Topics to be probed after finals:
Why are there so few options for punctuation marks at the end of sentences? Would language be more efficient or expressive if we had access to more than a "." , "?" or "!" ? That is, with punctuation marks that can add a variety of different additional overtones to the sentence, we wouldn't need to express certain meanings using additional words, but could just use the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence to denote implied meaning or emphasis. Or, conversely, for example, we could really experiment with more sophisticated types of irony with a bigger palette of punctuation marks to choose from.
Why are the majority of songs we hear about love? I've wondered about this for years. I suppose a lot of people are inspired by love, but people are also inspired by an inconceivable number of other things as well. (Like this little known gem, which I suppose can still be considered a type of love) Is the fact that love (or lost love, or hatred because of something that happened because of love, or love for God, or hoped-for love... you get the idea) is simply the greatest common denominator, and thus strikes resonances with more people? I find this doubtful. Remember, back in the day, when bard songs about warriors and mythical beasts were all the rage?
08 January 2009
06 January 2009
Hard Times
Unfortunately, I will be largely silent for the next three weeks, which will demanding in a way I never thought possible. We'll see how I emerge. If only finals were the only thing that had to be taken care of, if only.
In the meantime, learn how to change the world, see how other people are doing it, and go do it yourself.
In the meantime, learn how to change the world, see how other people are doing it, and go do it yourself.
02 January 2009
Mortality
Do you ever have moments in life when you feel suddenly, profoundly, and very vulnerably mortal?
Whenever I get this sensation, it's as if the world zooms out and fast-forwards, with centuries going by until all I see is a blur of nature, the remnants of our civilization subsumed by very ordinary things like rocks and trees and rivers. And whenever I will myself to see the world from that perspective, my life is a mere blip, a handful of frames in the millions of simultaneous films being played around us. When I then vision the world just bustling along after I've left, I expect to feel a nagging sense of "Hey, do you remember me? I was here."-- but I don't. I'm content just to see that the world has gone on.
Maybe Alan Weisman had this feeling too, and maybe it was strong enough for him to write A World Without Us. And maybe David Fincher, Eric Roth and F. Scott Fitzgerald each felt it in his own way when they worked on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. As I watched the film this evening, those thoughts were awoken once more. I was surprised. Strange at it may sound, this sort of thing usually comes around whenever I've been looking at really large trees.
Whenever I get this sensation, it's as if the world zooms out and fast-forwards, with centuries going by until all I see is a blur of nature, the remnants of our civilization subsumed by very ordinary things like rocks and trees and rivers. And whenever I will myself to see the world from that perspective, my life is a mere blip, a handful of frames in the millions of simultaneous films being played around us. When I then vision the world just bustling along after I've left, I expect to feel a nagging sense of "Hey, do you remember me? I was here."-- but I don't. I'm content just to see that the world has gone on.
Maybe Alan Weisman had this feeling too, and maybe it was strong enough for him to write A World Without Us. And maybe David Fincher, Eric Roth and F. Scott Fitzgerald each felt it in his own way when they worked on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. As I watched the film this evening, those thoughts were awoken once more. I was surprised. Strange at it may sound, this sort of thing usually comes around whenever I've been looking at really large trees.
01 January 2009
Wait... which one are you again?
I wonder if it's harder to form close friendships if you have an identical twin who goes to the same school as you do. Does the fact that most people cognitively clump you together with your brother/sister deter from them getting to know you as individuals?
I know that I sometimes have trouble getting past that initial awkwardness of telling identical twins apart, which makes it harder for me to move beyond that barrier and go into "real friendship" territory. It's easier if you get to know one twin first, and then meet the other twin later, but that's not always the case.
I know that I sometimes have trouble getting past that initial awkwardness of telling identical twins apart, which makes it harder for me to move beyond that barrier and go into "real friendship" territory. It's easier if you get to know one twin first, and then meet the other twin later, but that's not always the case.
Driving
I've recently re-discovered the fun in driving. The utility I get from all that tire-screeching and burning definitely surpasses the cost of new BFGoodrich tires ($62.99) from Costco.
I must insist that I am a perfectly safe driver at the same time. Since at got my license all those years back, I have never been in an accident, and have been the recipient of only 2 tickets-- and for the lamest reasons. One was for doing a California stop in my own neighborhood. The other was for driving in the left lane. Yes, driving in the left lane.
