This year is an Olympic year, which means every so often a story will be in the news about the Olympic torch passing through a different city or country, being carried by thousands of different runners until it finally reaches, Beijing at the start of the Olympic games.
This got me wondering, how does the olympic torch work? When is it lit, a few months ahead? At the end of the previous Olympics? Where is it lit? Is there a perpetual flame somewhere in Greece? Or do they light a torch from the old Olympic fire from the previous games? Does it pass directly from Greece (or wherever it starts) in a relatively direct route to the host country? Does it have to pass through each continent? Competing country? Around the world? How long does each runner have the torch? Does the torch rest at night? If so, how? Do they put out the flame and relight it? How do you get to be a torch-runner?
There are a lot of people alive today, something like 6 or 7 billion, significantly more than any other time in history. I think the population growth curve is exponential, and therefore increasing at a mind-boggling rate.
I want to know how many people have ever existed. How many human beings have been born on this planet from the time we arrived on the scene? I know this question could raise issues of evolution, the time of human origins, what counts as a human (i.e. Neanderthals, etc.), and so on…but let’s just go for a good estimate that would be accepted by mainstream science. Or perhaps since the dawn of civilization (i.e. human settlements) . How would you figure that out anyway?
Okay, so “Darn Good Questions” is about to get philosophical. (As if cow tipping wasn’t deep enough…) I don’t think you’ll be able to Google this one and find a simple answer.
Here at Wheaton College, we have something called the Forum Wall. It is basically a bulletin board in the student’s center where people can post things for public comment or discussion. Usually, it consists of cynical rants by underclassmen who think they have discovered some crucial flaw that no one else has ever noticed in Wheaton’s policies/culture/theology/dating scene/fill-in-the-blank… Most things that end up there are pretty dumb. Every post inevitably receives two comments. The first is, “Is this biblical?” The second is a random swear word. I read the wall for entertainment purposes, not because I expect to find anything all that stimulating or insightful.
However, the other day, someone posted a small slip of paper with an intriguing question that I have thought about often. It simply said:
“If your memories were switched with that of another, would you be you or him and in which body?”
The issue behind the question is typically called “the mind-body problem” which, in simple terms, asks how the physical and non-physical aspects of human beings interact. Can you be split up into body and soul? If so, which one is the real you? Are you your thoughts? Your body? Some intangible substance like a spirit? Can you separate these things from each other? Do you even have a separate soul? If your thoughts happen in your brain via physical, chemical process, how does that relate to your “mind” or “spirit”? There are lots of implications and interesting side-questions to this, such as, if they could simulate the processing power of a human mind in a computer, and therefore download my memories, etc. into the computer, does my soul now possess the computer? And so on…
Time magazine usually has something about this in an article about brain research about once a year. If you’ve read any amount of science fiction, you’ve run into this. Probably you had a lesson on this if you took a Philosophy 101 class. I find it fascinating.
So what do you think? Some of you have studied philosophy and theology, so you may have better thoughts than me. Others of you just like to ponder stuff. So, let’s here your opinions. I’ll save my thoughts for after some other people have responded.
In America, we drive on the right side of the road. Theoretically, we also walk on the right side of the sidewalk. For the most part, if you are taking a path or going through a door, it is most conventional, when passing someone else to pass on the right side. I assume that this is derived from our driving practices.
In Britain, they drive on the left. Do they also walk on the left side of the sidewalk? Do they pass to the left? Also, are there any other countries that drive on the left? Are we the weird ones or are they?
My friend, Dahvede, raised a darn good question. He wants to know why north is always at the top on our maps. From the perspective of space, that is completely arbitrary and in no way corresponds to a true “up” in the universe. He wants to know if there is a good reason for this. Full disclosure: Dahvede is a kiwi. His way of phrasing the question was not, “Why is north always up?” but “Why is the southern hemisphere always on the bottom?” He probably feels slighted that his beloved Middle Earth is on the bottom from our perspective on the world, hence his desire for answers are likely motivated by feelings of injustice. Nevertheless, he raises a good question.
I don’t know the whole answer, but I do know that in some cultures of the past (i.e. the ancient Near East, Egypt, Babylon, Israel) the maps were oriented differently, usually “up” being the direction of the rising sun, or East. They didn’t always even call it “up” and “down”. They sometimes said, “in front” and “behind you”, picturing themselves facing the rising Sun. This seems logical to me. Why is north the privileged direction now? I don’t know exactly, but I will venture a few guesses. 1) The North Star (Polaris) is a good constant, although it is not true north. 2) The magnetic field of the earth. Although north probably came into prominence before the widespread use of magnetic compasses. 3) Political reasons. In a picture of the world who do you put on top? Yourself. Who made most of the maps? Europeans. It is interesting that maps have also shifted around, not just which way is up, but also which place is at the center. Usually, it is the central city of a civilization, whether that is Babylon, Rome, Jerusalem, or London. Remember, a map is an interpretation of reality. It is not objective. It conveys values. Maps are biased. You can actually tell a lot about the worldview of a civilization by their maps. We studied some in one of my classes last semester to find out about what was important to ancient cultures surrounding Israel. I have also seen blogs and websites that are dedicated to showing interesting maps that convey more than just landforms and roads. They are fascinating sites.
So, there is the question. Does anyone know more than me? Leave any thoughts about maps, and specifically, why north is on top in the conventional map.
