Simultaneity Is Relative

Today was the last day of January term, and the course I finished just a few hours ago was about relativity and spacetime and Einstein and physics and stuff. I took this class for two reasons: first, because I am interested in physics to some extent, even though I’m really much more of a literature- and-writing person than a math-and-science person, and second, because it would be cool to actually know what I’m saying when I start talking about the spacetime continuum and making up crazy science fiction theories. I’m not sure that this class has caused revolutionary developments in my science fiction ideas, but I definitely have gotten stuff out of it, and it’s cool that I can now say that I understand the concepts of Einstein’s relativity. Because of the coolness of these topics, I now present a summarized list of stuff I have learned.

1. Aristotle’s observations of gravity led him to believe that each of the four elements (earth, air, water, and fire) had a different natural tendency and that the tendency of any object was determined by its proportion of the elements. Earth is heaviest and its tendency is to fall. Water also has a tendency to fall, but it’s lighter than earth, so anything that contains a lot of the earth element will sink beneath the surface of the water. Air is light, so its tendency is to rise above earth and water. Fire is the lightest, and so it will rise even above air. Of course, according to Aristotle, every substance familiar to us is a combination of the four elements. For example, dirt is not pure earth; it just contains a much larger quantity of the element earth than any of the other elements. It is also worth noting that Aristotle believed in the existence of a fifth element called the aether, an idea which is similar to, but not the same as, the idea of the aether mentioned in the following paragraph.  Also, I personally feel that it is worth noting that Aristotle was wrong, because this is something that I like to note as frequently as possible.

2. For centuries, scientists have believed in the existence of a substance called the aether that fills all of space and acts as the medium through which light waves can travel. In the nineteenth century, there were many experiments that attempted to detect and describe this aether, the most famous of which was done by Michelson and Morley in 1887. All of these experiments failed to detect any such thing as aether, but it was Einstein who eventually proposed the idea that the aether did not, in fact, exist. This dissatisfied many physicists, but it made Einstein’s theories work out very nicely, and they turned out to be true.

3. The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. This is the equivalent of 670,616,629 miles per hour. When I’m driving to or from dance class, I am driving at an average of only 0.00000000894 of the speed of light. (When I’m driving to or from church, I drive a bit faster than that because people drive crazy fast on that interstate and everyone would seriously run right over me if I tried to drive at a normal speed.) Earth’s average speed is about 0.0001 the speed of light, by the way, which is about 67,061.66 miles per hour.

4. This doesn’t exactly count as something new I learned, but in this class, we used a slightly different definition for inertia than what I’ve usually heard. We basically defined inertia as a force that resists change in velocity. (I wrote a bit more about that here.) In discussing special relativity, the terminology “inertial reference frame” shows up a lot. That basically means that you’re either motionless or moving at a constant velocity.

5. The Principle of Relativity (which, by the way, predates Einstein) says that, if one is in an inertial reference frame, the laws of physics work the same way regardless of whether or not the reference frame is moving. For example, if you’re flying in an airplane and you drop a bookmark or something, that bookmark will fall to the floor of the airplane, just as it would if the airplane was sitting motionless on the runway. However, if you’re in a vehicle that is accelerating, decelerating, changing direction, or bouncing because of a bumpy road or air turbulence, it’s not an inertial reference frame, which is why things slide around in a moving car. This is inherent in the definition of inertia, but the implication of the Principle of Relativity is that, if you are in a completely inertial reference frame, you can’t even tell whether or not you’re moving. Even if you are looking out a window and see the view changing, you can’t scientifically prove that it is you and not the scenery itself that is in motion. Technically, relativity says that it’s equally true and valid to interpret it either way; the significant point is not who is moving and who is stationary, but just that the reference frames are not stationary relative to each other.

6. Einstein’s big breakthrough (or, to be more precise, his first postulate in the Special Theory of Relativity) was that the principle of relativity applies not only to forces such as gravity, but also to things such as the way light behaves. It had recently been suggested by various physicists that the principle of relativity didn’t apply to light and to Maxwell’s equations regarding light, so Einstein was basically just disagreeing with that hypothesis. His second postulate, which was really just a necessary result of the first postulate, was that the speed of light is the same in any inertial reference frame. The weird thing, which leads to all of the weirdness inherent in relativity, is that this requires giving up on the assumption that time is a constant. Time has to go at a different speed depending upon how fast the clock is moving relative to the speed of light. (The faster the clock is going, the less time passes, so basically, time goes faster at higher speeds.) But this doesn’t have much of an effect on everyday life because the speed of light is so extraordinarily fast that people never travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

7. We defined an “event” as a single point in space and time. In most of our homework assignments, we labeled events that described the emission or reception of a light beam or the collision between two particles or spaceships, but technically, even a point where nothing of interest happened is an event. Unfortunately for my lovely time gravity theory, it turns out that all events are equal, and there’s apparently no such thing as time mass.

I posted this on tumblr a couple weeks ago.

8. Simultaneity is relative. This is the title of this blog post because the professor emphasized this very strongly and used any relevant occasion to remind us of it. Because of the relativity of time, two events can happen at the exact same time in one inertial reference frame and at different times in another inertial reference frame. It’s weird, but it’s true, and we did a lot of homework problems with spacetime graphs to prove it. The coolest one involved a Klingon ship firing laser blasts at a Federation starship in neutral territory shortly before passing into Klingon territory. From the reference frame of the Federation starship, it was hit while the Klingon ship was still in the neutral zone, which meant that the Klingons committed a crime. But from the Klingons’ reference frame, they passed into Klingon territory before the laser blast actually hit the Federation starship, and thus, they didn’t do anything wrong. Except that they were definitely in the neutral zone when they fired the laser blast, and the Federation starship was definitely in the neutral zone both when the blast was fired and when the blast hit, but for the sake of that problem, we assumed that the law was so poorly written that the only thing that mattered was where the Klingons were when their laser blast hit the Federation starship.

This is what a spacetime graph looks like.

9. On a spacetime graph, if two events are farther apart in space than time, then they are spacelike separated, which means that the order of the events is relative. Depending upon how fast an observer is moving, either one of them could have happened first, or they could have happened simultaneously. It is impossible for one to have been the cause of the other, because they are too far away in space for the effects of one to reach the other in time to have caused it. If two events are farther apart in time than space, they are timelike separated, which means that the first one happened before the second one from the perspective of any inertial reference frame. Therefore, it is possible (but not necessarily true) that the first event caused the second event. However, depending upon the speed of the observer, the events may or may not have happened in the same place. If two events are separated by an equal amount of time and space, they are lightlike separated, and this will be true from the perspective of any inertial observer, regardless of his or her speed.  Incidentally, there is one way of measuring the distance between two events that does not vary between observers. This measurement is written as delta S, and the equation is delta S squared equals delta T squared minus delta X squared where T is time and X is space. Even though delta T and delta X will be different for different observers, delta T squared minus delta X squared will yield the same result for every observer. (You can read more here about the stuff that passed through my brain on the day that we discussed these things.)

10. In addition to affecting the passage of time, high speeds also affect length. For example, in a video we watched, a couple scientists measured time dilation by tracking particles descending rapidly through the atmosphere past a mountain. It would take too long for me to explain exactly how that worked, and that isn’t the point of this paragraph anyway, so I’ll just say that they did in fact demonstrate that less time passed for those particles than for the mountain that was stationary relative to the Earth. But, according to special relativity, the particles may as well have been stationary and the mountain may as well have been traveling upwards. The result is the same, and the result is that the time interval between the particles’ presence at the top of the mountain and their presence at the bottom of the mountain was a shorter time interval for the particles than for the mountain. So, from the particles’ point of view, the mountain is actually shorter than it is from its own perspective. To put this in general terms, the length of a very quickly moving object is contracted. Yes, in this particular case, it was the particles that were moving quickly and the length-contracted mountain wasn’t, but that’s only from the perspective of the scientists observing this incident. (And anyone or anything else that is stationary relative to the planet’s surface) Relativity says that it’s just as true and valid to say that the particles are stationary and the mountain is moving. The question of which object’s length is contracted is a matter of perspective.

11. The Doppler Effect applies to light as well as sound. As explained in high school physics books, the Doppler Effect is when sound waves are perceived as being grouped closer together (and therefore, higher pitched) when the thing emitting the sound is travelling towards the observer, and they are perceived as being spread farther apart (and therefore, lower pitched) when the thing emitting the sound is travelling away from the observer. According to most textbooks, one should learn about this phenomenon by getting someone to drive their car past you while honking their horn continuously, but my parents didn’t do this for me and I somehow still managed to understand the concept of the Doppler Effect. Anyway, it turns out that a moving light source will produce the same effect, except that the perceived pitch of light can’t change, for the simple reason that light doesn’t have a pitch. But the frequency still changes, just as it does for the sound. In the visible range of light, this is perceived as a change in color. The other thing worth noting (in order to avoid disagreeing with the principle of relativity) is that the Doppler Effect works the same way if it’s the receiver rather than the emitter that’s moving. It also works if the receiver and emitter are both moving, but in that case, you have to do actual math to figure out what exactly happens. (But it’s actually pretty simple math.)

