Start Spreading the News...

...I'm leaving today.  Yep, it's true.  This afternoon I'll be saying goodbye to New York for the last time this summer to go on vacation (and I actually mean vacation) to the Black Sea.  I'll be traveling with Azamara Cruises (which, for convenience, I will also link to on the side bar) from Istanbul to Bulgaria, Romania, and Ukraine.  I'm super excited for this and I hope you'll enjoy reading about it... when I get back.  Because I'll be on a boat, Internet is going to be ridiculously expensive; so I'll be keeping a log of what I do while I'm there, but I won't be able to post it until I get back.  I've just been having so much fun with technical difficulties this summer!

This will definitely be my last trip for this summer, so this whole operation will be shutting down after this trip.  It'll still be up online and stay tuned.  I have some stuff planned for my final blog post that'll rock your socks!

Until then...

... wish me Bon Voyage!


Photo credit: http://www.allanfox.id.au/images_files/AzamaraQuestStarboard.jpg

The Mint!

Hey readership!  I have something to say today! (I promise I'll keep it succinct)

On Thursday the 18th (I know I'm behind, but when do I ever blog punctually) my dad and I drove down to Philadelphia.  Exciting as it was simply as a result of the fact that I got to drive most of the way there (4:15 hrs further towards having a full driver's license!), my dad and I had a lot of fun visiting Penn and the US Mint in Philadelphia.  Guess which part I'll be talking about (there's a hint in the title).

The Mint in Philadelphia (there are in fact multiple Mints around the country) is responsible for the casting of coins and medals for the US government.  I know this isn't particularly global, but I thought it might be fun to have a discussion about the penny and the nickel.  Some of you may have heard that it costs more than one cent to make a penny, but did you know that it costs more than five cents to make a nickel?  It's true!  The problem is in the formula.  Even though the penny has been reformulated a couple of times, the Mint is reluctant to change the recipe this time around for both types of coin.  They say that they're reluctant to change the feel of the money because they fear a negative reaction from the American public, but really it seems like the right thing to do to change the formula to make the minting of pennies and nickels more cost effective.  This article from the New York Times offers up some options for resolving this issue (only one of which the author thinks is reasonable), which I think are kind of interesting.  I've always found the penny a weirdly interesting issue (it began with a cutely old clip of The Daily Show someone showed me that I am currently unable to find and link to), so I'd love to hear your opinions on coinage in the comments!

A Post Tenuously Linked to Anything Relevant

This is what happens when I get bored and feel I need to blog.  Please enjoy some more from Magic and Physics.  We can pretend they're relevant to my focus in the Global Scholars program by getting a discussion of Asatru going in the comments:

A Webcomic to Enjoy

Credit where credit is due to my dear friend Dylan and his brother Drew at Magic and Physics.  Y'all should seriously check these two out, they're great!

Farewell to Jesus

Sadly my friends, I have left Jesus and have returned to the sleepy, muggy, boring town of Harrison, NY.  Having returned home, I realize how truly spoiled for interesting occurrences I have been.  That aside, let us begin the recap post:

My classes in Cambridge were only rivaled in excellence by the people I met there.  I learned so much from Beth (my major teacher) and Dr. Marsh (my minor teacher), and I hope to further my learning through the Global Scholars program this year.  My major class, Religion and Global Culture was never lacking for something to discuss as Beth kept the class really contemporary and contextualized by having us read through newspapers each morning to look for the ethical, philosophical, and religious stories of the day.  Dr. Marsh kept the class entertained with his wild quips and choice of source material in Classical Greece.  I hope the joy I experienced at Jesus College, Cambridge was reflected in my blogging.  Of course my experience would not have been close to the same with out the wonderful group of friends I met in college.  Without them I would not have enjoyed myself nearly as much.  I have truly met some wonderful people over my summer.

So what now?  I have two weeks at home (which I have so far spent sleeping off my jet lag and sleep deprivation.  For this reason my blog posts are up so late and so out of order) before I continue my jet setting.  This time with my parents and this time to The Black Sea.  My next trip may not be as intellectually stimulating (it is, after all, a vacation), but I am looking forward to blogging cultural opportunities and experiences.  After that, the summer is over.  No more blogging and no more jet setting for school recognition.  Sad Face.  In any event, I intend to enjoy the last bits of my summer for all they are worth and think about what I'll be blogging after this...

What the Heck is an Esoteric Book Shop?

Hey everybody!  Lets talk about Paganism!
When my major group was in London, we had the opportunity to go to Treadwell's Bookshop, an esoteric bookshop in Bloomsbury owned by Christina Oakley Harrington.  Christina was really interesting to talk to because of her story and how she was drawn to Paganism.  She grew up in Liberia (her parents worked with the UN in community building type stuff) and when she returned to the west she began to seek something more similar to the spiritual traditions of the tribesmen she had grown up with.  She found Paganism not in her rebellious teenage phase but as an adult looking for a spiritual tradition with which she could connect.  And Paganism is a really interesting faith spanning many different traditions...

