Thursday, June 30

            Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench near the Mariana Islands east of the Philippine Sea is the deepest point in Earth's oceans. The bottom there is 10,924 meters (35,840 feet or almost seven miles) below sea level. If Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, were placed at this location it would be covered by over one mile of water. The Challenger Deep is named after the British survey ship Challenger II, which discovered this deepest location in 1951.

           

Wednesday, June 29

            Our senses, even common sense, do not always allow us to perceive truth and may even deceive us, as in when we used to think, quite logically and rationally that the earth stood still and is stable and unmoving and the center of the universe.  So we had to learn to “see the invisible” of the world and universe around us.

            Turning inward is no easier.  Leonardo Da Vinci said it best,

“Experience does not ever err, it is only your judgment that errs, in promising itself results which are not caused by your experiments.”

           

Tuesday, June 28

            Poet, Alexander Pope, 1734:

Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise and rudely great,

With too much knowledge for the skeptic side,

With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god or beast,

In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,

Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;….

Chaos of Thought and Passion all confus’d,

Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d;

Created half to rise and half to fall,

Great lord of all things yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of Truth, in endless error hurl’d;

The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

Monday, June 27

            “If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape must have been present at the very origin of things.  Accordingly we find that the more clear-sighted evolutionary philosophers are beginning to posit it there.  Each atom of the nebula, they suppose, must have had an aboriginal atom of consciousness linked with it…the mental atoms…have fused into those larger consciousnesses which we know in ourselves and suppose to exist in our fellow animals.”

                                 William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890

Sunday, June 26

            Tolstoy, in describing his “thirst for God” that came from his heart, not his mind, said it was the result at about age 50 of developing “a consciousness of life”.  He said these feelings helped mitigate his otherwise feelings of dread “by the hope of finding the assistance of some one.”

                                                  Saturday, June 25

           Authors Burstein and Isenberg, in Madison and Jefferson, described landowner and farmer Jefferson’s attention to the rhythms of nature (even while in Washington as president) by charting changes in weather, when vegetables were picked and sent to market as follows:

“He luxuriated in this kind of thinking and planning, as though keeping tabs on the predicable and unpredictable would lead to a more appreciable control over the course of life.”

            The authors described Madison’s personality as “less of an essentialist, with a less deterministic way of mulling over human foibles,” than his friend Jefferson.

            I think we all try various methods to control events and individuals.  

I like journaling as a way to record events and somehow make sense of them, maybe with the subconscious hope of then controlling them or at least my own behaviors, if not the behavior of others.

Friday, June 24

            What do we hide from others?  What do we do that we do not want anyone else to see or know of?  How do we justify continuing those actions/behaviors?  What deeper issues might they be masking?  We have recently seen in the news some spectacular falls from grace as very successful and powerful individuals are caught in a double life or lies where their private actions do not match their public personas.  We all probably share this same challenge to some degree.  What does pressure, especially the kind of  pressure we place on ourselves make us do or not do?

                                                Thursday, June 23

The oldest living things on Earth may be the Bristlecone pine trees of California’s White Mountains.  Many of these conifers are over 4000 years old.  Nearby at the Redwood National Park reside the tallest living things with some Redwoods reaching over 370 feet high.

Wednesday, June 22

            A Brazilian genre called “cronicas” (chronicles) allows poets and writers a weekly newspaper column with wide latitude for a diary like entry, an essay the next week, a story or just simply a random thought.  They can be described as precursors of literary blogs but on newsprint.  A popular writer that had a column from 1967-1973 in O Jornal do Brasil was novelist Clarice Lispector of Rio de Janeiro.

Tuesday, June 21

            Summer.  Sun rose at 6:19 a.m. central time and set at 8:38 p.m.  14 hours, 18 minutes and 48 seconds, the longest day.  The days get shorter, tomorrow by one second, etc.

Monday, June 20

            The last day of spring.  Tomorrow is the longest day (daylight wise from sunrise to sunset) of the year.  The summer solstice arrives June 21 at 12:16 p.m. central time in the Northern Hemisphere.  It’s the official beginning of summer for the Earth north of the equator (it arrives in December south of the equator).  The Earth’s axis is at its greatest tilt toward the sun at 23 degrees 26 inches and so the northern hemisphere is at its greatest exposure of the year to the sun as the Earth rotates around.  Solstice is from two Latin words that combined mean sun stands still to describe how the sun is at its highest point of the year at noon on this day and seems to “stand still”.