Some more stuff from my tumblr page

12. Even though we actually spent several days of class time talking about “E equals M C squared” and radiation and subatomic stuff, I’m not going to say too much about that because, to be honest, I find that kind of thing a lot harder to understand than special relativity and its effects on space and time. But I will say this much: I know how nuclear bombs work. Some types of atoms are more stable than others, depending upon the number of electrons, neutrons, and protons. One factor is simply the size of the atom. The most stable kinds of atoms are iron atoms and atoms of similar masses. Smaller atoms are more likely than medium atoms to join together (nuclear fusion) and heavier atoms are more likely to split apart (nuclear fission). Fusion and fission both give off energy, which can be proven by adding up the energy and mass in the ingredients and the products of the event and taking into account that “E equals M C squared”. Uranium 235 (an atom that has 92 protons, 92 electrons, and 143 neutrons) is very radioactive. If you smash a neutron into a Uranium 235 atom, it’ll probably decay into Barium 144, Krypton 89, and three more neutrons which can go on to smash into more Uranium 235 atoms. If you have a critical mass of Uranium 235 and bombard it with a bunch of neutrons, you get a chain reaction that leads to a massive explosion and kills Hiroshima. (Unless, of course, you drop it on someplace other than Hiroshima, but I wouldn’t recommend that. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend dropping it on Hiroshima, either. Nuclear bombs are nasty things.) Incidentally, Uranium 238, which is more common than Uranium 235, is much less reactive, and unless I’ve misunderstood some things, it’s because of those extra neutrons. In really big atoms, larger amounts of neutrons make the atom more stable because the protons are trying to repel each other, and the neutrons are necessary to hold the atom together. Okay, that’s it; that’s the extent of my knowledge of nuclear stuff.

Ooh, here’s something else I learned in this class which isn’t quite worthy of a place on this list.

13. Even after finishing this class, I don’t quite get the concept of General Relativity, but we didn’t go into it in great detail because apparently the mathematics is well beyond the scope of this course. (I think that the real reason I decided to be a math minor is because I’m sick of hearing professors end sentences with the phrase “But we’re not going to go into that because the mathematics is beyond the scope of this course.”) But I do have a better grasp of it than I did before. The explanation of general relativity that I have heard many times before is that space is like a cushion. If you put a bowling ball in the middle of it, it will bend under the weight of the bowling ball, and if you put a marble near the bowling ball, it’ll roll down the cushion towards the bowling ball. This, I have been told, explains gravity according to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. When I questioned this, adults would explain to me that this was just the way it was and would give me looks that said, “It’s relativity, Small Child. Don’t expect it to make sense. Don’t be presumptuous and assume that you can understand the thoughts of The Great Albert Einstein.” Okay, it’s just one person in particular who seemed to be telling me this, and I am willing to accept the possibility that I was grossly misinterpreting this person’s lack of inclination to answer my question. My question wasn’t exactly a question anyway; it was more of a complaint. I felt that using this explanation was like using a word in its own definition. The reason that a bowling ball will bend a cushion is that it is heavy and is being pulled towards the Earth below the cushion, and the reason that the marble will roll down this bend is that it is likewise being pulled towards the Earth. And gravity is the thing doing the pulling. I guess I was being a bit too literal and failing to understand that the cushion explanation was merely an analogy. But my professor gave the class a similar analogy that I like better. This analogy involves an ant walking around the inside of a bowl that is empty except for a sugar cube at the bottom. Now, the ant doesn’t realize that it’s inside a bowl; it thinks that it’s walking in a straight line on a flat surface, and that there’s a sugar cube off to one side. As the ant keeps walking, it realizes that no matter how far it goes, the sugar cube stays in the same place relative to it. The ant is kind of clever for an ant, and quickly determines from this that it is in fact circling around the sugar cube. However, it still has no idea that it’s inside a curved bowl, so it can only conclude that there is some force, like gravity, attracting it to the sugar cube and causing it to orbit. In fact, there is no force; the ant is simply following a curved path because it’s walking on a curved surface. This analogy still isn’t perfect because General Relativity does say that mass (the sugar cube) causes space (the bowl) to curve, and the analogy doesn’t explain how that could happen. But it’s still a better illustration than the cushion one because it makes the point that Einstein was making with General Relativity. According to Einstein, gravity isn’t a real force. He came up with the Equivalence Principle, which says that the effect of perceived gravity is the same as the effect of being in a non-inertial reference frame that is accelerating upwards. (The acceleration is why it isn’t inertial) I’m not sure if Einstein literally meant that what we perceive as gravity is caused by acceleration of the Earth; I had thought we were considering the Earth to be an inertial reference frame. And I also don’t quite understand how curved spacetime relates to the Equivalence Principle. Like I said, General Relativity still doesn’t quite make sense to me, but at least now I’ve got analogies that make sense, and that’s progress.

14. In class today, we were talking about black holes, and the professor was explaining why it is that nothing can escape from a black hole once it’s within a certain distance from the black hole, known as the event horizon. (Note to self: remember to use the phrase “The Event Horizon” as a title for something awesome someday.) The common explanation is that the gravitational pull is acting so quickly that you’d have to travel faster than the speed of light to get farther away from the black hole. Unfortunately, travelling faster than the speed of light is impossible. (Yes, I have grumpily accepted this fact, despite having spent years trying very hard to deny it.) There’s another way of explaining this that is both weirder and cooler. If you will remember, one can find delta S, a non-relative measure of spacetime separation between two events, with the equation delta S squared equals delta T squared minus delta X squared. The result of this equation is the fact that, no matter how we move in space, we are unavoidably drawn forward in time at the speed of one second per second. (According to our own perspective, that is. If we are moving at relativistic speeds, of course, our speed through time will be different from the perspective of an observer who is not moving likewise. But even then, we’ll still be moving forward in time from any perspective.) Now, here comes the awesome bit. For some reason that I don’t actually understand, apparently inside the event horizon of a black hole, this equation changes to delta S squared equals delta X squared minus delta T squared. In other words, time and space change places. The implication is that, in this situation, you are drawn into the black hole in the same way that, in a more typical scenario, you are drawn towards the future. The other implication (which is the really, really awesome bit) is that I was right when I wrote a certain passage in a certain science fiction story a long time ago. I didn’t even have any idea what I was talking about; I was just writing random science-fiction-sounding stuff about gravity and time, and I threw the phrase “time gravity” and “black time hole” in there for the sake of awesomeness. But, from what I learned today, it would appear that there was some validity to that stuff. Clearly, I am a genius. Or something like that.

15. I don’t understand quantum physics at all. In fact, I’m not even quite clear on what the word “quantum” means. This is clearly something that I need to learn. You know, now that I understand relativity.

My Favorite Songs

One of my projects over this last month has been to make a list of my favorite 250 songs. (This list is now available on youtube and can be yours for the low, low price of 48 minutes and 13 seconds of your precious time.) As you may be able to guess, this was a pretty time-consuming project. Why, you may ask, would I choose to commit my time and effort to such an utterly pointless endeavor? Well, I happen to have quite an affinity for utterly pointless endeavors if they involve carefully organizing things into lists that will continue to exist in a tangible form after the project is finished. Some people knit or sew or do woodwork because they like their hobbies to produce tangible results; I make lists.

Part One: #250- #201

For the record, only pop songs are eligible for this list. That means that oldies, songs from musicals, and folk songs are all valid possibilities, but hymns and classical music are not. Current hits are eligible if I happen to like them, but very few songs from my own lifetime make the list. There are some, but not many. (A significant portion of the list consists of songs from the 1960s, and I noticed that the year 1967 in particular showed up quite a lot.) In order to be an available option for the list, a song must also have words; instrumentals aren’t allowed. These rules exist because certain types of music can only be judged according to different criteria. (This is especially true for hymns. It wouldn’t be possible to compare a hymn to a pop song according to a standard that takes into account the different things that make them “good”.) Christmas music, songs in languages I don’t know, or especially goofy songs are eligible, but tend not to do particularly well.  That may be less true of my current list than in previous years; I can think of five songs offhand that are in different languages and there might be more I’m forgetting. At least a couple are actually pretty high. Also, a Christmas song was #1 in January 2012, (and #14 this year) but I didn’t really think of that specifically as a Christmas song because it happened to be from the Doctor Who soundtrack, which placed it into yet another genre, and these genres kind of cancelled each other out and led me to treat it as a run-of-the-mill pop song.