Bookshops like Treadwell's serve as meeting places and to attract new members to the faith.  Pagans do not proselytize.  If you are interested in Paganism, you have to seek out the information on your own.  For the most part, Pagans are big readers and interested parties are encouraged to learn more through the books in a book shop.  Additionally, esoteric bookshops serve as meeting and classroom spaces for Pagan groups.  Pagans don't practice their religion in a defined space, but they still have to get together to discuss mutually interesting issues and educate those interested in Paganism.  For this reason, all esoteric bookshops must have a classroom space in the building.  I think this is really interesting because it demonstrates the ways in which a new movement embraces the issues that face modern religions.  When I was confirmed, I had to do it in a storage room that our church had converted into a classroom space.  When the church was first built, this kind of space did not exist.  Conversely, Pagans recognize the need for a classroom space in their faith and make sure they meet that need.

We also got to talk to Christina about the ritual practices associated with Paganism.  Ritual practice varies wildly across Pagan sects (in fact this variety has given rise to the PaganDASH movement, which I will let you read about on your own) but they generally conform to a similar calendar.  Pagan rituals are associated with the seasons and the changes in the agrarian calender.  For example: Mayday and Halloween.  Mayday is a spring festival that celebrates rebirth.  For Christina's sect of Paganism, adherents are encouraged to ask "what am I insecure about?" and subsequently work towards removing the insecurities in that aspect of the psyche.  In that way they can be reborn in the new year.  Conversely, Halloween, an Irish pagan ritual day, focuses on death and regrets.  Adherents on this day remember those who they have lost in that year and on what they might regret occurring.

I found this talk about Paganism really interesting and informative.  I always encourage questions in the comments but I will warn you I have only a general knowledge of Paganism and some ever so slightly more specialized knowledge about Asatru and Druidism that is not enough to make up a post in and of itself.  With that in mind, question and comment away!

Religion and Women's Rights

So this is a hot button topic if I ever saw one.  And I know a lot of you are thinking that this is an easy answer: NO!  But it's not that simple; rather, I don't think it is.  This was one of my major class' more interesting Saturday debates and I really feel it's worth bringing up despite my personal disinterest in women's rights.  It's not that I don't think they're important, I do, but going to an all-girls school I hear way too much about being an empowered, modern woman to feel passionately about it.  That said, let the debate begin!

This house believes that religion and women's rights are necessarily incompatible.

Proposition:  Look at the world stage.  I personally can barely read an email update from Amnesty International without hearing about some religiously driven women's rights violation.  Fundamentalist groups most definitely use women as scapegoats and demons in their rhetoric.  Additionally, a number of religious traditions do write against allowing women to enter the clergy/hierarchy of established faith or undergo certain rituals or occupy certain positions in society.  To many it seems clear that religion and women's rights are incompatible to say the least.  With the Abrahamic religions rife with women's rights violations and restrictions and even religions like Hinduism (notoriously tolerant of differences in belief) which bans women from entering the priesthood or learning Sanskrit as they are "unclean", it seems clear that established religion is against and incompatible with women's rights.

Opposition:  Just because fundamentalists in all religions take scriptures to be anti-women's rights doesn't mean that they actually are.  Islam, which of late has gotten a bad rap regarding women's rights, was shockingly progressive in the age it was founded.  For the first time women could inherit property and receive an education.  In many tribal religions, women are revered as healers and spiritualists.  While the Abrahamic religions do place prohibitions on women, it is not necessarily true across all religious traditions that women are relegated to second class citizens.  Hinduism reveres certain aspects of the female persona through goddesses like Kali; she is portrayed as a powerful and necessary woman.  It is true that scriptures have been reinterpreted of late to the disadvantage of women; but that does not mean that women's rights and religion are necessarily antithetical nor does it mean that in the original context of the religion's foundation that it was not progressive regarding women's rights.

I can't wait to read the comments on this one.

CamTrad Talk 3: How Round Is Your Circle?

I'll say it now: I am not a math person.  Math fascinates me, but I have serious issues with basic arithmetic.  That said, on July 22, we got the opportunity to listen to Chris Sangwin from the University of Birmingham talk to us about his work in geometry and maths.  I think he's a really cool dude (I did get to eat dinner with him after the talk) and so I'm really excited to talk about what he talked about.  Enjoy!

The question is: how do you know if something's round?  While that may seem like a simple-ish question, it's really not.  Think about it.  If you were asked to judge a free hand circle competition (I know, its a weird competition; but bear with me on this hypothetical for a bit), how would you go about judging which was the best circle?  Symmetry? Use a reference circle?  Draw loads of diameters?  There isn't a perfect way of judging the circularity of a circle.  The best way is to us the width.  In a circle the width is constant, so you go around and see if the width remains constant throughout the shape.  But if it was that simple, there would be no more to talk about.  Enter Reuleaux's Rotor.  There exist shapes of constant width that are not circles that work very well as rollers.  They're not great as wheels because you tend to bounce up and down a bit on rollers that are not circles; but they can move something laterally very well and in a very cool manner.  Shapes of constant width have some very cool applications.  For one, all UK coins are shapes of constant width and they aren't all circular (of course so are all US coins, but that's not very interesting because US coins are circles).  This is nice of course because it means you can buy a soda from a vending machine without worrying about the orientation in which you insert the coin (the Australians didn't figure this out; some of their coins are not of constant width).  Shapes of Constant Width can also be used to drill a square hole, which is really, really cool.  This is really important for engineering because engineers sometimes need to drill square holes and because you can then make a Rotary Engine.  That's exciting because they are significantly more fuel efficient, smaller, and produce fewer vibrations than a traditional engine.  They're slightly less reliable, but that's really because less in terms of R&D has been allocated to their development.

