E-I-…O

One of the program tasks is very specific: Read The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs. I first started it a few years ago, and shared my favorite factoids through ‘D’. Now here are my favorites in E through O!

Ecstasy was originally patented by Merck as an appetite suppressant in the 1920s (wonder what their Covid vaccine will look like!) Ancient Etruscans were known to write in alternating directs on each line (left-to-right, right-to-left).

The ‘F’s are full of fun. Ever wonder why on Earth the Fahrenheit system seems so random? Well for one, Daniel Fahrenheit was inaccurate – and estimated the human body temperature at 90 degrees (when we now know it as 98.6), but more importantly he used the freezing point of a mixture of equal parts salt and water as his basis for ‘0’. WT….?! Why not just make it a frozen margarita?! Farnsworth, Philo successfully broadcast the first television image on American T.V. – a dollar sign $.

Did you know that a gal is a unit of measurement? It’s a measurement of acceleration equal to one centimeter per second per second, named after Galileo. And where might you find some of this acceleration? Perhaps in a gymnasium, for which the literal translation from Greek was “school for naked exercise”, and indeed is how it used to be. And you though getting changed in front of your classmates during gym class was embarassing!

Heroine was originally developed by Bayer as a pain killer. Another case of now illegal drugs coming from your major legal drug companies. Speaking of drugs, Hollywood was founded by a man named Horace Wilcox, “a prohibitionist who envisioned it a community based on his sober religious principles.” Bet he’s turning in his grave now!

That’s just one of the many cases of irony in the Britannica. Jacobs gives us a whole list in the ‘i’s‘ section. Also of interesting note, it was an old Balinese Indonesian custom to force boy-girl twins to marry, as it was assumed they had intercourse in the womb. Huh.

Jonson, Ben was an actor who got away with murder, literally. He invoked an immunity clause known as the “benefit of the clergy”, “clergy” at the time being legally defined as anyone who could read the Fifty-first Psalm in Latin. Guess I should have been studying Latin all these years! This is just one of many legal loopholes Jacobs also lists for us (though not in the ‘Ls“).

A kappa is not just the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet. It is also a “vampire-like lecherous creature” from Japanese folklore that is obsessed with cucumbers, looks like a scaley green monkey in old drawings, and a cute turtle in modern cartoons, and refuses to bow its head for fear of spilling the water it keeps on top. Maybe they were using some of the LSD from the “Ls”…..

In learning, the Britannica says that a high IQ is “strongly associated with the 35-yard dash and balancing on one foot”. Huh?!?!?! I have a high IQ, but zero balance and I got kicked out of gym class for “running like a girl”. It’s a paradox alright, but not as bad as the liar paradox, which states, “If the sentence, ‘This sentence is not true’ is true, then it is not true, and if it is not true, then it is true.” It is seen in one of my favorite movies, Labyrinth, which, coincidentally, also begins with an L. Rounding out the Ls is good old Louis XIV, who was known for many things. But one thing you may not have known is that he tried to ban biological warfare by paying off an Italian scientist who had invented a biological weapon to keep quiet and never use or share it.

Looking for some more useful information? Then this tidbit of mechanics, fluid is for you. You should buy gasoline on cold days, because the colder the gas is, the lower its volume, making it less expensive. So even cool gas is better than warm gas. Cool and warm, by the way, could be considered a meronymn, the word between two opposites. Opposite of the aforementioned whacky Fahrenheit scale, is the much more sensical metric system.

“I’m a convert to the metric system. I feel un-American even typing those words.”

– Jacobs, A.J.

The ‘Ms’ leave us with these fascinating tidbits: a mule is the sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. This is not to be confused with a hinny, the offspring of a female donkey and a male horse. And, Mussolini, Benito started his career as a journalist. No wonder he was good at getting people to believe him! Christmas just passed and Three King’s Day is approaching, and most people have an idea what frankincense and gold are, but in case you are wondering, myrrh is a substance obtained from small trees and was used to relieve sore gums. Perhaps the Three Kings, or La Bufana, will bring me some myrrh next week!

