Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
The Diocese of Manchester passed out a voters’ guide. As previously mentioned, this immediately worried me.
It begins with a disclaimer that they don’t endorse any candidate, party, or PAC, but outlines seven issues. (Bold captions are their headings, the rest of the text is my commentary on it, unless quoted, in which case it’s quoted from the aforementioned publication.)
The Right to Life and the Dignity of the Human Person.
Of course this covers abortion, but they also include “destruction of human embryos for research,” an “intrinsic evil.” (Of course, one’s “dignity” is the exact terminology used by proponents of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide to promote one’s right to euthanasia when they’re in pain and near death, so it’s an ironic wording choice.)
Curiously, they add “This teaching also compels us as Catholics to oppose genocide, torture, unjust war…”
Of course, I oppose genocide and torture. The “unjust war” bit is interesting: I can think of only one thing that they might be referring to, but I don’t know if they’d be so vague if that’s what they meant.
Call to Family, Community, and Participation
It starts off that family, “based on marriage between a man and a woman” (of course they’d add this), is fundamentally important. While I’m not sure why the families have to be between a man and a woman, I’m also not sure what this one is trying to say. It basically just talks at length about how policies should work on supporting families, their needs, and “the common good.” (Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is universal health care.)
Rights and Responsibilities
They start off with right to life (anti- abortion and death penalty), but then add “Each of us has a right to religious freedom”–obviously the church isn’t going to oppose this, but I’m a bit proud that they’re eager to support peoples’ rights to not be Catholic, too. And then they add that we all have the right to “those things required for human decency–food and shelter, education and employment, health care and housing.” (Emphasis mine.)
Option [sic] for the Poor and Vulnerable
Amen!
Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers
They call for a living wage and “opportunities for legal status for immigrant workers,” which seems to amount to tacit support for affording humane treatment to illegal immigrants.
Solidarity
I’m going to quote this one verbatim because it’s so well-done: “We are one human family, whatever our national, racial, ethnic, economic, and ideological differences. Our Catholic commitment to solidarity requires that we pursue justice, eliminate racism, end human trafficking, protect human rights, seek peace, and avoid the use of force except as a necessary last resort.”
Care for God’s Creation
“God’s Creation” is then implicitly defined as the Earth.
All in all, I’m left with a positive note. One thing that drives me mad is when people try to use the church to justify atrocities. The “moral majority” often seem to be the same ones advocating killing illegal immigrants as they cross the border, torturing suspected terrorists, opposing health care, and fighting living wages. I wish they’d come to their senses about same-sex marriage, but I really can’t fault them on abortion, which is a much trickier issue. I thought I’d be outraged by this guide, but, in actuality, it seems to support many of the things I support, and, for the most part, does so very tactfully in a way that still requires that people think for themselves.
I had someone on a forum I frequent ask me a question. It’s in broken English and he explained that he’s not a native speaker. In my reply, I tried to be sensitive to that by speaking somewhat simply. Not in a demeaning way, but in my attempts to learn Spanish, I learned very quickly that short sentences expressing one simple idea are much simpler than elaborate sentences conveying a complex range of thoughts, such as this one.
And that reminded me of the Simple English Wikipedia project, which I think should get more attention. They treat it like another language: there’s English, Spanish, Simple English, etc. A really awesome idea in my opinion. (Although the sexual intercourse page–warning, has an illustration of the process–is still pretty sketchy… Maybe because it’s not a topic that lends itself to being explained in simple, direct terms?)
I think “Simple English” is something everyone should practice, though. As some of the pages on the simple.wikipedia.org site show, writing in a simple manner does not necessarily require coming across like a dimwit.
I found a script that does that sort of Markov chains mentioned. I use it in PHP.
I needed a large body of text, though. Just using someone’s blog posts, for example, just results in a lot of repetitiveness. It’s no good. For bonus points, I wanted a large body of text that sounded kind of strange no matter how it was read.
So I found the Bible. It’s doubly good because the wording is pretty archaic, so you’re use to having to carefully analyze it to divine some meaning. While a guy on a forum saying he recently spent an evening with a grain of salt comes across as nonsense, in the context of the Bible you might try to read into it. This is perfect for this script!