Part Two: #200- #151

It is worth noting that my methodology for favorite-song-lists is very specific. It is necessary that I follow the exact same procedure every time I make such a list. The first step is to look through all of the music I own and write down the title of every song that I like enough that I believe it deserves a place on the list. Normally, the final list has one hundred songs rather than two hundred fifty, but the preliminary list always has a large surplus. Usually, it has somewhere between six hundred and seven hundred songs. This implies what the next step is: I must cut songs off the list until I’m down to the predetermined number. In theory, this step could be done fairly quickly, but I spread it out over the course of several days in order to ensure that a temporary mood doesn’t play too large of a role in this selection. Once I have my 100 or 250 songs chosen, the next step is to record a clip from each song and to save it onto my computer. These clips can be anywhere from five to twenty seconds, although I aim to get them as close to ten seconds as possible. Generally, the average length ends up being a bit higher than ten seconds. These clips can come from my favorite part of the song, from the very beginning of the song, from the title line, or from a place that just happens to be convenient to edit. That detail isn’t particularly important. Collecting these clips is the most time-consuming and least fun step, but the next step is the funnest.

Part Three: #150- #101

That’s when I put them in order. First, I sort them into three folders: A is for the songs that I really love and wish I could put at #1, B is for the songs that I really like, but not quite that much, and C is for the songs that I also like, but it wouldn’t make me extremely sad if they didn’t make it very high. Each of the three folders is then subdivided into three more folders, so I end up with A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, and C3. At that point, any folders with ten or fewer songs can remain as they are, but any folders with more than ten songs must be further split. If I recall correctly, this time I ended up with some folders that had names that were seven characters long. Once all of the folders are manageably small, I can start editing the clips together into a longer audio file. I don’t put them all into one file, because that would be too long to work with easily. This time, I used ten files, each of which were about 25 songs long. Finally, I use these audio files as the music for a video which gives the number, title, artist’s name, and release date of each song. (I don’t include the artist and date if the song has many different versions and the version is not significant to the placement on the list. Generally, this is true of the folk songs. I also occasionally am unable to find this information and have to leave it out. In some cases, this could conceivably be because I was wrong about the title of the song.)The video editing process is my second least favorite step. It gets slightly tedious and it takes longer than you’d think. This time, it’s taken me probably about six or seven hours spread out over five days. To answer the questions you might have, yes, I do have more important things to do, and no, I don’t sleep. Not very much, anyway.

Part Four: #100- #51

If I knew more about music, it would be fascinating to analyze the patterns and similarities between my favorite songs. Since I don’t really know what I’m talking about, I probably shouldn’t say much about those observations. However, there is one simple pattern that’s very obvious. I apparently really, really like The Seekers, since they came in at #1, #2, #3, #4, #6, and ten other places farther down on the list,  plus two more songs that fall under the category of folk songs that I like regardless of the artist performing them. Lately, I have indeed become somewhat obsessed with The Seekers, as anyone who has seen my facebook profile or my tumblr page will tell you. (And this isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned them on my blog, either.) The Moody Blues made quite a few appearances in my top 50 as well, which is somewhat surprising since I don’t listen to The Moody Blues a whole lot. The Beatles didn’t do as well as usual if you judge based upon the top of the list, but in the entire list of 250, they certainly still had more songs than any other group. There also were a number of Monkees songs, which included #5, and this is noteworthy because The Monkees haven’t played a prominent role in my previous lists. To make a more general summary of the kinds of songs I like, I notice that the 1960s are disproportionately represented, and in particular, I saw the year 1967 quite a lot.

Part Five: #50- #1

I Don’t Like Aristotle

I have this weird thing about Aristotle. I don’t like him. I know that his was one of the greatest minds of all time, I know that he made valuable contributions to just about every field of study in existence, and I know that his influence has played a large part in the course of human history, but something about Aristotle just annoys me. In theory, I ought to like Aristotle, because one of his defining characteristics was a tendency to classify everything, and that is a tendency which I share. (For example, I am in the process of posting my list of top 250 favorite songs on youtube after spending about a month carefully sorting and organizing them, and I am also currently trying to classify emotions into a small set of primary emotions, so that I can better categorize and document the entire range of emotions and collect data on a multi-daily basis in order to determine how various factors of everyday life affect emotion, as well as cognitive ability, which I have already developed a method for quantifying. This is just the kind of thing I do for fun in my spare time.) Some of Aristotle’s contributions to the world include taxonomy, various fields of theoretical science,  the foundations of all mathematics and physics for subsequent centuries, organization of rhetorical techniques, deductive logic, and various other systematic modes of thought that are either dear to my heart or at least appealing to the natural tendencies of my brain. Basically what I’m saying here is that Aristotle was brilliant and apparently obsessed with organized thought, which is reason for me to admire him. But instead, he annoys me like crazy.

Part of this is because there are a few specific things he said that I dislike. The most obvious and significant examples are theological, because Aristotle wasn’t exactly a Christian. (Despite what Plotinus said centuries later)To be honest, I’m not quite clear on what Aristotle did believe, although I’ve always gotten the impression that his beliefs more or less corresponded to what is now called Deism; that is to say, he believed in a God who created the world and invented moral rules, but hasn’t been particularly involved in the world since then. Although Aristotle definitely believed in “The First Cause” and “The First Mover”, he clearly didn’t believe in the triune God and he didn’t discuss sin and salvation in the Christian sense. Yet his philosophical ideas somehow still got tied up into Christianity in medieval times. For this reason, Martin Luther hated him and had some very choice words to say about him, which is enough to verify to me that Aristotle is not to be liked. Granted, Aristotle lived before Christ, but still, the point is that he didn’t believe in THE God; he believed in a god that he made up out of his own logical thought process, which, as brilliant as it was, was still human and thus not entirely reliable.

As long as we’re on the topic of unreliability, it is worth noting that Aristotelian physics turned out to be totally messed up and wrong. They held sway until Newton and Galileo came along, but then it was thoroughly demonstrated that Aristotle was mistaken, which isn’t really all that surprising since he was just making stuff up based upon his casual observations. Yes, I know that theoretical physics means that hypotheses are formed without the immediate verification of precise experimental data, but theoretical physics isn’t good for much unless its conclusions are justified by subsequent developments and experiments. (I feel a need to point out that the physics of the last century plus a few years, based upon Einstein’s postulates and theories, have disproved some of Newton and Galileo’s theories, so Aristotle’s physics is now at two degrees of proven-wrong-ness.)

In my logic notes from last semester, there’s a line that reads, “Yet another reason to be annoyed by Aristotle”. I didn’t even bother to write down what that reason was, because I knew I would remember. I was right; I remember both the note and the reason for the note even though I haven’t looked at those notes since the semester ended. This source of annoyance was the discrepancy between Boolean logic and Aristotelian logic in a case where Boolean logic is clearly better. Aristotle says that certain forms of categorical syllogisms are valid if the terms are existing things and invalid if the terms are non-existing things. That makes sense, except that the whole point of distinguishing between valid and invalid syllogism forms is that valid forms are valid regardless of what the terms are. According to the Boolean standpoint, if the truth of the syllogism relies upon whether or not the terms exist, then the form of the syllogism is valid. In other words, it is valid to say, “All unicorns are mammals and all mammals are animals; therefore, all unicorns are mammals” because, if both premises are true, then the conclusion is true. The fact that unicorns don’t exist (or so I’ve been told) is irrelevant because, if they did exist, they would clearly be animals if we can assume that they are mammals and that mammals are animals. But, according to Aristotle, the validity of the entire syllogism depends upon the existence of unicorns. For the sake of my logic class, we had to answer questions from both the Aristotelian standpoint and the Boolean standpoint, but I would like the record to show that I am totally on Boole’s side on this one.

Just look at his arrogant, self-satisfied smirk!

But, despite his flaws in theology, physics, and (in my opinion) the rules of categorical syllogisms, the fact remains that Aristotle was a remarkably intelligent person and that he made remarkable contributions to every aspect of academia and human thought. I can fully justify my disdain of Aristotle only by acknowledging one other reason for it: I’m jealous of him. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest geniuses ever to live, and his thoughts have been among the most prominent thoughts ever thought for more than 2300 years now. My brain aspires to great genius and doesn’t like the fact that there have been minds so great that my mind will never achieve the success and accolade that they did. This may very well be the same reason that I find Einstein annoying and have tried so hard to deny the fact that nothing can travel faster than light. I now reluctantly agree that this is the case, because it has been mathematically demonstrated to me in various fascinating and undeniably clever ways. But I am so totally not happy about it.