Napoleon was known for being a rascal. So much so, that he purposely made sure there was no priest at his wedding to Josephine, so that he could leave her later without the need for divorce. Apparently the decision to give countries nautical jurisdiction over three nautical miles from their coast is because that was the distance a cannon could fire. The nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill” is actually an allegory about British taxes. I wonder if children 200 years from now will sing a nursery rhyme about Brexit?

Under occupational diseases, along with carpel tunnel syndrome, we learn that in the past, hatters used mercury salts to make felt for their hats, often leading to mercury poisoning and the term “mad as a hatter”. The ancient Egyptians used olive oil as lube to move large building materials. This does not mean it should be used to lubricate other things… and on that note, I leave you with one more practical piece of encylopaedia advice – cutting onions under running water will keep you from crying.

My Notes from “Notes From An Apocalypse”

So upon opening this blog’s home page, I realize that I only have 8 days until “graduation”! Eeek! Needless to say, my Goodreads account has already pointed out that I’m a bit too far behind in my goal of finishing 20 books by the end of the year. At this point, must.finish.The-know-It-All. This entire process has been about making concessions…

I did however, manage to finish Notes from and Apocalypse, by Mark O’Connell. I was expecting it to count as my “Science” book, but I think it only counts in so much as the common person’s sociology counts as a science.

What he was offering was, in this sense, not so much a prediction of the future as a deeply political interpretation of the present.

The book was indeed not quite what I expected. I expected more background and science about how the world might possibly end, but this book focuses more on how people might receive / are preparing for the Apocalypse (which is somewhat alluded as already happening all around us).

[I]f civilization did collapse these men would be entirely useless to themselves, and worse than useless to everyone else. What they didn’t understand, she said, was that the thing that would allow people to survive was the same thing that had always allowed people to survive: community. It was only in learning to help people, she said, in becoming indispensable to one’s fellow human beings, that you would survive the collapse of civilization.

It is an interesting anthropologic study, as half of it is this Irishman’s view of what appears to be a pretty distinctly American phenomenon.

I wondered how it was that so many Americans—educated, intelligent Americans—seemed to genuinely believe this stuff. The only thing that seemed to me to explain the conviction also fatally undermined it: the fact that from cradle to grave every American was subject to a relentless barrage of propaganda about the special freedom guaranteed them by their citizenship.

Moreover, he takes us on a trip to the places where pretty apocalyptical stuff is already happening. So in a way, it was actually another travelogue. At least I know my type!

The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck”—which seemed to me to encapsulate perfectly the extent to which technological progress embedded within itself the prospect of catastrophe.

There is no way of contemplating the catastrophe of our way of life from the outside. There is no outside. Here, too, I myself am the contaminant. I myself am the apocalypse of which I speak.

There are just too many good quotes from this short book, view my favorites here!

On the Noodle Road

This book was originally meant to be part of my ‘travel/history/food’ month of reading, and though I got a bit far behind in my reading, I still really wanted to finish it.

This book encompasses all three of those subjects – travel, history, food – with a bonus bit of socio-cultural anthropology thrown in. Taking us on a journey from Eastern China to Rome, Jenny, following in the footsteps of Marco Polo, introduces us to tasty dishes and warm characters across the Eurasian continent.

“A culinary Mason-Dixon Line runs across China; north of it, abundant wheat fields feed the population. The wheat-rice line also creates different flavors in the cuisines. Shanxi vinegar, made of wheat, has a unique sweet-sour balance quite different from the lighter southern vinegars, which are usually made of rice.”

While rice is often synonymous with China, we learn in the first chapter that rice is only a staple in the southern half of China, where as the northern parts rely much more on bread and noodles.

“It turned out that the secret to good honey was also the key to many distinctive dishes across the Silk Road: the more cross-pollination, the better.”