But back to roundness.  I have a feeling that the people reading this blog weren't alive in 1986 to witness the Challenger Disaster but it's actually a really important reminder of why we need perfect roundness.  First a bit of background: at that time (I'm not really sure about now), the parts of a space shuttle were built separately and shipped to the Kennedy Space Center to be assembled there.  In transit, one of the seals around one of the rocket boosters became a little less than round.  Instead of fixing it, the suits told the engineers to bang it back into shape and keep using it.  Long story short, that seal leaked and the fuel ignited causing the shuttle to explode.  This tragic accident is an important example of why roundness is key to engineers, so they use both theoretical and practical tests to determine if a shape is truly round.  If the width is constant, you have something that might be a circle; so further tests must be conducted.  Engineers currently use a "V" test: if you place a shape in the V and rotate it while measuring three points, two on the V and one outside, you can determine if the shape is a circle or not.  There's a reason not all shapes of constant width are used as wheels; if the shape is a circle, then it maintains three points of contact (i.e. the third point outside the V will not change position).  I can't find a good youtube video of this one, so you'll just have to use your imaginations.  There are 6 different angles that are used for the Vs and if the shape works in all of them, the shape is declared a circle.  Or that used to be the case.  Because Chris Sangwin is cool, he and his colleagues created a shape that disproves this test.  Or rather a bunch of shapes.  Well, really a way to make a shape that disproves any V test.  It's complicated and it's called Sangwin's shape (or that's what I'm calling it).  And it's really cool.

You really ought to get this guy's book.  He was a great speaker, so I'm sure the book is fascinating.  He also has a website, that is totally worth checking out since it covers some stuff that he didn't cover in his talk to us.  All in all, this was a really cool talk about a really interesting subject that I can't pretend to fully understand.  I'll leave you with a joke Chris told us while we were waiting for some audio problems to be fixed (a cricket match randomly started playing through speakers that were not being used):

How do you tell the difference between an extroverted and an introverted mathematician?
He stares at your shoes instead of his.

Movie Reviews!

Sometimes Christianity really scares me.  Like a lot.  Recently, my Religion and Global Culture class watched some movies both published by and about Evangelical Christians.  We've watched Jesus Camp (a movie that I probably should already have seen) and Left Behind (yeah, its a movie about the Rapture) and I can't take any more Evangelical Christianity.  We'll go one by one and I'll try and convey the horror of Evangelical Cinema.

Left Behind shows all of us non-believers the horror of the rise of the Anti-Christ who of course is of indeterminate Eastern European ethnicity and is the Secretary General of the UN.  It teaches us that only those who believe in their hearts of hearts (and the innocent children) will be saved.  If you are an adulterer (Rayford Steele), an atheist (Buck Williams), or a preacher without true faith (Bruce Barnes) you will be LEFT BEHIND with the rest of the heathens who were not born again.  Left Behind to face the seven years of hell on earth under the antichrist.  Fear it!  Admittedly it was interesting to see how the modernized  the biblical story, but it was essentially fear mongering.  Pathetic, pathetic fear mongering.  This film in particular had a budget of about $17.5 million, which says a lot about how strong the Evangelical film industry was even in 2001; demonstrating that an awful lot of effort is going into spreading the word through overdramatic cinema.  This genre started because it was cheaper to modernize biblical stories and it has expanded exponentially.  They're meant to teach budding Christians to be truly faithful but the only lessons I learned from this movie were to fear globalization and that the lesbian hippies won't be saved.

And now Jesus Camp.  This is what happens when you limit media to only that which compliments your message and manipulate children.  I mean Holy Sh*t people!  Telling children to become soldiers of God and Christian America is not OK;  of course, if they're doing it in Somalia and Palestine it's totally fine (sarcasm hand raised).  This movie really begs the question: where does Religion cross the line between Faith and Zeal?  I have no problem with having a religiously oriented moral center, but this movie shows parents isolating and conditioning their children to believe in Creationism, Satan as the root of all things that go wrong, and a unilaterally Christian America.  In this movie you see a preacher railing at children, telling them that they are lying hypocrites, that they must prevent Satan from entering their lives or they will burn forever in a fiery pit of doom, and about all the sins of abortion.  And this preacher is railing at little kids!  She indoctrinates these kids with songs and games and toys, and encourages religious fervor to the point of glossolalia and fits.  I really encourage you all to watch it for yourselves, because I really can't capture the fear that this movie struck into me in words.  Of course there is an anti-Born Again bias that imbues the movie.  We can't forget that if we hope to have a rational discussion and analysis.  But still, it's scary.