Here’s the page. A lot of it’s sheer nonsense, but some of it’s incredibly good. In lieu of actual verse numbers, the script picks up on the numbers and very consistently plugs in two numbers in front of text.
Some recent highlights:
22 7 And David said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, and upon every high mountain…
The zombies are coming? To kill the living?
5 11 Woe unto them! for their day is come, the time that David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbare to go forth. 23 14 And he went through the corn fields on the sabbath days. 4 32 And they were offended in him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and
This is one of those ones that almost tells a ‘coherent’ story about David escaping from Keilah, running through cornfields even on the Sabbath, which offended people. But Jesus stooped down to begin scripture. I’m fairly certain that no such verse appears in the Bible, though.
22 3 And David prepared iron in abundance for God had made them rejoice with great joy
That’s not much of a party….
Of course, sometimes it seems to get in a sort of loop… Anyone who’s read the Bible will recall that it, at various times, launches into really lengthy lists of people’s names and the relations between them. So I cringe whenever it begins doing that, because sometimes it just doesn’t stop. Here’s a good illustration of that:
are honest, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
29 2 And he placed forces in all the coasts thereof, from two years old was Jehoash when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.
My biblical history isn’t so hot, but I’m fairly certain that rulers had to be at least three to begin their reign.
15 6 In the morning sow thy seed, and in the water
o_O
40 4 And the glory of their strength in the tabernacles of Ham
16 59 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will stand upon my watch, and set me in dark places, as they that must give account, that they may lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel, and have no child, and her husband were dead, she bowed herself and travailed; for her pains came upon her.
Say what?
33 25 Wherefore say unto them, My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s loins.
Is that an actual verse? It sounds like it may have been the equivalent of a your-mom insult from the biblical era?
Anyway, go see for yourself. Just don’t expect every verse to be good.
Tonight I interviewed a sergeant with the campus police department. He’s starting a community policing division, and some of what he had to say was neat. When he first started doing it years ago, his supervisors thought he was slacking off. He’d spend hours in the residence halls, chatting with students. At first, he told me, students were suspicious. Why were the police asking them about the football game? What were the police really there for? Soon, they got to realize that there was no hidden motive. His job was to patrol the campus and keep a presence in the dorms, and, as long as he was doing that, he figured he might as well make sure people knew his name and that people knew he wasn’t out to get them.
After a while, his supervisors realized that the officer that seemed to waste his shifts chatting with students was one of their top officers. He was solving crimes no one else could, until soon there really weren’t many crimes for him to solve. The crime in the buildings he patrolled dropped sharply. And the reason, he told me, is pretty simple: people knew he was there all the time, so they thought twice about doing anything stupid. And when people observed someone else doing something that affected them, they felt comfortable reporting it to him, whereas they might not want to call the police ordinarily.
But this reminds me a lot of the “Broken Windows Theory.” For those not familiar, some researchers somewhere watched an abandoned building for a while. Nothing much happened. One day, the researchers smashed out one of the windows, and kept watch. In a matter of days, people smashed in all the other windows. The reason put forward is that, when people see things in disrepair or decay, they don’t see as much of a problem with making the problem worse. As a very minute example, consider a trashcan in the bathroom. Would you ever throw your paper towel on the floor? If you’re the least bit civilized, no, it’d never cross your mind. But what if the trashcan was overflowing? You could probably fit your paper towel in. But you just throw it on the floor, partially because you have no choice and partially because you’re dismayed at the level of disrepair. And extrapolate that feeling to the people who would go around committing more egregious acts. I think it’s the exact same thought process.
At work, I probably drove the maintenance people nuts. I considered it a complete disaster if a light in the bathroom was out for more than a day, for example. There were nine bulbs in each bathroom, but a single flickering bulb is all it takes to make the bathroom seem like a run-down place. Pretty soon, I’d tell my coworkers, we’d have graffiti and people breaking the mirrors. We never did find out if I was right, because we never let the chance present itself. (I won’t lie: OCD was another factor that I insisted that burned-out bulbs be replaced ASAP.)