Some Thoughts on Genesis 24

Disclaimer: After I finish the long quotation from Genesis, the end of this blog post is just some things that have occurred to me regarding this particular Bible passage. I’m not trying to claim that what I’m saying here is official doctrine or that my thoughts constitute theological truths. In fact, since the notes in the Lutheran Study Bible (which are extensive and very awesome) don’t make these connections, I’m willing to accept the possibility that they aren’t valid. It is entirely possible that I’m really stretching things and that it’s just plain wrong to take these things from this text. If anyone reading this has anything to say, particularly if it involves quoting Bible verses or good biblical commentary, your comments are welcome and appreciated.

Genesis 24 is the account of how Abraham sent his servant back to his native land to find a wife for his son Isaac. The chapter begins with the conversation between Abraham and the servant, and then the servant sets off on the journey. Starting at verse twelve, here is the text as quoted from the ESV (English Standard Version):

And he [Abraham’s servant] said, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink’, and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’ – let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.”

Before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, came out with her water jar on her shoulder. The young woman was very attractive in appearance, a maiden whom no man had known. She went down to the spring and filled her jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said, “Please give me a little water to drink from your jar.” She said, “Drink, my lord.” And she quickly let down her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink. When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, “I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.” So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw water, and she drew for all his camels. The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether the Lord has prospered his journey or not.

When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a half shekel, and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels, and said, “Please tell me whose daughter you are. Is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?” She said to him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.” She added, “We have plenty of both straw and fodder, and room to spend the night.” The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord and said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.” Then the young woman ran and told her mother’s household about these things.

Rebekah had a brother whose name was Laban. Laban ran out toward the man, to the spring. As soon as she saw the ring and the bracelets on his sister’s arms, and heard the words of Rebekah his sister, “Thus the man spoke to me,” he went to the man. And behold, he was standing by the camels at the spring. He said, “Come in, O blessed of the Lord. Why do you stand outside? For I have prepared the house and a place for the camels.” So the man came to the house and unharnessed the camels, and gave straw and fodder to the camels, and there was water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him. Then food was set before him to eat. But he said, “I will not eat until I have said what I have to say.” He said, “Speak on.”

[Verses 34- 49 are spoken by Abraham’s servant and repeat everything from the previous 33 verses. Then Rebekah’s father and brother agree to send Rebekah back with Abraham’s servant, and they all eat together. The next day, Rebekah and the servant depart, and Rebekah marries Isaac at the end of the chapter.]

This is what I find really interesting about this passage: Abraham’s servant recognizes Rebekah as Isaac’s bride because of the words she speaks (“Drink” and “I will water your camels”) and the water she gives, in the same way that Christians can recognize the true church by the words it speaks (the Bible) and the water it gives (Baptism). In fact, the reason that Abraham’s servant has to take this trip in the first place is because any potential brides in Isaac’s current homeland belong to pagan religions, which is to say that they’re associated with false churches.

I’m reusing this picture of a sign I stuck on my dorm room wall, because it’s a cool sign.

That’s something I noticed while ago that I thought was cool, but this morning it occurred to me that the order of events in this account could be significant, too. First comes the part about the water, then Rebekah and her brother invite the servant into their home, then they talk things over and agree that Rebekah will marry Isaac, and then Abraham’s servant eats the food that Rebekah’s family provides. (The Lutheran Study Bible does have a note that points out that it would have been customary for the guest to eat before such a discussion, but in this case, it was important to the servant to get that matter taken care of first.) Likewise, Christians enter the church through baptism; baptism can occur even before a person makes a conscious decision to enter the church. (In this case, my opening disclaimer doesn’t apply. It is official doctrine in the Lutheran Church that infant baptism is valid because baptism is a gift from God that does not require a deliberate decision to accept Jesus. It is something that the church can give to us even before we have the knowledge to recognize what we are receiving in baptism.) However, when the church offers us food, (Holy Communion, aka The Lord’s Supper, aka the Eucharist, etc.) before we partake in this meal, we should be sure that we’re in the right place and that we are in agreement with the congregation with whom we’re eating. In the case of Abraham’s servant, that means negotiating the betrothal before accepting dinner. In the case of communion, that means two things. First, unlike baptism, communion isn’t something that should be offered to babies or to people who have not yet been instructed in the church’s teachings. Second, it’s an argument for close communion (aka closed communion), which is the practice by which a congregation only offers communion to members or to visitors who believe the same thing. (Basically, that means members of another congregation of the same denomination.)

The English major part of my brain is wondering if there’s something metaphorical to say about the camels. It seems important that Rebekah is so attentive to them, offering them water and then assuring Abraham’s servant that her family has plenty of straw and fodder for the camels, even though he hasn’t specifically asked about that. Obviously, Rebekah was a generous and caring hostess, but if there’s a parallel to be drawn here, I’m going to guess that it’s along the same lines as what Jesus says in Matthew 6: 25-34. (See accompanying picture) If the camels stand for something, they stand for Abraham’s worldly possessions, and the fact that they are well provided for stands for the fact that, by God’s grace and love, our worldly needs are met, in addition to the forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life that God has already given us.

The end. I reiterate that comments, corrections, and additional remarks are welcome and requested.

An Unforgetable Moment In My Life

This comparitively recent picture in the kitchen is included for context, and as an extra bonus, it also happens to be a cute cat picture.

‘Twas a moment I shall always remember. It took place in the kitchen on a relatively ordinary summer morning when I was thirteen years old, soon to be fourteen, for my birthday was in early September. (As a matter of fact, it still is.) It was fairly early, probably about eight O’clock, and my sister and I were doing the dishes. Normally, this was a chore that was executed later in the day, but on this particular day, we were doing it earlier because we were about to leave for a multi-day trip, and the dishes must be done before then. My sister and I both greatly hated this chore, but I don’t recall that fact having much bearing on the story that I am currently telling. In fact, I seem to remember being pretty happy at the time because I was excited about the aforementioned trip. On this particular day, my sister was doing the washing and I was doing the drying, a task which also included putting away the clean and dry dishes.

The pan of which I speak looks very much like this.

This was the scenario when the moment that I will always remember occurred. I was standing on a wooden stepping stool in order to reach the top shelf of the cabinet where we keep casserole dishes and baking pans, and I was lifting a fairly heavy brown-tinted glass pan onto that shelf. I don’t remember what that pan had been used for most recently, but we often make things like corn bread in it. As far as I know, my family still has that pan and still uses it frequently, although I don’t specifically recall seeing it anytime recently. Since I don’t go to my house very often, it isn’t surprising that I don’t have a very complete and up-to-date knowledge of my family’s culinary tools and devices. But, whether my family still uses that pan or not, the fact remains that at that particular moment, I had it in my hands and was putting it on the shelf where it belonged. That objective was a little more complex than it sounds, because the cabinet was pretty full. To put one dish away required removing a stack of dishes and restacking them to make room for the new arrival. I had just done that, and was sliding the stack of rectangular pans back onto the shelf. I had to be very careful, because they were heavy and many of them were breakable, and I had to reach above eye-level, even with the added height of the stepping stool. For the record, I succeeded in doing this without breaking anything, which wasn’t surprising considering that I was accustomed to doing this every single day.

At that precise point in time, I promised myself that I would never forget that moment. It wasn’t because there was anything significant or memorable about it. It was just that I was fascinated by the idea that I could permanently preserve a certain moment in my mind just by deciding to remember it, even a perfectly ordinary moment like that. It worked. I have never forgotten that incident, and I’m pretty sure I never will.

Slightly Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Beauty

I don’t know where this picture came from originally, but it is a computer-generated image that has been posted in many places online as an example of a fairly normal but objectively beautiful female face.

Society and the mass media promote two different ways of defining and thinking about beauty. The first tells us that beauty is objective and can be judged according to a standard set of ideals, that some people are much better-looking than others, and that it’s important for every individual to do whatever they can to make themselves as attractive as possible, especially in cases where this individual is female. The other perspective says that beauty is only skin deep and that true beauty comes from within. According to this definition, there’s no such thing as objective beauty and it is unethical and hurtful to say that one person looks better than another. One of these views is considered to be superficial and the other is considered to be politically correct, but they’re both commonly held ideas and they’re both deeply ingrained into people’s minds. I would like to offer the opinion that actually, both of these ways of thinking of beauty are incorrect and potentially harmful. Even though one is always critical and the other is always complimentary, they’re both too extreme and just plain wrong.

