Random Thought #75

I was reading in one of my books about the history of what happened in and around Jerusalem between the Old Testament and New Testament times. Apparently when the Seleucid Empire seized control, their king Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) basically outlawed Judaism and desecrated the temple. When one of the sons of Mattithias Maccabee (Judas) led his followers to re-take Jerusalem, it was 3 years to the day of when the temple was desecrated. Only one vial of pure oil was left for burning in the menorah in the temple but the miracle that happened was that the vial should have only lasted 1 day, but instead it lasted 8 days, which was long enough to make more oil. The victory party lasted those 8 days and thus the Feast of Tabernacles or Feast of Hanukkah ("Dedication") was born. It was later renamed to the Festival of Lights. I had no idea this was the basis behind Hanukkah but its a pretty cool story.

Random Thought #74

Why is it that you can't immediately see when you go from a lit situation to a dark situation and vice versa? I thought I knew the answer, but in simple terms. The more scientific reason is kinda interesting. Wikipedia says "Pupillary response is a physiological response that varies the size of the pupil, either resulting in constriction[1] or dilation (expansion), via activation or deactivation of the iris dilator muscle. The response can have a variety of causes, from an involuntary reflex reaction to exposure or inexposure to light — in low light conditions a dilated pupil lets more light into the eye — or it may indicate interest in the subject of attention or indicate sexual stimulation.[2] The pupils contract immediately before someone falls asleep." I knew about letting in more light or less light into the eye but the others were new to me. I'm not sure how more light enables us to see in darker scenarios but its amazing how the body automatically reacts to certain stimuli. Quite fascinating.

Random Thought #73

I saw some cool TED videos recently and instead of talking too much about them, I thought I would just give you the links and you can watch them yourselves.

Making Choices
http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goldstein_the_battle_between_your_present_and_future_self.html

What is Consciousness?
http://www.ted.com/talks/antonio_damasio_the_quest_to_understand_consciousness.html

Seeing unseeable biology
http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_berry_animations_of_unseeable_biology.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bolinsky_animates_a_cell.html

Random Thought # 72

I've been a little frustrated lately at work because the software that I support is so massive and all-encompassing that its nearly impossible to understand everything that it does, even within the span of a couple of years. I also came into the job knowing virtually nothing about it, so needless to say, its been a big difficult learning a piece here and a piece there and trying to understand the entire picture and how it all fits together. That got me thinking about how we learn/teach. Think about this, how much more difficult would it be to put a 1000 piece jig-saw puzzle together if you had no idea what the end result is supposed to look like. What if you had no clues because the puzzle didn't extend past the border? I personally learn much better if I know what the entire picture looks like in an ideal or completed state. This way, I have a goal to shoot towards and can sort of track my progress along the way, whereas if I didn't have that, I could only hope I'm putting the pieces together correctly, only to find out that I totally messed up and have to do it over and over again. Its the whole trial and error educated guesses concept. I've recently been reading about mantic and sophic and how they are complete opposites, yet compliment each other. Mantic implies learning from a higher source, revelation, inspiration, prophecy, etc., whereas sophic is how we learn. We use our own understanding, logic, rationale, facts, etc. to determine what exists. Mantic requires faith, and sophic requires facts. I recall a scriptures that says lean not unto thine own understanding, but trust in the Lord. I believe that's Proverbs 3:5. My sister just sent me a little plaque with that on it. Another correlation I've found is with how babies learn as compared to adults. Babies don't try to learn piece by piece, they observe their entire surroundings, taking in everything there is. We focus and specialize and get down into the nitty gritty. We learn at such an amazing rate while we are little babies. We go from doing nothing to walking and talking in 1 year's time. That's a miracle. Children trust and obsorb. Adults are skeptics and nitpick. Its no wonder the Lord keeps telling us to become as little children. Have faith, observe, learn, obsorb, trust, love, forgive, etc. Have you ever wondered why corporate training courses, university classes, and Sunday School Lessons are never successful? Ever take some time to just sit in a quiet place and watch nature and see how much you learn? Its amazing. Seek, ponder, and pray. The recipe for learning.

Random Thought #71

I don't know what prompted me to think of this but for whatever reason, I was thinking about vision and what 20/20 vision meant. I know it means you have normal good vision, but I wondered what the numbers actually meant. I found out that it represents visual acuity and that the first number is always the same. It represents the distance from the eye chart that someone stands when trying to make out the various lines of letters of different sizes. Its 20 ft. The second number is a little more complicated. According to wikipedia, it is "the size of the letters, specifically it denotes the separation at which the lines that make up those letters would be separated by a visual angle of 1 arc minute, which for the lowest line that is read by an eye with no refractive error (or the errors corrected) is usually 20 feet (6.1 m)". So the chart is designed so that the size of the letters on the last row if there were multiple lines, the space between those lines would be 1 arc minute, or 1/60th of 1 degree. Since you are reading the chart from 20 feet away, if you can read that bottom line, then the denominator becomes 20 and you have 20/20 or normal vision. If however, you had 20/10 vision, then that means you can see the same level of detail from 20 feet as someone with 20/20 vision could see at 10 feet and vice versa. If you had 20/40 vision, then you could see the same level of detail at 20 feet as someone with normal vision could see at 40 feet. I thought it was kind of interesting that they chose 20 feet. I also thought that it was interesting that everywhere else, normal vision is 6/6 because 20 feet is roughly the same as 6 meters. Bet you've never heard of 6/6 vision as being normal before huh?