Sometimes we’d be insanely busy. And it felt like the building would be nice and clean for hours and hours, and all of a sudden, the floors were a mess. People would drop crumbs, and, as long as there were crumbs on the floor, why bother picking up the napkin you dropped? And when the people at the next table saw napkins on the floor, why should they bother picking up the plate they dropped? And when the kids a few tables down finished their soda and knocked the bottle over, why not leave it on the floor?
As Malcolm Gladwell would say, there’s a tipping point. Things would be nice and clean for hours on end, until all of a sudden there’s a subconscious signal that it’s no longer necessary to be tidy. And I’m not sure how many of my coworkers understood it on a scientific level, but I think most them intuitively got it. Even though we were really busy, we’d try to find an employee who could spare 15 minutes to go around and pick up. Not only did this have the positive effect of solving the “broken windows” problem, but I think it even went the other way: they saw that, not only were the windows not broken, but we were actively addressing the issue. And every once in a while, you’d get someone who would pick up the trash under their table when you got near them. You’d basically reversed the problem.
Our toilet in our dorm room was getting really gross. In addition to the predictable filth, the top of the toilet had become really dusty, and there were probably about five cardboard rolls from finished-off rolls of toilet paper. The other day, I couldn’t take it any more, so I cleaned the toilet bowl and the seat. I didn’t really have the energy to do the whole thing, so only half the toilet got cleaned. There was still considerable room for improvement, but you were no longer afraid to use it.
Today, our toilet is sparkling clean. I don’t know who did it. I never asked anyone to, and I didn’t do it. But I take partial credit. I think I sent a subconscious signal by cleaning half the toilet. All of a sudden, the other part of the toilet was thrown into contrast, and the message was sent that we don’t like our things to be filthy. Someone else picked up on that, and finished the job. And I think the toilet’s going to stay clean for a while.
And now that I’ve talked about sending subconscious messages with my toilet, I think it’s time I acknowledged that I’m up way too late and went to bed.
It just occurred to me how freaking weird the phrase “know, in the biblical sense” is.
You know we have a problem when a slang term for sex comes from the inerrant* word of God*.
* Except that we can’t possibly know? (And I don’t mean know in the biblical sense…)
* Except that we have no way of knowing if it’s really the word of God, either.
Imagine my excitement when I moved back into school yesterday and saw that Kyle had a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys! I’d posted (I think?) the other day about how I’d heard it mentioned enough that I wanted to pick a copy up.
The back of the book calls it “The perfect book for every boy from eight to eighty.” And it’s even better than I’d been lead to believe it was! I’m not necessarily interested in the (unusually long?) sections devoted to historical battles, but several parts seem extraordinarily interesting:
- Knots. I can tie my shoes, but that’s about it.
- The rules of soccer. Not being a soccer fan, I never really learned anything other than the extreme basics. Here it is in two pages.
- Nautical (Naval) flags (semaphores?): not useful to me, but neat
- How to juggle! They say it takes about an hour of practice until you’re able to do it.
- Types of clouds. Just the other day I was regretting having forgotten this!
- Coin tricks. I haven’t yet tried these.
- Latin phrases! Most of them I’m familiar with, but maybe that’s because I’m 21 and went to Catholic high school. Still a neat read, and really, a good refresher for those who know most of them. (I object to the pronunciation of “Veni, vidi, vici,” despite it being correct.)
- How to play poker! This is what I need!
- Chess! Once again, it was just recently that I was lementing having forgotten this skill.
It also just has a lot of neat stuff that anyone (at least in the U.S.) should read, including:
- The Declaration of Independence. Not the first few lines, but the whole thing.
- Selections from Shakespeare.
- Seven poems (Walt Whitman, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Frost, et al*.)
- The Ten Commandments, taken from the King James Bible.
* Et alia, surprisingly, is not in the book’s list of Latin phrases.
Sadly, I think everyone I know is either too old or too young for me to give this book and have it appreciated for the truly awesome gift it would be, but I think it’s definitely worth picking up a copy for yourself. (Most of this book would be just as enjoyable by girls, although I should note that there’s apparently another book, The Daring Book for Girls.)