Of course, everyone knows what’s wrong with the idea of objective beauty that is promoted by movies, the fashion industry, and advertisements in general. It’s unrealistic and artificial, and it promotes the idea that a person’s self-worth is based primarily upon their physical appearance. It makes people, especially women, feel inadequate, and it opens opportunities for marketing strategies that prey upon people’s insecurities. Women are told that they are supposed to strive for a certain ideal, and if that means spending ridiculous amounts of money and time on nice clothes and makeup and hair care products and skin care products, then that’s what you have to do. If you don’t, you’re ugly, no one likes you, and your opportunities in life will be very limited. Those ideas are obviously neither correct nor pleasant.

The other definition of beauty sounds better, though. It’s nice to be able to say that everyone’s beautiful just the way they are and that a person’s facial features have no impact whatsoever either on their potential in life or their overall degree of attractiveness. The problem is that, strictly speaking, that isn’t true in every context, and anyone who really believes it is going to have a hard time dealing with a world in which looks really do matter sometimes. Personally, I feel that there’s a bit of a contradiction in a philosophy that states that everyone is beautiful and that beauty doesn’t really matter. The only way in which that conflict is resolved is to make “beauty” an extremely vague term, which is easy to do when you’re already operating according to the idea that beauty is unimportant. But then you’re basically denying the existence of any such thing as objective physical beauty, and that’s kind of sad because beauty is, by definition, a good thing.

To be honest, I have never understood why people say that the Mona Lisa is pretty.

I think it makes the most sense to think of beauty in the same way as you’d think of a skill in a certain area. For example, some people are born with a mathematical mind and are guaranteed to be good at math as they grow and learn. If that is something that really matters to them, they will put effort into mathematics and will end up being excellent; otherwise, they’ll just be a little bit good at math and they’ll be better at something else that matters a little more to them. In other words, a person’s mathematical ability comes from a combination of natural ability and deliberate effort. It would be silly for another person to tell a mathematical genius that being good at math is not something they should be proud of because they were born with it, but it would also be silly for others to put that mathematical genius on a pedestal as a model of human perfection just because he or she is extremely good at one certain thing. Other people are born without that degree of mathematical talent. If they work really hard, they can still become somewhat good at math, but certainly not to the degree of being a genius. It would be incorrect and hurtful for other people to claim that this non-genius is an inadequate human being just because of a lower level of innate proficiency in one area.

Likewise, some people are born being naturally good-looking and others aren’t. Regardless of how naturally attractive someone is, there are things he or she can do to look better. The question of whether or not it’s worth it is really a matter of opinion. For example, I personally think that plastic surgery, except when it’s reconstructive in nature, is not worth the money and the recovery time. I don’t, however, think that it’s silly or wasteful for me to use makeup or to occasionally spend some time doing something cool with my hair or to prefer wearing clothing of certain colors simply because I think I look better in those colors. But I do know a lot of girls who wear an awful lot more makeup than I do and who care more about their hair than I do and who buy a lot of clothes because they find it necessary to have as many flattering or “cute” outfits as possible. Some of them are naturally beautiful people who do their best to enhance their good looks because it’s something that they value in themselves. Others are less good-looking to begin with, but they are dedicated to making themselves look as good as they can, and usually, the result is that they succeed in being pretty.

I don’t often spend any more time on my hair than absolutely necessary, but I do admit to having wasted some time recently trying to imitate this hairstyle. This is Clara Oswin, from the latest Doctor Who episode.

To be honest, I am a little biased against people who think that their appearance is a high priority in their life, and I am very baffled by some girls’ willingness to spend so much time and money on the way they look. Really, though, it’s a lifestyle choice. To me, my appearance is slightly important, but there are a number of things that are much more important. I’d rather put my time and efforts into the pursuit of intellectual achievements, partly because that seems much more important to me and partly because I’m aware that any natural assets I have are intellectual rather than aesthetic. I’m not saying I’m a genius, either, but I do go to a fairly prestigious college and make fairly decent grades, which is worth something.  I’m not sure what an equivalent achievement in prettiness would be, but it’s certainly something well beyond my potential.

There are some people out there who are very good-looking and very smart and very talented in other areas as well.  I guess that must come from a combination of being very naturally gifted and being extremely non-lazy. In that case, those all-around awesome people deserve admiration and respect, even from those of us who just can’t understand how an intelligent and motivated person can find the time to make their hair look that nice or put that much effort into putting together a really great outfit.

It’s true that there are a lot of people out there who are superficially obsessed with their appearance or who are misguided enough to judge other people based upon their looks. And it’s true that it’s bad to be entirely focused on physical beauty and that our society shows many of the negative results of that mindset. But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to acknowledge that there is such a thing as objective beauty and that some individuals do have quite a bit of it.

Here is a picture of Grace Kelly, because I once had a paper doll of her that I deemed to be the prettiest of all my paper dolls.

For the record, this blog post was in part inspired by a website I found (and unfortunately lost again, so I can’t share the link) which lets you upload a picture of a person’s face and then uses objective details to calculate how good-looking  that person is. This strongly appealed to the part of my brain that is fascinated with quantifying everything. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do a lot with it because it requires pictures that are completely straight-on; the slightest angle or the tiniest incline of the head confuses it. I therefore only had a couple pictures available to feed into the program, but I was interested to note that the analysis of one particular picture of one particular sister indicated that she was more than 95% pretty. Given the fact that I have myself beheld the face of this sister of whom I speak, I am not at all surprised, and I expect that pictures of some of my other sisters would have gotten similar scores if I had been able to find correctly angled pictures to use. My point here is to justify the coolness of such a computer program (and the amount of time I wasted playing with it) and to explain why it is both awesome and unfair that my sisters are pretty people. The additional point of this particular paragraph is to subtly point out that my sisters are pretty people without actually complimenting them, because, you know, that would go against all the principles of sibling rivalry.

Note: Those of you reading this who know me and/or my family in real life may be curious about which sister’s picture I used. If you want to know, you can see it for yourself, because it’s my current cover picture on facebook. It is pretty obvious which sister’s face I was able to use because she’s the only one who isn’t leaning and doesn’t have her head turned or someone else’s hair obscuring her face.

Other note: I notice that all of the pictures I have used here happen to be of Caucasian women, and I would like to note that 1) This is a coincidence where my choices were concerned and I hope that isn’t offensive, and 2) It is interesting and strange, though, that Google images don’t give you racial diversity unless you specifically ask for it.

Things I’ve Learned From Watching The Big Bang Theory

I can’t remember exactly when I first became aware of the TV show The Big Bang Theory, except that it was at some point during spring semester my junior year. (That is to say, last year) I also don’t remember exactly what I saw first, except that I know I saw a lot of short clips on youtube long before I ever saw a full episode. In fact, I still haven’t seen many full episodes beyond the first season. I enjoy The Big Bang Theory for two reasons: the characters and the nerdiness. The main characters are all unrealistic enough to be ridiculous while still being realistic enough to be relatable, which is a combination that maximizes the humor. Sheldon Cooper, for example, is more socially inept and more obsessive than anyone in real life could possibly be, but there are at least a couple moments in nearly every episode where he says or does something that is exactly the kind of thing that I would say or do, or where he seems exactly like certain people I know. That fact actually has to do with both of my reasons for liking The Big Bang Theory; the fact that I find Sheldon relatable just goes to show that I’m a nerd and that the nerdiness is the real reason that I like the show.

The problem with The Big Bang Theory, though, is that it’s kind of inappropriate. Not only is there often some obscene humor, but the plotlines themselves are often pretty raunchy. It’s annoying enough when you’re watching something that contains a lot of sexual innuendos, but it’s pretty hard to ignore when the story itself revolves around the characters’ promiscuity. I know that The Big Bang Theory isn’t exactly X-rated and that it might sound a bit prudish to find it offensive, but I think it’s pretty sad that our culture is so accepting of obscenity that it can be considered prudish to be disturbed by it.

My point here is that, even though I enjoy The Big Bang Theory, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.  However, I don’t regret the fact that I’ve watched a good deal of it. I would here like to offer a list of random nerdy trivia that I have picked up from The Big Bang Theory. This list comes entirely from season one and only contains facts that I didn’t already know. (For example, I felt no need to include the fact that tomatoes are technically a fruit.) It also omits all of the physics stuff that admittedly went over my head. Most of the items on this list are direct quotations; those that are paraphrased are the ones that I didn’t put in quotation marks. Also, it is worth noting that I was too lazy to look up any of these facts yet (even though that had been my intention when I started making this list) so it’s possible that some of them were fabricated by the scriptwriters.