For anyone out there who didn't know (and is reading this when police ticket quotas are almost due), driving in the left lane is illegal. It's technically a passing lane. I got fined $100 in Massachusetts for "Driving in the Left Lane." And because I live in NJ and CA, I couldn't go up to MA to challenge that abuse of police power in court.
I must insist that I am a perfectly safe driver at the same time. Since at got my license all those years back, I have never been in an accident, and have been the recipient of only 2 tickets-- and for the lamest reasons. One was for doing a California stop in my own neighborhood. The other was for driving in the left lane. Yes, driving in the left lane.
For anyone out there who didn't know (and is reading this when police ticket quotas are almost due), driving in the left lane is illegal. It's technically a passing lane. I got fined $100 in Massachusetts for "Driving in the Left Lane." And because I live in NJ and CA, I couldn't go up to MA to challenge that abuse of police power in court.
Not your mama's religion
As we were grocery shopping at the new Jamboree Diamond Plaza last week, my mom abruptly said to me, "Religious people seem to be pretty nice, don't they?"
It was one of the first times that she had ever brought up religion; it seemed that she had been thinking about a topic that I suppose has long been a subject of contention, that is, the idea of religion correlating with the rather ambiguously defined sense of "morality." She brought to mind a few of our neighbors, and recalled how the church-going ones always seemed to be a little sunnier than their nonbelieving peers.
Well, I offhandedly told her that at least if we used incarceration rates as a nation-wide metric, atheists were somewhat "nicer" in proportion. Whereas estimates of atheists range anywhere between 5-14% (Gallup and ARIS, respectively) of the US population, they comprise only 0.209% of the incarcerated (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2007). (Catholics are disproportionately higher and Protestants are somewhat disproportionately lower in prisons.) Of course, that one statistic doesn't mean secular ethics trumps religious ones, for there are other correlates that must inevitably be taken into consideration (education levels, race, etc.), but at least it takes the legs out of the claim that a religious education makes Joe the lovely Plumber all the more moral.
My mom then asked, "so what if people sent kids to meet nice people and to be a part of that community-- and not necessarily for the religious education?"
That actually made me pause for a bit. What if they did? Is there anything necessarily wrong with that, so long as the kids like it too? What if people started seeing churches as purely social spaces, and their messages as supplementary? I doubt church leaders would mind, for their congregations would grow. Perhaps the more faithful churchgoers might feel less comfortable because of the influx of people joining for the social reasons-- but they could also welcome these new members as people they could potentially convert someday.
However influential religion may be in today's world, if looked at from a wider historical lens, its pervasiveness is waning. Value judgements on that trend aside, our communities will need to gradually fill the gap in civil society that churches currently (and used to) provide. So what if, instead of churches disappearing one by one, they were "converted" in a sense, to institutions that brought people together, and still taught morality, just in a secular setting? Something like the YMCA/YWCA or the Boys and Girls Club, so to speak, but with life lessons after school and on Sundays/Saturdays.
Then, people like my mom who wanted take their kids to an institution that did help with a moral upbringing, but framed it in a purely secular context, would have a place to go. "Preachers" would teach altruism, duty, service, charity, empathy, and other such ideas, and use current and historical figures as examples while doing so. From a young age, children would be introduced to the ideas of Aristotle, Spinoza, Plato, Kant, Comte, and Holyoake, eventually choosing their own palette of principles with time.
Of course, this is all hypothetical and very far into the future, but what if we eventually do need to fill the social and edifying gap of religious institutions? Would something like this work?
It was one of the first times that she had ever brought up religion; it seemed that she had been thinking about a topic that I suppose has long been a subject of contention, that is, the idea of religion correlating with the rather ambiguously defined sense of "morality." She brought to mind a few of our neighbors, and recalled how the church-going ones always seemed to be a little sunnier than their nonbelieving peers.
Well, I offhandedly told her that at least if we used incarceration rates as a nation-wide metric, atheists were somewhat "nicer" in proportion. Whereas estimates of atheists range anywhere between 5-14% (Gallup and ARIS, respectively) of the US population, they comprise only 0.209% of the incarcerated (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2007). (Catholics are disproportionately higher and Protestants are somewhat disproportionately lower in prisons.) Of course, that one statistic doesn't mean secular ethics trumps religious ones, for there are other correlates that must inevitably be taken into consideration (education levels, race, etc.), but at least it takes the legs out of the claim that a religious education makes Joe the lovely Plumber all the more moral.
My mom then asked, "so what if people sent kids to meet nice people and to be a part of that community-- and not necessarily for the religious education?"
