(no subject)

I shouldn't be staring longingly at the unread books on my shelves right now. I have enough reading to do for school. But something about the rows of multi-colored spines standing along my wall is really appealing right now. I have an urge to start digging through all my boxes of packed up books, looking for favorites new and old.

But it'll have to wait 'till Summer. Today, I have a mid-term to be ready for.

Numbered notebooks, studying for tests, another evening at the help desk

I have two mid terms out of the way. Tonight, as I work here at the help desk until 5 o' clock, I'm going to go through my notes for my history class, where I'll have a test on Thursday.

I have more notes for this class than any of my others so far. Though I don't have my urbanism notebook here to look at, I have 32 pages of linguistic anthropology notes, 29 pages of LGBTQ notes, and 64 pages of history notes.

(On a tangent, I started numbering my notebook pages after having seen notebooks belonging to my great-grandfather for the first time. I was really struck by his design notebooks, with their pages and pages of diagrams and neat writing and their page numbers at the top. I'm not as thorough though; he numbered his books all the way through before he started using them, judging by the fact that many at the end were otherwise blank. I number them as I go. One of these days I'd like to get scanned copies of some of his stuff.)

Anyway, tonight will be studying and perhaps a little writing. And maybe getting up and walking a bit more than I usually do here. The computers have usage monitoring software now so I don't have to get up and count people every half hour, so I keep thinking I should get up and walk around anyway once in a while. I installed the software for my Fitbit on the computer here (because I have become that obsessive about the thing) so I have the motivation of watching my step count rise.

But I feel a little more relaxed tonight than usual lately, with two days 'till the next big thing. It's nice.

(no subject)

I'm finding myself confused by apparent inherent contradictions in world view behind some religious ideas I see on Facebook. Coming at this from an anthropological perspective, I ought to try to involve myself in that culture to learn how people who are part of religious community that believes in things like efficacy of prayer perceive their world. Maybe I could even do it. I'm reminded of an example in one of my textbooks about a woman who was doing fieldwork in a Wiccan coven. She realized that she'd mistakenly left her wristwatch on while they were involved in a ritual. Since the group's understanding was that wearing electronics while involved in a ritual would cause them to malfunction due to the energies involved, the anthropologist's first instinctive thought when she noticed her watch wasn't working was that it had failed because she'd left it on during the ceremony. So maybe I really could get involved enough in a Christian group to assume, at least for a little bit, their world view on this.

But it's hard. There are aspects of some varieties of religious thought that I just don't understand.

Please pray immediately for a young lady who is fighting for her life right now - [NAME REMOVED BY ME]. She is fighting a heart problem she's had for years. In the last 3 days it has elevated to the point that her body could give out at any moment. They've already had to shock her back to life 3 times, but don't know what else to do for her. She has a strong faith and love for Jesus Christ and is ready for whatever He has in store for her. The doctors are baffled right now but God isn't. Please pray His will for her life.

This is a sad thing for those involved. But why would God tease people this way by sickening someone and then making zir healthy again in response to prayer. That's awfully capricious. Does he want to make sure that zir loved ones care enough about zir to pray? How does one reconcile these things that seem irreconcilable to me?

At least one person offered to pray for my dad while he was in the hospital, and I appreciated the thought. While I may not believe that the action will have any direct effect, I can still pass on the fact that the prayer is concerned. It's nice to know that people care about you when you're sick, and I appreciate the expression of care and concern that it is. Good will is always worth while and worth sharing, and I won't be critical of that because it comes in a form I wouldn't offer myself. But as for some kind of direct affect of prayer on anything outside of in a social context, I don't believe it.

If God is all powerful, then whatever he wants will happen, so why bother praying? If he's not all powerful or doesn't exist, then why bother praying at all? I guess the answer is partly that not everything in life is, or should be, approached from a purely rational perspective.

Maybe this sort of request is primarily a form taken by the social ritual of a group of connected people expressing concern and solidarity for someone who is ill and it just happens to be framed in a religious way. Perhaps these incidents are fulfilling valuable social functions completely outside of whether or not the prayers of those involved are directly affecting anything. It's important to feel connected to and supported by a group, which is what I get out of anyone offering to pray for me or my family.

Cooky!

People keep posting this recipe for cheese bread like Red Lobster makes. I think I might try to cook it this weekend. Maybe my girlfriends would like some! I need to go shopping for food anyway, so I could pick up the ingredients and maybe cook it on Thursday. maybe I can find the bread pans that cranberrynomiko gave me before she moved to Oregon.

I haven't actually cooked anything in...a long time.

Propaganda Wars

This is a piece written by someone who was paid, along with other people, by a company to be, essentially, an online propagandist and information fighter.

This is frustrating. I was aware of this already, but it is frustrating. It's kind of an extenstion of my problem with memes. People are being paid to, in a way, be living memes. Or perhaps that's not quite the right term. But it makes you realize that talking to these folks is basically like having a conversation with a bot. It's all performative for them, acting for a paycheck, and it destroys public discourse.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/10/12/diary-of-an-israeli-shill/