1. “If the height of a single step is off by as little as two millimeters, most people will trip.”- Sheldon

2. “Curry is a natural laxative.” –Leonard

3. “Thailand has had the fork since the latter half of the 19^th century. Interestingly, they don’t actually put the fork in their mouths; they use it to put the food on a spoon, which then goes into their mouth.” –Sheldon

4. “Evolution has made women sensitive to high-pitched noises as they sleep so that they’ll be roused by a crying baby. If you want to avoid waking her, speak in a lower register.” (Note: I kind of cheated by putting this one on the list, because I’d actually heard it before)

5. The development of the atomic bomb was in part due to someone named Oppenheimer, who regretted his involvement in the creation of such a weapon.  –Leonard

6. “You can’t prove string theory. At best, you can say, ‘Hey look! My idea has an inherent logical consistency!’ “- Leonard (Note: I kind of cheated on this one, too, because technically it’s not really a fact. It’s just a quotation I like that happens to be about a specific scientific theory.)

7. There are only eight consonants in the Hawaiian language. –Sheldon

8. “A serape is open at the sides; a poncho is closed.” –Sheldon (Note: Actually, I knew this one, too.)

9. “When you start a party at seven, no one actually shows up at seven.” –Penny (Note: It’s really sad that I picked up a fact of commonly accepted social conventions from a TV show that is largely defined by the fact that the characters have a poor understanding of commonly accepted social conventions.)

10. “A bed is oriented with the headboard away from the door. It serves the ancient imperative of protecting oneself against marauders.”- Sheldon (Note: I have always instinctively followed this rule whenever possible, and now, thanks to TV, I know why.)

11. The phrase sleep tight “refers to the early construction of beds, which featured a mattress suspended on interlocking ropes which would occasionally…” –Leonard (Note: It disappoints me that Leonard doesn’t actually finish the sentence, because I was genuinely curious. I presume that the following words would have something to do with the ropes either breaking or stretching.)

12. “Indian parents continue to have a greater than average involvement in their children’s love lives.” –Sheldon

13. The brain chemistry of white mice is actually more similar to that of humans than is the brain chemistry of guinea pigs. –Sheldon

14. Dentists have an extremely high suicide rate. –Raj

15. “Gram for gram, no animal exceeds the relative fighting strength of the army ant.” –Shldon

16. “In a proper sandwich, the cheese is adjacent to the bread in order to create a moisture barrier against the lettuce.” –Sheldon

17. Bertram Forer, in 1948, conducted research to debunk astrology. –Sheldon

18. “Starch absorbs fluid, which reduces the amount of vomit available for violent expulsion.” -Sheldon

Bonus Interesting Metaphors:

1.When Penny said that she both hated and loved her ex-boyfriend, Leonard equated this with the paradox that light acts both as a wave and a particle.

2. When both Penny and Leonard ask Sheldon for advice about whether or not they should go through with their date, Sheldon compares their uncertainty about the future of their relationship with the uncertainty described in the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment. (Here is a link to a blog post I wrote a few months ago that described Schrodinger’s Cat)

This concludes my list. Just for the fun of it, I might make similar lists for later seasons, if I find the time to watch them.

‘Tis the Life of a Dancer, Episode 1

This is Natalia Osipova. She is extremely awesome.

I’m not going to claim that I’m a professional-level dancer, or that I’ve dedicated every moment of my entire life to ballet, or that I look like those astonishingly beautiful ballerinas who inspire both envy and dedication in every ballet student who frequents youtube and reads dance magazines. But I have dedicated a significant amount of my life to ballet over the past six or seven years, I am a dance major in college, and I do have enough experience and knowledge that I feel entirely qualified to make the points that I want to make here. Basically, it comes down to this: Most people just don’t understand ballet.

Of course, you could probably say that about any profession, field of study, sport, or hobby. I think that every activity can really only be understood by people who have dedicated a lot of time and effort to it. False assumptions and silly stereotypes exist for any job, pastime, or field of interest. But I think that ballet is even more subject to misunderstandings and absurd opinions because it’s such a common interest. Almost everyone thinks they know more about it than they really do, simply because ballet is so prevalent in pop culture. In our society, most females, as well as some males, have at some point in their life taken at least a few dance classes, and in many of these cases, those classes were preschooler-level ballet classes. Contrary to what many people seem to think, that doesn’t really constitute ballet experience. It doesn’t even constitute a taste of what ballet is really like.

For that age group, ballet classes generally consist of running around, playing charade-like games, and wearing things like pink tutus and tiaras. Even at a very good pre-professional ballet school, actual ballet technique usually isn’t taught until the student is at least six or seven years old. This isn’t because the teachers don’t care about the little kids; it’s because it’s physically impossible for children that young to do ballet. For example, babies don’t have arches in their feet, and those arches usually don’t develop until around the age of four. Until then, the child cannot point his or her foot, at least not as well as ballet technique necessarily requires. (There are exceptions, of course. I remember one time being at the zoo and noticing a baby who had beautiful ballet feet. This was such an unusual sight that it surprised me at the time and has stuck in my mind ever since.)Also, although little children are capable of greater flexibility than older children and adults, it isn’t safe for a young child to stretch as much as a serious ballet student must. A little kid who stretches too much could do permanent damage to his or her ligaments. This is a risk at any age, but especially for children with immature ligaments and joints. One of the biggest ballet impediments to little kids, of course, is that bodily awareness takes years to develop. Not only does every child need to reach a certain age to have good control of his or her muscles, but it also usually takes several years of dance experience beyond that to have the control necessary to really be ready for the precision of ballet class. For all these reasons, very few dancers under the age of about seven or eight are really training in “real” ballet, even at a top-notch classical ballet school.

I am not saying all of this to demean young dance students or to deny the value of dance classes at a young age. I think that pre-ballet classes for little kids are very beneficial, both to the children taking the classes and to the dance schools offering the classes. (Not to mention the fact that young aspiring ballerinas make up a significant portion of ballet’s fan base, so ballet itself as an art form benefits from encouraging these young dance students) It’s just that, if someone took ballet for a couple years when they were little and then quit, they don’t really know anything more about ballet than someone who has never taken a class in their life. That isn’t an exaggeration; pretty much everyone has seen enough ballerina storybooks and ballerina pictures to have some idea of what ballet looks like and to be familiar with a couple ballet positions. The idea of the ballet world that a four-year-old ballet student has will pretty much correspond to the coloring-book-and-paper-dolls version of the ballet world. Only after years of training, countless hours of classes and rehearsals, a good deal of pain and frustration, and unquantifiable amounts of hard work, will a dance student have genuinely experienced the way ballet really works.

I think that the predominant idea of ballet in pop culture is that a female ballet dancer is ethereal, graceful, and very delicate. That really is the effect that ballet dancers want to have; ballet is supposed to look light and effortless. But it isn’t light and effortless at all. Gaynor Minden, a dancewear company that specializes in pointe shoes, uses the phrase “It’s Amazing What Goes into Making Something Look Effortless” as a sort of advertising headline. That line is very true. A ballerina’s delicacy comes from a lifetime of grueling hard work, the endurance to push through pain on a daily basis, and thick enough skin to be able to tolerate constant corrections and criticism from teachers. What the audience perceives as delicacy is actually toughness. I’m saying this as someone who has experienced enough of this to know how difficult and painful it can be, but who knows that all I’ve been through is just a pathetically tiny fraction of what a professional dancer has experienced.

To be fair, I do think that the general public is aware that ballet isn’t all pink tulle and fairy tales. I do think that it’s commonly understood that serious ballet training takes a lot of hard work and discipline. If the questions that people sometimes ask me can be taken as valid evidence, it has occurred to most people to wonder if pointe shoes hurt, if dancers get injured very often, and if all those classes and rehearsals are time-consuming. In each of those cases, the answer is yes, and much more so than any non-dancer can realize. I have had multiple stress fractures as well as ongoing Achilles tendonitis for a few years now, not to mention perpetually bruised toenails and, of course, sore muscles and any number of random aches and pains. I use myself merely as an example; anyone who spends a significant amount of time in ballet classes experiences the exact same injuries and pains that I do.

There are emotional side effects of ballet, too. Classical ballet technique is extremely precise; it’s a big deal if your arm is just a little too low or if your ankle is at slightly the wrong angle or if the muscle just above your kneecap isn’t working quite as hard as it should be. Any muscle in the body could be too tense or too loosely held. Any limb or digit could be too stiff or not straight enough. In any move, you have to be conscious of every single part of your body at every single instant, and the slightest mistake is a problem that needs to be fixed. Perfection simply doesn’t exist in ballet because there are just too many possible things to be wrong. Even if a dancer somehow did manage to achieve flawless technique, he or she would still be imperfect because it would always be possible to jump a little higher or move a little faster or to get a few more rotations into each turn. Besides that, there would be certain positions or moves that just aren’t flattering to the body type or dancing style of even the most perfect dancer. Classical ballet choreography doesn’t allow certain moves to be edited or omitted just because they don’t look good on the dancer. A dancer is required to constantly strive for utter perfection, but there’s no such thing as utter perfection. It’s a goal that is automatically doomed to failure, and every dancer feels the frustration of that failure acutely.