The culinary history lesson continues as we follow Jenny (sometimes accompanied by her husband, Craig) through the silk (and noodle) road. But while this book and it’s title lead you to believe that it is simply about food and history and facts, there is actually a deep underlying cultural study – of women. In every place and home she visits, our heroine asks the ladies of the house how they feel about their rights in their country and about being wives and mothers. It is definitely interesting to read if you are a young woman of a certain age, or someone who is curious how women in certain countries really feel, not what is shown to you on the nightly news.

“It occurred to me that the idea of the West was as much of a construct as the concept of the Silk Road, and it was only a lingering Orientalism that kept our ideas of Asia and Europe so divided in our heads.”

She teaches us that cooking is a metaphor for life.

Cooking provided a pathway for living: you started out “raw” and ended up “ripe” or “well-cooked.”

But also, what is really important in life, for people all over. She hits on what seems to be almost a Universal Truth, a Meaning of Life, even. And all of this because of some noodles…

I was reminded of what I’d learned across the Silk Road. I’d gone through a string of places where hospitality was more important than making money. Where people made good, honest food without having to market it or spin it into something bigger. Where people had invited me into their homes so warmly and treated me to so much without asking for anything in return. Where you could sit down for a two-hour lunch in the middle of a workday and feel good about it. That was what the trip was about—the importance of friends and family, of slowing down enough to enjoy life. Searching for the origin of noodles had allowed me to come to those realizations.

Reading Update

It’s only five weeks until I should finish the new and condensed alternative Graduate Program – eek! Looking back, I have found that while I have recently had plenty of time to work on the program, and reading, and languages, I have struggled to stay motivated. Most days I don’t even start working until after lunch. I usually reserve reading for before bed – but more often than not I fall asleep only a few pages in!

As such, I am condensing my last few weeks of reading into just one book per category. I originally intended for November to be about Science and December about business, but now at the end of November, a few days before Thanksgiving, I am still (appropriately) finishing one of my Travel and Food books from October. At this rate, I need to finish one book a week! So…

For the remainder of the year, I will focus on finishing up books I’ve previously started:

• On the Noodle Road – I am almost finished with this book, it it was well worth the read!
• The Know-It-All – The main pillar of the entire Alternative Graduate Program, I must finish this book before “graduation”. It should be doable since I am already halfway through it.
• Lingo – I started this book back during my Language Arts month, and intended to carry it over into my Travel month, but have not been as productive as I originally hoped. Still, I’d like to finish it!
• Outliers – I began this book years ago, and a few passages stuck with me, though at this point I will need to start form the beginning again.
• Notes From An Apocalypse – This. Just all of this. The most appropriate book I can think of to end 2020. A book filled with pandemics and monster storms, and perhaps a glimmer of hope.
• Protocol / Algorithms to Live By / Doughnut Economics – One of these, or the entire Trifecta, will carry me into the new year! Diplomacy and Decision Making are two areas I could really work on in my life. And I am curious to see what advice economists have for recovering from the current state of affairs. Bonus, I found a Dutch version of Doughnut Economics for extra credit.

Speaking of books in other languages, it seems I will not have time this year for reading some French classics as I had hoped. But, have no fear, next year I would like to finally read Le Compte de Monte Cristo – an undertaking that, looking at the chapter list, will likely take the entire year!

It’s good to set goals early. And perfectly fine to adjust them as you progress (as I have frequently done). Keeping my goals simple and reasonable and less overwhelming than lofty ambition (though I frequently suffer that as well!)

October Reading Update: Travel, History & Food

I am a few days behind on my October reading update post, due to travelling to visit family. Alas, I am even more than a few days behind in my October reading due to same travelling to visit family (Travel, coincidentally, being the topic of this month’s readings!)

I have managed to only finish 2.5 books this month, which is sad considering how this month’s subjects of Travel, Food, and History are my favorites. As such, I have made the executive decision to carry on with this topic for November as well, especially since I already have many of the books downloaded on my Kindle.