And of course, on this topic, we really ought to consult one of the top geographical minds our nation has ever produced:
Every time I have taken students to a rural area for a mission trip, someone makes a joke about sneaking out at night to go cow-tipping, that is, going out to find cows who sleep standing up and knocking them over to freak them out. Of course, no one ever really does it, but it always comes up. My father insists that cow-tipping is a myth. He says that cows sleep lying down, just like other animals. I’ve seen cows lying down before, but the pervasive idea of cow-tipping feels too strong for me to believe him. Plus, they did it in Tommy Boy.
I want to hear from you, have any of you tipped a cow? I don’t want know that you knew someone who tipped a cow. I want know if you have either tipped or been present for a tipping of one of our bovine friends. If you have not tipped a cow, maybe you could look up whether or not cows sleep lying down or standing up.
I am officially done with one semester of grad school. I have conquored: Greek 101, Hebrew 101, Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament, and Ancient Near Eastern Backgrounds of the Old Testament. Next semester has a great line up. More Greek, Hebrew, and three theology classes: New Testament Theology, Reformation Theology, and Contemporary Theology. I just ordered my books, and I am pumped. But, that is school, and right now it is Christmas break. So on to other things…
I am going to be adding a new “feature” or “category” to my blog. It is a little something I like to call, “Darn Good Questions” or “DGQ” for short. The idea of DGQs originates from my undergrad days, when I first got to college. I was so in over my head with all the things I didn’t know, that I needed some way to keep track of the things I wanted to learn about . So, I would carry around a small notepad in my back pocket and write down anything that sounded interesting that I did not understand. It evolved into a list of books, topics, and questions that I would periodically go back and investigate. I have learned a lot by doing this. These days, I use my Treo to write down my questions. In college, my friends got really into giving me questions that they wanted to know about. Our favorite question was, “Do penguins have knees?” Questions like these come up all the time for me, and so I am going to share them with you.
All I am going to to do is post the question here on the blog in the category “Darn Good Questions” and if any of you can find out the answer, leave it in the comments section. I’ll look things up sometimes, but I often don’t have time to keep up with my questions. That is why I want to share them with you. One of you might have a spare 10 minutes to go read something on the internet about the origin of “nook and cranny” or whether or not Mongolians really eat stir fry or whatever it is I want to know. So here is the first DGQ:
Can you opt out of citizenship? I was born in the United States, so I am, by no choice of my own, a citizen of it. However, I could choose to become a citizen of another country. If I did so, I would, most likely, loose my citizenship in the U. S. But, what if I just didn’t want to be a citizen of any country? I’m not thinking of doing this or anything, but I am really curious if citizenship is forced upon all people. Is there a way to choose to be a citizen of no nation? Or do you have to be a citizen of a country?
Ever since I first encountered Wikipedia, I have had a facination with it. The idea of an open-source encyclopedia that anyone can edit sounds like a sure failure, but on the whole, it is fairly accurate. For that reason, I find it remarkable. The self-correcting power of an invested community is really pretty amazing…and one worth pondering in the realm of spirituality, theology, and church life…of course, you are bound to run into some problems with any system like this, so I found these articles interesting:
Well, as I continue to sort through the random documents and notes on my computer, I found a “journal entry” of sorts from this summer. Michelle and I had spent the day at the Field Museum in Chicago, and when we got home, I wrote this down. It was my reaction to an exibit on animals. It was definately a doxological moment for me, and so, I share it with you here.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
My favorite exhibit that we looked at was called, “What is an Animal?” It covered the definition of animal (which apparently includes sponges and coral and sea cucumbers…amazing!). It also had a section on the different ways animals move, sense things, and reproduce. It was definitely a doxological place. How can you not worship the God who made these things? I was astounded to learn about all the different types of senses animals have. The idea of sensing is mind-boggling in itself. We detect data from the world, convert it into chemical information in our bodies, and then some how experience the data in a meaningful way…it makes you ponder the mind-body problem…but I’m not going there. What amazes me is that some animals can sense things like electricity and magnetism. Some fish have such sensitive electrical sensors that they can detect the presence of their prey, not by sight or smell, but by sensing the electrical impulses of their muscles. There are also fish that can sense pressure in such a way that they can feel the movement of another fish several feet away as they move. That is how fish swim in schools and turn in unison. It is not by sight, but by remote sensing of movement via minute pressure changes in the water. Unbelievable! There are also animals that can sense light like we can, that is electromagnetic radiation, but not in the same ranges as us. They see infrared and ultraviolet…I was thinking about this on my walk to work this morning. I was admiring the shadows and light that came through the trees on Wheaton College campus, and I realized that I could have been made in such a way that I could not see the shadows I see. I could have had a broader range of visible light, and as a result, I would be able to detect the light that passes through the trees and walls because it is at a longer wavelength. God made us to see visible light in a certain way, so that many of the objects we see are opaque and shadow-making to us. If we could see a broader range, they would be translucent or transparent. Crazy, eh?…What is also astounding is the way certain deep-sea fish reproduce. In one species, the male fish is significantly smaller than the female. During sex, the male bites the female, never to let go for the rest of his life. The female’s skin grows around the male, and eventually, their bloodstreams merge. Then the male fertilizes the female’s eggs. Talk about becoming one! Unreal! What a variety of life? What innovation? Truly amazing.
