I have since moved my blog to tumblr. Click on the title for the link.

Posted in: on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at at 3:04 PM 0 comments  

I came across this while writing an essay on England in the 13th century. This costume was apparently used for doctors visiting victims of the Bubonic Plague. It's purpose was two-fold.

The wide-brimmed black hat worn close to the head was the symbol of a doctor, used to partial shield from infection. A primitive gas mask in the shape of a bird's beak was warn because of thoughts that the plague was spread by birds. There may have been a belief that by dressing in a bird-like mask, the wearer could draw the plague away from the patient and onto the garment the plague doctor wore. The mask also included red glass eyepieces, which were thought to make the wearer impervious to evil. The beak of the mask was often filled with strongly aromatic herbs and spices to overpower the miasmas or "bad air" which was also thought to carry the plague. At the very least, it may have served a dual purpose of dulling the smell of unburied corpses, sputum, and ruptured bouboules in plague victims. The overcoat worn by the plague doctor was tucked in behind the beak mask at the neckline to minimize skin exposure. It extended to the feet, and was often coated head to toe in suet or wax. A coating of suet may have been used with the thought that the plague could be drawn away from the flesh of the infected victim and either trapped by the suet, or repelled by the wax. The coating of wax likely served as protection against respiratory droplet contamination, but it was not known at the time if coughing carried the plague. It was likely that the overcoat was waxed to simply prevent sputum or other bodily fluids from clinging to it. The cane was used to both direct family members to move the patient, other individuals nearby, and possibly to examine the patient with directly. Its precise purpose with relation to the plague victim isn't known.

The plague doctor's clothing also had a secondary use: to intentionally frighten and warn onlookers. Part of the appearance of the plague doctor's clothing was meant to frighten onlookers, and to communicate that something very, very wrong was nearby, and that they too might become infected.

Posted in: on Sunday, May 04, 2008 at at 2:40 PM 0 comments  

I was watching a random Japanese youtube video about robotics when this song began playing. I lost the link but later remembered some of the words and spent a few hours finding this. Her site is here if you would like to hear more. Enjoy

P.S. Click the title to hear the song. I have yet to figure out a better way to put music on blogger.



Oh, look! I magically figured out how to embed music files. Yay me!

Posted in: on Thursday, March 27, 2008 at at 2:47 PM 1 comments  

For my lunch at work today I ran over to Kroger and brought back a TV dinner to reheat in the microwave. But as it was cooking I realized that I forgot to bring a fork and the only thing in the drawer in the break room was a set of chopsticks. So I ended up looking like a complete idiot eating burritos with sticks. It got me to thinking, though, what would someone from a thousand years ago assume about our time if they happened to be sitting in that particular room for an hour? They would most likely assume that our culture used this oriental device as our eating utensil among other things.

This is precisely what happens when we look back on time. Our perception on reality gets narrower, not only through time, but as well with interpretive blindness, such as the event just mentioned. The person from 1008 A.D. sitting in on that hour lacked the perspective of context and experience of our day. As a student in theology I am interested in how our interpretation of Christ's day is also blinded in an attempt to clarify the meaning of scripture. When one reads a passage in the gospels he is in effect sitting in for just a small period of time. Of course there are several levels of truth in perspective. Plato explains this well in his Divided Line Theory. For our example we will use 4 perspectives in decreasing truth.

1. The greatest truth is in the form, or what something actually is. I could have hallucinated my entire experience of eating with chopsticks, but the truth is either that I was or I was not.

2. Second to truth in form is that which is in my perception of the form. I experienced myself eating with chopsticks and thus understood that it was out of the ordinary, a fluke. Only my mind could have interpreted it that way because I was the one causing the event.

3. Now if someone was watching me eat with chopsticks this would be very close to my experience. They would assume that something was wrong with what I was doing. Although, it could have been my daily routine and thus this experience loses some truth.

4. Let's say that the person watching me wrote down what happened, then later on someone read this work. The words on paper are an extension of truth in experience. Once again, what was written could have been fiction and thus lost some truth.

5. I suppose I could add a fifth element to this example by saying that the person reading the piece of writing was less informed than the document itself, but we are dealing with realities of consciousness, and furthermore, sentience.

Below, I doodled my idea of how perception works through time. I've drafted it out to make it clearer than my hand drawing. The point in the middle represents this very point in time. It is important to understand that time does not belong to material or motion, but to a point. I will explain this better later. The lines, -x and +x, are 180° of all of reality. You could say (thought this is putting parameters on God and only used to support what we can humanly understand) that this is what God perceives, everything. The cone setting at 60° is our perception of the past. It is narrower that the God perception because we can only know by our senses and the additional facet of mind and memory. So we cannot know what is happening in Fiji but we do know that the room is cold, the light is bright and that something tastes familiar.


















