thought.. actually, if you look at what he talks about in Black Like Me.. etc."

Actually, for years I read next to nothing. Why? Because most of what I had read up until that point could easily be labelled "junk food" literature - the fast paced page turners that you finish and realize you just wasted two hours of your life. Blegh. It wasn't until I discovered that there could actually be a point to reading that I really started doing so.
It was funny the day my Senior year that I realized that the most intelligent people weren't always, or even usually, the ones who got the highest grades. Rather, they were those who read quite a bit. Alas, such is our education system that I wasted eleven years of school before I figured this out and started picking up some books.

The reason why this is a big deal to me? It's because people always seem to assume that when I tell them how many pages I have left in a book or something along those lines that I don't like the book and I'm not reading it by choice, which is, generally, not true.

I read because I like having read things. I read to be able to know about the World. And because, maybe, every so often, reading gives me more of a chance of being smart enough to use that knowledge to tap into something, anything, more hopeful or useful than merely unconciously existing. Moving beyond Absurdism.

The deepest post

"Brevity is the soul of wit."
- Polonius (Hamlet)
(But it's Polonius, so what does he know?!)

My posts are getting more and more outrageously long. So this one is short.

Fin.

Kick out the devil's sin; pick up a good book now.

Two thousand eleven pages later where am I?

This is, in fact, a bragging post. Not because I think that this is an "amazing" feat for most.. but one for me.
You see: I told myself that I was going to read at least two thousand pages during the break. Not only did I tell myself this, but I actually did it. Weird, right?
I tend to tell myself I'm going to do lots of things that I end up not really doing.
Here's the thing.. I may have read all of those pages, but unless I try to make some sense of all that I read there's no reason why I should've read them. And so these are a few of the things that I learned over the break; book by book.

The Picture of Dorian Gray: The self is more terrifying than anything than any other subject. The most frightening part of the self: apathy towards the honor of the self and towards the universal golden rule.

Three Cups of Tea: Ok. This book really isn't as "revolutionary" as it is proclaimed by book snobs as being. I was reminded of the fact that not only can there be non-violent forms of intervention, but that non-violent intervention is usually more effective.

Mormon Scientist: I'm not the only one who thinks that evolution is not contrary to Mormon Doctrine (for me - a special emphasis on "Theistic evolution" in opposition to "Intelligent Design" which is really not evolution.. but I'll write something else on that later). Mormons, even prominent ones, can argue opinion with Prophets on such controversial topics as Evolution and not be considered "apostate" as many label Orson Scott Card for having written books that aren't just fluff. :)

Slumming: This is a radical book for me to have liked because it has two of the features that I usually avoid when it comes to selecting a novel: A) It's Young Adult and B) it's written by an LDS author. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned from this one is that if you write an LDS YA and it has too many "depressing" parts to it no one will buy it (Que the people at the library telling me "That's not uplifting"). 'Twas very hard to find.

Nonviolence: I have yet to find an intensely convincing argument for either side of this debate. The most interesting thing in this book? There is no word for nonviolence in any language. I actually could not tell you the difference between pacifism and nonviolence before I read this though, so it gets some points.

A Short History of Nearly Everything: Bill Bryson likes geology. Blah. Beyond that I learned that Scientists are radicals and if they're right, then they'll most likely get mocked while they're alive and they'll be made into Saints latter on. A lot of the well-known scientists throughout the years have hung out together. The fact that Yellow Stone is one huge volcano took years to figure out. Don't run around Yellow Stone at night even if you are a park ranger. Umm.. dang, you think I'd remember more from this book. Shoot.

Roots: This book is well-researched historical fiction, not nonfiction. Take it out of the 920s. This was the best book on slavery I have read. The history of all places, not just Europe (dang you Europeans! myself included), should be taught as a way of showing the Roots of America for even though we like to pretend that Western thought is "civilized" thought, it generally is further away from being "civilized" than other cultures.. whoops. The book also reminded me of Kite Runner because it was SO popular when it came out among those who "wanted to understand other cultures."

I'm hoping that because most of these books made do the outrageous thing - think of life in different terms than I did before I read them - that I can use them in shaping my opinions, myself, and, of course, as a means of making a point in debate. :)

Read. More. Books.