What I did finish:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – I had been wanting to read this for years, and was very pleased with the way it was written and the topic was presented. It may be a ‘Young Adult’ novel, but I recommend it to any older adults as well.
• Less by Andrew Sean Greer – I found this book in a local book exchange, and then saw it on a list of recommended books featuring LGBTQ subjects. I found the book highly relatable and enjoyable. Essentially, about travelling the world to escape something at home, only to find that it will follow you anywhere you go until you accept it.

I am also halfway through this book, also about running away into the world to find oneself, which I have been meaning to read for many years now as well. I find this book incredibly relatable, and quotable.

• The Yellow Envelope: One Gift, Three Rules, and a Life-Changing Journey Around the World by Kim Dinan

Next on Deck:

• On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu
• The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley by Eric Weiner (sequel to my favorite book!)
• Lingo: A Language Spotter’s Guide to Europe (carried over from the Language Arts Month)
• The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
• Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson (a nice segue into Science)

Many other books are in my list, but I try to be reasonable with my expectations, especially given last month’s performance!

For more ideas on your travel reading resources, check out these pages:

• My Lists of Travel Reading from my Travel Blog
• My Full List of Non-Fiction Books for this Program
• The Annual “Travel Reading Challenge” List (a very real alternative to travel these days)

The Yellow Envelope

Words that express something I try to tell everyone, but it seems it’s something you only truly learn the more you travel!

“Why had I always assumed that life, left to its own devices, would not play out in my favor? Why had I never before trusted that the world might take care of me?”

~ Kim Dinan, The Yellow Envelope: One Gift, Three Rules, and a Life-Changing Journey Around the World

Banned Books Week

As I start a new month of reading, I came across this list of most frequently banned books in the news. It amazes me that a good number of them were required reading when I was in High School! A few others have been made into blockbuster films Many of the choices, while yes they should definitely have an age restriction, I don’t think should be banned.

At least Fahrenheit 451 isn’t on the list, that would be the irony of ironies.

Part of me almost wants to focus on reading all the ones I haven’t this month. But alas, it is time for my favorite subject – Travel, History and Food! However, I thought as a good segue from my religious readings to my history readings, I will start with The Book Thief – another book a little bit about banned books.

September Reading: Religion

*Disclaimers*: (1)If you just want the reading list, please scroll to the bottom now. (2)All ideas presented below represent my own interpretations and a respectful inquisitiveness regarding various texts and histories. I fully support everyone’s freedom to believe as they wish (so long as it doesn’t directly inflict pain or death on others).

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness – an act of trust in the unknown.

– Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

This month’s reading was hard – I ended up only finishing three books, and am currently half way through two others which I will try to finish in the next couple days (fat chance, but hey).

There is a plethora of both fiction and non-fiction books on religion (and other such books that fall into either category, depending on your point of view). To be fair, who is to judge that the Bible is non-fiction but a book of Greek mythology is fiction? I think all religion should be one or the other, though I would probably classify it more like “magical realism”.

Many common themes came up across all of my readings both in books of scripture, and books about scriptures, and the history of religion.

The first, and most obvious, theme is how Islam and Christianity both sprang from Judaism. This is not so unbelievable given that the Jewish Torah is the first part of the Bible, and the beginning of the Quran also recounts the same stories of Adam and Eve and of Moses. The Quran then goes on to say that Christian, Jewish, or otherwise, will go to their heaven if they are faithful ̶ if only more people quoted this verse instead of all the ones about prejudice and violence. (Another common theme is that God/Yahweh/Allah seems to get more violent and less accepting as the scriptures go on…)

Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.

Quran 2:62

The second idea is that spoken scripture has a different effect than written. Some would even say more powerful. This is a traditional still found in Hindu Vedic chants, prayers in both Judaism and Islam, and, to a lesser extent, Christian prayers and hymns. The Lost Art of Scripture, Evolution of God, and A History of God mention Hindu vedas being chanted because spoken word is more powerful than written (also Jewish and Muslim prayer chants) – I wonder if this is why we seek news and entertainment nowadays in the form of videos and podcasts over reading print?