Sunday, June 19

            In honor of Father’s Day was able to join my daughter in the church youth choir for the 8:30 service along with the other Dads of the singers.  We sang: Siyahamba (a South African folksong); Faith of Our Fathers (from the Methodist Hymnal); and Joshua (the battle of Jericho).

Saturday, June 18

            Always a pleasure taking my daughter to her riding class and being at the ranch that houses the 100 horses.  It’s a great atmosphere as workers fill stalls with hay and water, tend to horses with ailments and various dogs and cats owned by the instructors roam among us.  I enjoy being around the beautiful animals as they are prepped for riding, rode and then washed afterwards by the many kids taking lessons.  Parents can help with putting saddles and gear away.  My daughter takes a treat to each horse she has ever ridden before leaving.

Friday, June 17

            My best friend’s birthday.  I have overnighted after yesterday’s baseball game.  We get up late as a dance party broke out that had us pushing furniture out of the way and sharing iPods of favorite music deep into the night.  The music was wonderfully varied as the ages of the iPod owners and dancers ranged from 13 to 53.

Thursday, June 16

            Ultimate hooky…a mid-week day baseball game with my best friend and his family and friends for his birthday.  We watch the Houston Astros lose at home 5 to 4 to the Pittsburg Pirates, the tying run left on base in the bottom of the ninth and the final out coming on a close play at first.  Foot long hotdogs, cold beer, peanuts and Cracker Jacks.  I am shown how to keep proper score.  I save the mustard stained sheet for future reference.

Wednesday, June 15

            When did humans begin thinking like humans?  That is, when did consciousness develop, where we could ask, “who are we and what are we doing here?”  That is very hard to pinpoint.  Some scientists speculate 200,000 years ago humans might have been able to be said to have developed “personality” and wisdom.  The earliest cave art dates to about 40,000 years ago, at least what has been found.  Remember the earliest writing is thought to date 8,600 years ago.  Can we really be wise before we can create symbols?

Tuesday, June 14

            When and how did life evolve to humans?  It is believed cell life proliferated in water and eventually water creatures moved to land (375 million years ago) and these land creatures became human in form (4.4 million years ago).

Monday, June 13

            It is believed life arose and formed from nonliving matter 3.7 billion years ago.  That is when evidence of the first cells emerged.  We still do not know what caused this so far “spontaneous” appearance.

Sunday, June 12

            It is believed the universe is 13.7 billion years old.  That is the closest physicists can come right now to pinpointing the when of the "Big Bang".  We still do not know what “triggered or lit the fuse” for the Big Bang.

Saturday, June 11

            In Jorge Luis Borges’s wonderful collection of short stories, Labyrinths, there is one entitled, The Library of Babel, which is about a library that contains every book ever written or to be written in every language.  Is this not simply the universe? 

Friday, June 10

            The universe will be only one fact and one great truth for whoever will discover how to embrace it from a single point of view.

                                                           -Jean Le Rond d’Alembert

                                                           18^th -century mathematician and philosopher

            Mathematician Kurt Godel spent his later year working on a proof for the existence of God.  

Thursday, June 9

            What might have come first, God or our ability to conceive of God?

Wednesday, June 8

            Watched the 1951 Academy Award winner for best documentary, Kon Tiki in which Norwegian natural scientist Thor Heyerdahl and five crew men record on camera their voyage from Peru to the Polynesian islands by wood raft (called Kon Tiki after an ancient warrior/god believed to have first traveled from Peru to Polynesia).  He proved his theory that Polynesia was settled from the east and not the west (as was the conventional wisdom), because South Americans could have utilized the trade winds and equatorial currents to sail a balsa wood raft the 5000 miles west.  This would then explain the plants and fruits that are in both South America and Polynesia.  The voyage took 101 days.  Their vessel was made from nine balsa wood tress, bamboo and rope just as ancient South Americans would have made 1500 years ago.  One can go see the Kon Tiki vessel at the Kon Tiki museum in Oslo, Norway.

Tuesday, June 7

            I have been reading up more about Aspergers which is part of the autism spectrum and is characterized by causing individuals to struggle in social situations because of an inability or difficulty in reading social cues such as facial expressions.  So it can be hard for these individuals to understand or appreciate other people’s feelings.  Some research suggests it is helpful to teach and use vocabulary words that relate to feelings, words like “empathy” to help individuals with Aspergers.  Language it is believed has a positive effect on the brain’s ability to understand feelings therefore helping the individual understand feelings, theirs and others.