That actually made me pause for a bit. What if they did? Is there anything necessarily wrong with that, so long as the kids like it too? What if people started seeing churches as purely social spaces, and their messages as supplementary? I doubt church leaders would mind, for their congregations would grow. Perhaps the more faithful churchgoers might feel less comfortable because of the influx of people joining for the social reasons-- but they could also welcome these new members as people they could potentially convert someday.
However influential religion may be in today's world, if looked at from a wider historical lens, its pervasiveness is waning. Value judgements on that trend aside, our communities will need to gradually fill the gap in civil society that churches currently (and used to) provide. So what if, instead of churches disappearing one by one, they were "converted" in a sense, to institutions that brought people together, and still taught morality, just in a secular setting? Something like the YMCA/YWCA or the Boys and Girls Club, so to speak, but with life lessons after school and on Sundays/Saturdays.
Then, people like my mom who wanted take their kids to an institution that did help with a moral upbringing, but framed it in a purely secular context, would have a place to go. "Preachers" would teach altruism, duty, service, charity, empathy, and other such ideas, and use current and historical figures as examples while doing so. From a young age, children would be introduced to the ideas of Aristotle, Spinoza, Plato, Kant, Comte, and Holyoake, eventually choosing their own palette of principles with time.
Of course, this is all hypothetical and very far into the future, but what if we eventually do need to fill the social and edifying gap of religious institutions? Would something like this work?
Break up? I can't afford it...
I often have rather random postulations that pop into my head over the course of the day; I believe they disproportionately come up either when I'm driving or am in the bathroom, so I'll spare you the contextualization.
Regardless, these ideas will probably be under-developed, but in the back of my mind I'm also hoping somebody in the future will take it a step further (or find someone who already has).
One particular one that I was wondering about this morning was whether divorce rates would drop this year in the face of higher unemployment stemming from the credit crisis and ensuing recession(s). I suppose this one is pretty straightforward. In the United States, 59% of women over the age of 16 are in the labor force, three quarters full time and the rest part time, comprising 46% of the total domestic labor force (Dept. of Labor). Now, I'm also going to fudge the 19% wage gap (2005) and just consider the 8% difference in women and men employment.
So, I'm going to say it's reasonable to assume that people take financial situations into consideration when deciding on whether to divorce. Sure, emotions and compatibility are one thing, but if you're financially dependent on your spouse as it is, then you don't want to screw yourself over with a breakup. With unemployment rates at 7% and growing, the job market's tough. As of last year, 57% of married couples were dual-earner (Dept of Labor). Which means, a good chunk of women who heretofore were stay-at-home moms and would like to live on more than a divorce settlement and also skim off child support face dim prospects at finding a job.
Women who already work but make less than their husbands (it's now $0.81 to the dollar) face similar situations than before the economic downturn, but they may also take job insecurity into consideration.
The effect in other countries that adhere to more "traditional" viewpoints of women's roles might be more pronounced; my eyes are on places like Italy, Spain, Korea, and Greece. At the end of the day, people will think about money when making these decisions, personal incompatibilities be damned.
Regardless, these ideas will probably be under-developed, but in the back of my mind I'm also hoping somebody in the future will take it a step further (or find someone who already has).
One particular one that I was wondering about this morning was whether divorce rates would drop this year in the face of higher unemployment stemming from the credit crisis and ensuing recession(s). I suppose this one is pretty straightforward. In the United States, 59% of women over the age of 16 are in the labor force, three quarters full time and the rest part time, comprising 46% of the total domestic labor force (Dept. of Labor). Now, I'm also going to fudge the 19% wage gap (2005) and just consider the 8% difference in women and men employment.
So, I'm going to say it's reasonable to assume that people take financial situations into consideration when deciding on whether to divorce. Sure, emotions and compatibility are one thing, but if you're financially dependent on your spouse as it is, then you don't want to screw yourself over with a breakup. With unemployment rates at 7% and growing, the job market's tough. As of last year, 57% of married couples were dual-earner (Dept of Labor). Which means, a good chunk of women who heretofore were stay-at-home moms and would like to live on more than a divorce settlement and also skim off child support face dim prospects at finding a job.
Women who already work but make less than their husbands (it's now $0.81 to the dollar) face similar situations than before the economic downturn, but they may also take job insecurity into consideration.
The effect in other countries that adhere to more "traditional" viewpoints of women's roles might be more pronounced; my eyes are on places like Italy, Spain, Korea, and Greece. At the end of the day, people will think about money when making these decisions, personal incompatibilities be damned.
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