It is form this idea that the third idea springs – Scripture is a living thing, and it was never meant to be the final word.

Today we tend to regard a scriptural canon as irrevocably closed and its texts sacrosanct, but we shall find that in all cultures, scripture was essentially a work in progress, constantly changing to meet new conditions. […] But we will see that scriptural narratives never claimed to be accurate descriptions of the creation of the world or the evolution of species. […] Instead of attempting a factual account of the past, “history” described the meaning of an event.

Karen Armstrong – The Lost Art of Scripture

I’m glad that scripture is not meant to be wholly accurate, because there is a whole lot of deception, bloodshed and violent sexuality in the scriptures! The fourth overarching theme is what I call the naughtiness of mankind. Abraham seems to have been the first pimp ̶ he not once but twice gives his wife away (as his “sister”), only to later receive riches from the ones which almost took her. His son, Isaac then does the same. Jacob (Israel) deceived his father and tricked his brother Esau (father of the Edomites, modern-day Jordan) and was rewarded by becoming father of the chosen people. Which could imply that the on-going conflicts between Israel and Jordan is essentially the worlds oldest sibling rivalry (I’m not saying this is true, just how I interpreted the story!) Does God really reward so much deceit? And, did God/Yahweh/Allah really tell his people to slaughter all the other peoples? Or did the men writing the story add that later to use that as their justification? Scripture may be the “word of God”, but it is still written by man (and with all his human prejudices). Again, another age-long debate between the believers and their critics.

¹³Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you. … ¹⁵And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. ¹⁶He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.

Genesis 12: 13-16, Bible (NIV)

The fifth and final theme is the idea of God within us or that we are God (as is everything else in the Universe).

This will be an important theme in the story of scripture: Yahweh was not simply experienced as a “Being” external to the self; he was, rather, an omnipresent reality, immanent in the human psyche as well as in the natural world and historical events.

Karen Armstrong – The Lost Art of Scripture

“Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.”

– Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Coupled with this is the idea of religion being the bridge between creativity and logic. The Lost Art of Scripture and The Book both also discuss the idea that religion is a way to bridge right and lef-brain activities. (Similar with this TED Talk, which also compares religion to sex – and there is indeed a lot of sex in the scriptures!).

The two hemispheres of the frontal brain work in tandem. The Brahmanas’ ritual science, which explained, systematised and analysed the right hemisphere’s intuitive grasp of the inter-relatedness of all things, was a left-brain project. But the drama and sensory experience of the ritual, … returned this analytical account of the bandhus to the right brain, so that the patron experienced these “connections” physically and emotionally.

Karen Armstrong – The Lost Art of Scripture

Educated and A Burning both examples of extremism in different religions and also how ones choices affect the lives of others. Definitely two great reads for a different perspective.

Got Religion? focuses on problems facing actual organized religions these days – and the ultimate trouble facing Millennials on a whole – the paradox of choice. Too many choices of religion, and too many choices of religious institutions.

It has become cliché to point out that the array of choices we have today often leaves us more unhappy than a limited spectrum might have. […] Books on the millennial generation tend to go on at length about the so-called paradox of choice and the related phenomenon of decision fatigue. […] “The god of open options is also a liar. He promises you that by keeping your options open, you can have everything and everyone. But in the end, you get nothing and no one.”

Naomi Schaefer Riley, Got Religion?: How Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues Can Bring Young People Back

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This may be the longest post I’ve ever written, and kudos to you if you read all the way through, but I feel I’ve only just touched the surface. One could write a thesis on these things; and in fact, in high school, I kind of did.

Religion is not something you can finish in a month, but something you study for a lifetime. In fact, any subject is. I’m starting to realize that there will never really be an “end” to such a project as this, but rather a means to develop good habits of lifelong learning.