Monday, June 6

            Yesterday I facilitated a small group discussion in my daughter’s youth Sunday School class, the topic was Harry Potter, Magic and the Bible - then I taught about the book of Revelations in an adult Sunday School class.  The Methodist church has a long tradition of Sunday School classes.  The Sunday School format and use of lay teachers became even more popular in America as Methodist ministers helped found the Chautauqua Institute in 1874 which was a place for summer fun and learning along a lake in upper state New York and helped popularize the outdoor lecture style of learning.  It was originally called the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly.  Today visitors enjoy a variety of performing arts programs and classes and lectures by world famous authors/scholars in a variety of disciplines.  I would like to take the family there one summer for a one week visit.

Sunday, June 5

Rafael Nadal’s win this weekend over Roger Federer for his sixth French Open tied my childhood favorite player, Bjorn Borg’s record six French Opens.  A couple years ago Roger Federer  surpassed with six Borg’s previous record five Wimbledon titles. So it all made me consider who is the best tennis player of all time?  Today, tennis players are measured by how many of the major titles they have won.  The major titles are the Australian Open (January, hard surface), French Open (May, clay), Wimbledon (July, grass) and U.S. Open (September, hard surface).  Roger Federer currently has the most at 15 and has won at least one of each, completing a “career grand slam”.  So I would have to go with Roger since he has the most and can say he has won each of them.  Some say Rod Laver was the greatest because he won two “in the same year grand slams.”  The only other males to win each major were Fred Perry, Don Budge, Roy Emerson and Andre Agassi.  So Roger’s total and his ability to master each surface makes me give him the nod.

Saturday, June 4

            A campaign has begun to build a presidential library at Mount Vernon for George Washington’s papers and presidential memorabilia.  Presidential libraries as we know them today did not really start until President Hoover’s in his home state of Iowa.  President Reagan’s may have kicked off the wave of state-of-the-art facilities designed to attract visitors.  President George W. Bush’s is being built on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

            We went to see our first such libraries a couple summers ago going first to Austin for Lyndon Johnson’s on the University of Texas campus and then George H. Bush’s on the Texas A. & M. campus, stopping for a tour of the Blue Bell ice cream complex along the way.  (That’s the part the kids really liked.)  We hope to eventually see all of them.  Gerald Ford has one on the University of Michigan campus.

            The three presidents with the greatest personal libraries were probably John and John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  One can see the Adams family library which is in the original building of its own at their family home in Quincy, Massachusetts and then some of Jefferson’s books are still at Monticello with the rest in the Library of Congress.

Pie is very important to me.  From the first slices of apple pie Mom would buy me as a treat after a check-up at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit to the Strawberry Rhubarb we ate with our hands in the car as college students returning from a trip to a cider mill near Ann Arbor to the banana cream made by the Mennonites who catered the Tulsa Maintenance Base cafeteria for American Airlines to the coconut cream at the Cotton Gin restaurant outside Dallas to the peach or apricot pies my family will buy me whenever we stop at a roadside gas station or convenience store in West Texas to the exotic such as buttermilk, chess and egg nog pies.  The best pie ala mode combinations in my opinion are peach pie with Blue Bell peach ice cream, pumpkin pie with Blue Bell pumpkin ice cream and of course apple with Blue Bell vanilla bean ice cream.  Two new bakeries have opened near us that specialize in pies!

Thursday, June 2

            Writing is the extension of human language and literature across time and space.

Wednesday, June 1

            Etchings found on 8,600-year-old tortoise shells in China may become the world’s oldest evidence of writing if researchers confirm they are linked to the Dawenkou culture of 2800-2500 BCE.      

The oldest language is thought to be Sanskrit of the Indo-Iranian family.  

The oldest literature may be mythological stories from the Babylonians and written in Sumerian on clay tablets.  One of the most famous was the Epic of Gilgamesh.  

Of course way before all of this we know humans were trying to communicate with pictures and symbols as many cave drawings have been found and dated.  

And before this we don’t know when sounds were used such as grunts and groans or when verbal language first developed.  The earliest and greatest writing was thought to have been written recordings of oral traditions such as Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad and the many books of the Bible.

It is the same with gestures or sign language, we just don’t know when.  

We don’t know when man’s brain developed to the point where it prompted humans to want to share information.  

And the ultimate question, when did information itself first arise?