This is an image that’s been going aroumd the internet a lot, and I don’t know where it came from originally, but this is exactly what most dancer’s feet look like. Not immediatly after the pointe shoes come off, though. They normally would be a little more red and swollen for an hour or two.

And then there’s the fatigue. A normal ballet class lasts ninety minutes, and I usually am physically exhausted within ten to fifteen minutes, which means that I spend the rest of the class just trying to get through it. When there are rehearsals after class, the rehearsals can go on for several hours. Schedules get really intense during theater week. Before one show that we did at my college, I spent so much time in the dance studio and the theater that I moved my laptop and all my schoolbooks into the locker room and only returned to my dorm for a few hours a night to get a bit of sleep and to take a shower before heading off to the next day of academic classes, dance rehearsals, and murderous fatigue. I can only imagine how much crazier it must be for a professional dancer. At major companies, dance is a full-time job. At smaller companies, dance is an almost-full-time job with part-time pay, while all of the dancers work other jobs and many of them are also working towards their education. It’s hard enough to be a college dance major; it must be even harder to be both a professional dancer and a college student.

One aspect of life as a dance major that I find particularly annoying is that we aren’t supposed to complain about dance. It’s okay for someone in any academic major to sometimes get tired of their field of study, to dislike certain courses or professors, and to be delighted when the semester is over and they get a break. College students complain about their classes to their classmates and also to their friends in different  disciplines, they whine about how little sleep they get and how much time they spend studying, and they constantly talk about how hard school is. It’s just kind of a fact of college life; college takes a lot of work and college students are supposed to complain about it as much as they want. But dancers are supposed to always love dance, to never be too tired for dancing, and to continue dancing over breaks if at all possible. If they do complain, their non-dancer friends think they’re babies, because dance classes are fun classes, right? When dancers feel overworked or get burned out, that’s seen as being completely different, and somehow less valid, than the kind of exhaustion that comes from academic work. As a double major who has put a lot of time, effort, and sacrifice into both dance and academics, I can tell you that academic work is extremely easy compared to ballet. For most classes, you can just sit there the whole time long. Even if you pulled an all-nighter and are extremely tired, even if you have a killer migraine, even if you have a painful injury, even if you’re utterly depressed and unmotivated, it’s always technically possible to sit through a class. I’ve been through all of those scenarios many times, and so have most college students. Chances are, the worst thing that could happen to you is that you can’t focus and don’t pick up certain topics as quickly as you should. (Well, there’s also the risk of falling asleep in class, which is something that every sleep-deprived college student has to come up with his or her own strategy for avoiding.)  In ballet class, on the other hand, you could severely injure yourself or collapse from sheer fatigue and overwork. That’s not even hyperbole; it has happened to me on more than one occasion and I’ve been aware of it happening to other dancers as well. And that’s not just something that’s isolated to college-age or adult dancers. Burnout and injury from overwork are things that can happen to young intermediate-level dancers as well. I don’t know the statistics, but I think it’s safe to say that most serious ballet students over the age of eleven or twelve have experienced multiple injuries, have been through a lot of dance-related stress, and have had moments when they genuinely hated ballet.

I still have my first pair of pointe shoes, and they still fit. They look like this.

Of course, when you say these kinds of things to non-dancers, they will probably assume that you’re exaggerating or at least being dramatic. And if they do take you seriously, they will wonder why you would continue dancing if it makes you so unhappy. A lot of dancers have a cliché answer to the “Why do you dance?” question, usually something along the lines of “Because movement is in my soul,” or “Because it makes me feel whole” or “Why do you breathe?” I’ve never had a good answer for that question, at least not one that’s completely honest. The real reason I’m a college dance major is just because otherwise, I would have had to make ballet a much lower priority in my life. And the real reason I got so involved in ballet when I was a teenager was just because I was so frustrated by it that I couldn’t help putting a lot of work into it. Those aren’t very inspirational and quotable reasons, especially not when you add the fact that I never did, and probably never will, get anywhere near good enough to justify all that I’ve put into my pursuit of balletic excellence. It’s very hard for me to explain why I dance; it’s much easier for me to explain why I continue dancing in spite of everything.

This was my facebook profile picture for a while. I’m just sticking it here because I happen to like it.

There are some joys in life that you never really experience outside of ballet. There’s the sense of accomplishment after a performance or after a particularly good class. There are the occasional encouraging words from teachers who give compliments so rarely that a single kind word from them is worth more than all of the empty praise in the world. There’s the sensation that you occasionally get at the very top of a jump that went higher than usual or in the middle of a turn that went around more times than usual. There’s the satisfaction of suddenly doing something correctly that you’ve spent years working on and hating yourself for being unable to do. There’s the feeling of stepping out of hot and sweat-filled classroom into the sunlight and breeze of a beautiful afternoon like the one I was fortunate enough to see yesterday. There’s the type of slight soreness that isn’t bad enough to be a problem and actually makes you feel almost kind of proud because it comes from hard work. There’s the knowledge that you’re capable of doing things that most people can’t, even if you can’t always do them as well as your classmates. Sometimes, there are moments in class when you see yourself in the mirror and realize that you actually look like a dancer. And it doesn’t even matter whether that position or step is hard, or if it hurts your feet, because that’s not the point. The point is that you’re doing something correctly and it looks the way it should.

Because really, when it comes down to it, all of the work and all of the hardships of classical ballet serve one purpose, and that purpose is to embody that image of the fairy tale ballerina who is so elegant, effortless, light, graceful, and delicate that no audience member could ever guess that her feet hurt or that she’s dead tired. That perfection is not what it’s really like to be a ballet dancer, but it’s still what the art of ballet itself is like.

Why Young People Leave the Church

I was going to use some random pictures from Google of pretty churches, but I decided It would be better to use pictures I’ve taken myself. So here’s a blurry and low-quality picture of my family’s church in Arkansas.

I frequently read or hear things about how few “young people” there are in churches, and how the youth of this generation doesn’t care about religion and is falling away from the faith. The definition of “young people” will vary depending upon the context; it could refer to a specific narrow demographic group, usually high-school aged kids, or it could just be the opposite of “elderly” in a binary system where everyone is either young or elderly. It doesn’t really matter; regardless of how you define youth, it is statistically true, at least in many congregations and denominations, that there are a lot of elderly people and few young people. At least in this society, it is accurate to say that young people as a demographic group are falling away from the church. Sometimes people comment and complain about this in order to criticize young people for leaving the church and sometimes they’re criticizing the church for losing young people.  In either case, it’s understood that something must be done to bring young people back into the church.

People offer lots of reasons for why young people might have a tendency to leave the church, and most of these reasons imply possible solutions. For example, it is often said that young people don’t like liturgy, and that a contemporary worship style encourages teenagers and young adults to attend worship and to develop an emotional affinity for church. I had thought this was actually a very recent idea, but I once saw a non-denominational hymnal from the 1920s that claimed that young people are so emotional that they can only be drawn to religion by singing hymns that are very emotionally charged. Hence, I-Love-Jesus theology becomes preferred over Jesus-Died-For-Me theology. This is a problem, and I highly doubt that it has any success in drawing young people into the church.

Then there are some people who say that young people leave the church because church is boring or irrelevant. I think this may be a more valid argument because I actually have heard former Christians or Christmas-and-Easter-only churchgoers say that church is boring. It would seem that this actually ties very closely to the reason in the previous paragraph, because the proposed solution is often the same: dispense with the liturgy, change the musical style, and present a more modern and socially relevant image to the world. Let youth group activities take precedence over worship, use pop culture references to keep things interesting, and make sure that the clergy come across as being cool and fun people. The problem with this is that it turns church into a social group and a genre of entertainment. If the desired young people start coming to church for the fun and the society, they will only stay for the fun and the society. People can get tired of a favorite band or a favorite genre of movies after loving it for a few years, and people can drift away from a set of friends over time. In the same way, people can get bored of a fun and culturally relevant church just as easily (and in fact, much more easily) as they can get bored of a liturgical and confessional church. You can’t combat a person’s tendency to get bored by catering to their changing tastes. But boredom becomes irrelevant when the topic at hand is understood to be important. Someone can stop liking their favorite food, but they can never get tired of eating. Someone can stop liking their favorite TV show, but that won’t drive them away from television itself. Someone can get bored with their favorite hymn or stop being fascinated by their favorite Bible verse, but they won’t get bored of religion if they realize that religion is more than whatever personally relevant message they are currently getting out of it. A clear law and gospel message is always relevant, and if that’s what people are hearing, people aren’t likely to get bored and aren’t likely to let temporary boredom drive them away from the church.