Finally, I leave you with some Recommended Reading for your Religious Studies (just a small sample, feel free to add more on Mythology, Eastern Religions, Comparative Religions or anything else you find interesting!) Also, I recommend downloading the Quran and Torah / Bible as a handy app – the you can bookmark verses and get daily recommended verses.

August Reading: English and Language Arts

Earlier this month, I decided to focus on different topics in my reading and other endeavors each month. August became the Language Arts month, in which I read, among others, two of the required course books, studied Linguistics online, and also began learning Greek.

It is interesting to have everything come together. Both my Applied Linguistics and TESOL classes touched upon the myriad of inconsistencies in the English language, while in The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson attempted to explain why and how those inconsistencies got there. Bryson also touches upon how unregulated English is­­­­—a point covered more thoroughly in Dreyer’s English—compared to, say, the heavily regulated French language (a fact that was also discussed in a few of my French lessons). Both The Mother Tongue and Lingo note that Lithuanian is the closest living relative to the original Proto-Indo-European language, from whence the majority of Western languages developed. Icelandic, however, is one of the least changed languages.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, explains the actual process of writing, while Writers and Lovers explores, in a story, how writing affects the overall life of the writer. Both provide excellent advice not just for writing, but for life. Namely: follow your dreams, don’t give up, take everything little by little, and have good friends.

I always learned that if a piece of information appearing in three or more resources is general knowledge, or at least it carries more clout. So indeed reading the same tidbits over and over has ingrained them in my memory for at least the near future!

List of August Books on English, Grammar, Writing and Languages

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• Writers & Lovers, the only fiction on this month’s list, is an addictive novel that basically says you can make it as writer if you just stick with it, just like anything in life and love.

• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, is well, just that. It was required reading in the original Alternative Graduate Program. In it Lamott explains what it takes to be a writer, based on her years of experience. In the book, she also provides handy tips that can be applied to other tasks in your life as well, including the namesake tip to take any task “bird by bird”.

• Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style is the grammar book you wished your teacher used in school! Written by and from the viewpoint of a copy editor. It is written very humorously and matter-of-fact, with a slight obsession for footnotes (so be prepared to do a lot of flipping back and forth!) The book includes excellent and comprehensive practical grammar and writing tips, so I decided to add as required reading to the program (in place of the Grammar Girl podcast). The book also taught me that I use a lot more British spellings than I thought, and despite Dreyer’s claim that “No American can get away with calling a z a “zed”, I can.

• The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way is mostly a history of the English language, brought to you by the man who also wrote a history of nearly everything else. The book is interesting but can get a bit dry, particularly the second half of most chapters. As a learner of Dutch, I found the similarities to Anglo-Saxon and Old English interesting. The most entertaining chapters cover the differences between British and American English and, of course, swearing. Bryson’s discussion on the future of English as an international language (a topic also covered in my Applied Linguistics course) is also interesting, though a bit outdated given that the book was published 30 years ago!

• Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages sounds like my kind of book! Unfortunately, I was only able to finish about twenty percent of it before the month ended. What I do like though is how the chapters are short and each one describes a language like a member of a family (which I suppose they are). It also includes, at the end of each chapter, a note on which words were most shared from that language to English or other major languages, and one really cool and useful word from that language. I do intend to revisit and finish this book eventually.

• Words on the Move: Why English Won’t – and Can’t – Sit Still (Like, Literally) is another book I ran out of time to finish. But like the other books in this list, it takes a very humorous approach to the English language, its history, and its future. I only read the first couple of chapters, but it mentions twice in the first three pages the use of “literally”—is it incorrectness or evolution? I say it’s just plain annoying.

I hope you enjoyed August’s English lesson!
September will cover major world religions and religious texts.

Reading Humour

2020 summed up in book titles pic.twitter.com/R5hWQmWPuo

— SparkNotes (@SparkNotes) July 30, 2020

A little humour, but also some great recommendations for Classic Novels to read!