Within that cone is another. This is an even more limited truth through the use of a second hand view point as we listed above. We could put another cone within that represented a written work of something perceived. For instance let us think of the inner cone as the bible. Through time the words have remained the same ignoring the facts of translation and human error. However, as time travels along the y coordinate* experience becomes something different, civilizations change and its symbolism is reinterpreted. So the words are the same but the meanings have become convoluted. The further we look back (and the further from form) the less we can see truth. Unfortunately, with the brevity of human life the closest we can see truth is in written, passed down or causal form. These three could easily be placed within number four above, not very good. Our intuition as mankind can be very good and at time exact. The problem is we do not know when we are exact or horribly wrong... oddly enough, sometimes it is through time that we advance truth. For instance, in my New Testament class we have been studying how through most of the Church's history we have believed that the gospel of Mark was a paraphrasing of Matthew, though now we know that it was written before it and used to write Matthew and Luke.

My philosophy on the diagram above† is that in the event that God knows and perceives all time, then all time must exist in a single event or point. If we were to expand on the diagram to represent all time but in the perspective of what can be seen, the point of sight would be wrapped around a perfect circle with a single point lying in the middle as seen below. Of course the entirety of the diagram would be dynamically within the point. It would intrinsically be the point while maintaining a full circle that connects at all points.












This is all to say that we can only come close to seeking truth in biblical interpretation studies and never actually attain truth without God. We might say that he is not necessarily the God of substance, but the God of form, the ultimate perspective on truth. Through him we can transcend the barrier that our intellect places on physical reality and seek understanding while yet being within our limited realm.

*Along with the idea that time is only a point and cannot actually travel through any physical manner as such, it never actually exceeds -y or +y but travels on the non-point of 0,0 as represented equidistant from -x and +x.
†The cones as they are represented are actually opposite attributes of what is actuality. For the ease of understanding they are made in the direction of the imaginary coordinate z which represents time and direction as well, but allows for the point of perspective to remain in time and perceived with reality being greater at 0,0 than back on the -y plane.

Posted in: on Tuesday, March 04, 2008 at at 8:07 PM 1 comments  

I was walking out of our dining hall the other day and came across a mother and her little boy sitting in the chairs outside. A girl beside me went up to the little boy, kneeled and asked his name but he pushed himself back into the chair and wouldn't respond. The mother laughed and told the girl that he was just shy. "tell her your name," she said.

I didn't even stop to hear out if the boy had anything to say or even if he had a name, but I spent the next several minutes wondering what effect the mother's words had on him. She must have repeated that phrase a hundred times before, 'he is just shy.' I don't dispute that the little boy was afraid to talk in public but his bashfulness in not my concern. If said enough times, surely the boy will be shy because that is what his mother tells him he is. I wonder, is it possible to change his public communication by telling him that he is bold? Would that eventually make it so? What should I tell my children if they are shy or even if they are bold? Do parents constantly worry that simply by their words they can be drastically changing their children's lives?

Posted in: on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at at 9:07 PM 0 comments  

I was questioned today, if you and I were the last people on earth would you have sex with me. Sad to say, my initial thought was not a yes or no. Rather, it was, if such great catastrophe befell the earth that only two survived, how would you, scatterbrained as you are with a dire need for D&G, ever survive? So, no, simply on the basis that you would never make it. I don't think that was the answer she was looking for.

Posted in: on at at 6:45 PM 0 comments  

I think I know why Scrubs is such a great show. Unlike most, lame, WBesque sitcoms, Scrubs admits when a joke is lame. Where most shows might drag on a bad joke or situation for several minutes (or sadly entire episodes), Scrubs plays off handfuls of slight comedy with hardly a breath between dialogue. Zack Braff, you are my hero!

Posted in: on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at at 12:27 AM 0 comments  

Part Two

Please place your guesses along with name in the comments link below.

The answers to yesterdays images are as follows:

1. Manila folder closure (Ryan)
2. Fender guitar pick (tt mcgee)
3. Rug (erin)
4. Ceiling fan (ryan)

Posted in: image on Thursday, February 21, 2008 at at 2:41 PM 1 comments  

I've been thinking lately about the necessity for community living. It seems that we rely on our society progressively more the closer we live to them. So we may only visit our neighbors down the road a few times a year, maybe just to borrow a tool or food, whereas we daily exchange items, thoughts and opinions with our roommates who are nearby us. This semester I am living in a single room with shower and kitchen. I hardly need to step outside my door for anything, which leaves me vegetating in my bed watching TV for most of the day. Having roommates definitely helped me keep in check with things; with conversation if nothing else. This self-sufficient American box isn't my ideal rooming situation. Relying on others, it turns out, is a far better system of living. The financial advantage at least is worth your while. Last year and last semester my roommates and I hardly needed to buy anything for the room, one of us usually had what was needed. Now I am pressed to purchase things I may only need for a few more months. This doesn't help when I try to keep my belongings to what can fit in a car.... I dunno, just don't complain when you have to live with someone.

Posted in: on at at 1:30 PM 0 comments