Another commonly offered explanation for why young people might not like to go to church is that religion is too full of rules and accusations, and that most of these Christian values are hypocritical anyway. If we want to bring young people into the church, we should therefore tone down the morality and emphasize God’s love. In other words, we need less law and more gospel. That would certainly be true in a congregation that was too legalistic in the first place, but it doesn’t work to remove all references to sin. If you do that, you’re throwing out every aspect of theology, because things like forgiveness and grace and salvation lose all of their meaning when sin isn’t acknowledged. The result of this is a church that portrays God as nothing more than a benevolent guiding spirit who loves us. That is certainly appealing, but in the long run, it’s much less appealing than the message of a God who loves us so much that he sent his only Son to live a sinless life and die to pay for all of our sins so that we might have eternal life. That story has some gruesome and disturbing chapters, but it’s a story with a much happier ending, and besides, it’s true.

Personally, I think it’s pretty obvious what’s really driving young people away from the church. It isn’t that church is too boring, too old-fashioned, or not cheerful enough. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The problem is that this society doesn’t acknowledge the fact that children are intelligent and easily interested. Our culture caters to children’s short attention spans, propensity to become bored, and undeveloped thought processes when those are traits that children don’t actually have. I think we actually encourage kids to become bored quickly by letting them know that we’re afraid they’ll become bored, and we discourage them from being curious and intellectual by letting them know that we’re afraid they won’t understand things. Therefore, everything is dumbed down for kids, and that includes religion. For example, when I was a little kid in Sunday school, I frequently was made to sing a certain fun, interesting, and easy-to-remember song that went like this:

“Father Abraham had many sons/ Many sons had Father Abraham/ I am one of them, and so are you/ So let’s all praise the Lord! RIGHT HAND! Father Abraham had many sons/ Many sons had Father Abraham/ I am one of them, and so are you/ So let’s all praise the Lord! RIGHT HAND, LEFT HAND! Father Abraham had many sons/ Many sons had Father Abraham/ I am one of them, and so are you/ So let’s all praise the Lord! RIGHT HAND, LEFT HAND, RIGHT FOOT! Father Abraham had many sons/ Many sons had Father Abraham/ I am one of them, and so are you/ So let’s all praise the Lord! RIGHT HAND, LEFT HAND, RIGHT FOOT, LEFT FOOT! Father Abraham had many sons/ Many sons had Father Abraham/ I am one of them, and so are you/ So let’s all praise the Lord! RIGHT HAND, LEFT HAND, RIGHT FOOT, LEFT FOOT, HEAD! Father Abraham had many sons/ Many sons had Father Abraham/ I am one of them, and so are you/ So let’s all praise the Lord!”

If you’re still reading at this point, I’m betting that you skipped most of the words of that song, or at least skimmed over it pretty quickly. I got pretty annoyed and impatient just typing it out. I was going to cut it off in the middle, but I decided not to do that because my annoyance and any reader’s disinterest in those lyrics is exactly the point I’m trying to make. In contrast, here is a song that Martin Luther wrote for children in 1531:

“Lord, keep us steadfast in Thy Word/ Curb those who fain by craft and sword/ Would wrest the Kingdom from Thy Son/ And set at naught all He hath done./ Lord Jesus Christ, Thy pow’r make known/ For Thou art Lord of lords alone/ Defend thy Christendom that we/ May evermore sing praise to Thee./ O Comforter of priceless worth/ Send peace and unity on earth/ Support us in our final strife/ And lead us out of death to life.”

Do you notice a slight difference between these two songs? For example, do you notice that the first one is repetitive, boring, and demeaning to the intelligence of anyone who is told that they’re supposed to like it because of the fact that they’re a child? And do you notice that the second one is more interesting, more meaningful, and doesn’t drive you berserk with its utter inanity before you’re even halfway through the second verse? Do you notice that the first song would make you want to rip out your own vocal chords if you were forced to sing it on a regular basis while the second song is something that would actually be enjoyable to sing frequently? Also, it’s worth noting that it has a tune that is more interesting and aesthetically pleasing (by virtue of the fact that it has a range of more than three notes) while still being quite simple and easy to sing. As a young person and as a former small child, I feel qualified to say that young people don’t appreciate having their intelligence insulted by stupid and annoying ditties and that young people have good enough attention spans and enough emotional maturity to be capable of understanding that church isn’t supposed to be a form of entertainment. If young people are being driven away from the church, maybe a good solution would be to stop forcing young people to sing “Father Abraham.”

Yay Snow!

Once again, my plans have been diverted. The blog post that I began a day and a half ago is still sitting unfinished in a folder titled “Future Blog Posts” while a new and more pressing topic has presented itself to me. It snowed today, and snow changes everything. Granted, it only snowed for a couple hours, and very little snow actually accumulated on the ground. (And I missed most of it because I was in class.) In fact, even that small amount started melting immediately and now, just a few hours later, the snow is mostly gone from the ground. Fortunately, I live on the fifth floor of a building on a steep hill, so the view from my window mainly consists of trees and the tops of buildings, where there still is snow. It’s very, very beautiful. My window is wide open; I don’t care about the cold nearly as much as I care about the sight of the snow.

Technically, this snowfall wasn’t nearly major enough to be a big deal. It’s nothing compared to the kind of snow that people who live farther north get at least a few times every single winter, and it’s nothing compared to the snowstorm that my family experienced on Christmas day. But I personally feel that this snow is due cause for excitement and obsession. For one thing, I kind of have a thing about snow. If it snows, it’s a very noteworthy occasion; that’s just the way things work in my world. In particular, it is necessary that I alert the internet to any snow that I see. But I’m not exactly unique in that way. At my college, everyone does that. This is Alabama and Alabama snow is a rarity almost as significant as if the Alabama Crimson Tide loses a football game. (The difference, of course, is that it’s good when it snows and it’s a major disappointment if Alabama loses a game.) Alabama snow happens maybe once or twice a year, and there’s never more than a couple inches. Every snowfall I have seen here in Alabama, even the tiniest of flurries, is worthy of acknowledgement. In fact, I know a number of people who automatically apply the word “blizzard” to any sighting of snow.  This particular snowfall actually is a greater than average one, even though it will be nothing but a distant memory by mid-morning tomorrow.

The presence of snow on the ground or in the air entails certain changes in my rules of life. Basically, that means that I rewrite my to-do list if it snows, and that the revised version is more likely to include things like sitting on my bed and watching DVDs on my laptop late into the night. I’ve actually done that a number of times in the past couple of weeks, mainly because it’s been so cold and rainy that I’ve slipped into a mentality similar to that of a snow day, except without the joy and excitement. Now that it’s finally snowed in actuality, I have an excuse to act that way. Besides, I now also have an excuse to follow the dietary traditions which I associate with snowy weather.

It goes without saying that one should have hot chocolate when it snows, and this especially holds true when one lives at college where one’s mother is not present to place limits on the amount of hot chocolate one may consume or the quantity of chocolate that one should put in one’s hot chocolate. (In case my mother is reading this, or anyone else’s mother for that matter, I would like to point out that it’s called hot chocolate, not hot chocolate-water.) I take some pride in the fact that I don’t use hot chocolate mix to make my hot chocolate. I make it with cocoa powder, sugar, and hot milk. Really, hot chocolate mix is just cocoa powder, artificial sweetener, powdered dairy products, and various substances that offer no contribution to flavor and are present only because of the tacit rules of food packaging companies that all prepackaged foods must contain several ingredients that are named with long and unfamiliar words. You can get more or less the same thing just by heating up some milk, (It’s best if you actually scald it a little) and add the correct proportion of cocoa powder and sugar. (This is done by estimation, not measuring.) Then, if you want to make it extra special, you can just add some marshmallows and/or chocolate chips. This, dear readers, is how hot chocolate is to be made.

Even besides the hot chocolate rule, dietary practices should change in accordance with the weather. Basically, that’s my way of saying that I eat loads of junk food when it snows. Today, for example, I discovered that the campus store has finally restocked bagel bites, and I naturally bought a box. Those will be my supper, along with an excessive amount of Oreos and a chocolate bar. This, of course, is in addition to the aforementioned hot chocolate.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to post an annoying amount of snow pictures to tumblr.