On our trip to Ghana, we had ten students, two faculty members (who we basically considered students), and two professors. We tried to pull tables together so that all fourteen of us could have our meals together, but sometimes we’d be lazy and just sit at individual tables.
One morning, I had breakfast with one of the professors and another student. When I sat down, the professor and student were talking about the career track of a professor. I think both of us students walked away convinced that it was something we wanted to do. There are lots of reasons: the pay is good; the job comes with some level of prestige; you get summers off, a month off at Christmas, and Spring Break; but, most of all, I think it’s because I would just enjoy it, and I think I could do a better job than many incumbents.
We were talking about prices in Africa, and someone mentioned the conversion rate, but then added that because of PPP, things were a lot cheaper. When I learned about PPP, we talked about exchange rates, inflation rates, a “long-run equilibrium,” and some complicated formulas that no one understood.
In Ghana, a dollar could buy me three bottles of Coke. In America, a dollar might not even buy me one bottle of Coke. Why don’t discussions of PPP start there? It’s a really simple concept if it’s explained in terms that real people understand.
Accounting is probably the most boring subject I’ve ever taken. The problem with this is that accounting is a fascinating field. Understanding accounting principles helps you know enormous amounts about a company’s earnings. Understanding accounting can help you spot fraud. (Or conceal fraud.) But no professor ever taught it that way.
I think part of the thing is to throw out the textbooks. You need books, absolutely. But textbooks, almost by definition, are boring. This book has good reviews. (Of course it doesn’t cover the whole field of accounting.) You might throw in another book on fraud. Keep the assigned readings short. I think that, if you actually choose an interesting book, some students might actually read it! And maybe they’ll even want to come to class and learn.
A few e-mails later, it’s occurred to me that I never actually mentioned that I was back from Ghana. I had an incredible time, and we came back right as I was beginning to miss home, so it worked out well. JFK has got to be the worst airport on the planet. I don’t think I saw a single happy person the whole time I was there. (Also, for all of the American, pro-English-language jingoism, you’d think that we might go through the trouble to ensure that the first person that one landing in America has to speak to speaks English?) I have many tales, but don’t really know where to start and don’t want to give too much away so I can have lots of great stories for when school starts.
What I’m actually posting about is The Dangerous Book for Boys. I’d seen it mentioned somewhere and thought that it was a really neat idea. It just showed up on the front page of Amazon as a most-popular selection. It’s hard to tell who the target market is, because it sounds like it’s something that anyone, or at least any male, would enjoy. I think I may have to pick a copy up.
Are any of you guys familiar with Body for Life? It’s kind of like Getting Things Done in that it has a slightly creepy cult-like following. It also seems almost too good to be true. But I’ve read so many positive reviews that I picked up a copy. Currently I’m just reading it, not doing anything in it. (But I’m only like 30 pages into it, too.)
I’m worried in trying to describe it, because I don’t want to shower it with so much praise that people are repulsed. Cynicism is always appropriate, IMHO. But there are a lot of reviews from people who talk about how it not only helped them get into good shape, but it also ended up giving them so much more energy and so much more self-confidence. While I’m not in nearly as bad shape as some of the people who have gained from it, I still think I could get a lot out of it.
As I said, I’m currently just reading it, but I’m thinking that I’d like to begin following it. But I think it would make the most sense to do it in a place where I can walk to the gym, where I don’t have exhausting labor to do, and where I have friends who can help keep me motivated. (The more people I know who are involved, I think, the harder it is to drop out of.) So I have it in the back of my head that it’s something I should take up when I get back to school.
BTW, I think fair use allows me to quote a paragraph, so I want to quote something in it that blows me away. He talks about how, before beginning, you should set some specific goals and review them every day. And then:
Back in 1953, a Harvard University study showed that three percent of the students graduating that year actually wrote down their specific career goals. Twenty years later, a team of researchers interviewed the class of ‘53 and found that the three percent who had written down their goals were worth more financially than the other 97 percent combined.
Anyone else want to browse through a copy and consider doing it at the start of next semester? (Before you buy the book, I have a copy you can borrow.)