Intellectual Devotional, Day 15: Sparta vs. Athens

Day 15 gives a quick overview of ancient Sparta and its rivalry with Athens. It touches on well-known points like the rigorous military training, regular infanticide, and relative lack of cultural achievements. I've never really been into Greek history, so I find this particular topic hard to write about without just repeating the facts presented in the article.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 14: Noah

Ho Boy, this here is a doozy! Today the ID covers Noah, the storied Biblical figure who purportedly built a giant ark, shoved a bunch of animals onto it, then puttered around the world while the Big Man in The Sky rained cats and dogs on everyone else and flooded the whole dang thing.

First, I'll address some of my own issues with this story, despite knowing it's surely a parable and not supposed to represent actual events.  First of all, let's allow that a ship large enough to hold 2 of each animal in the world can be built.  How's a guy going to feed all of those animals for almost an entire year (290 days (40 days of rain, 150 days sailing while the floods receded, and 100 days stranded on top of Mount Ararat)) ?  Not to mention the number of carnivores there must be in that bunch.

I did find a couple of things interesting in the ID reading, however.  Firstly, apparently the story of Noah contains the first mention of wine in the Bible.

Secondly, apparently there's some mild disagreement between the Christians and the Jews as to the interpretation of this story.  The Christians view Noah as having ultimate faith in God, considering that he built a giant ark based solely .  The Jews, on the other hand, choose to look at the order in which people boarded the ark.  Noah was last to board, the Jewish tradition holds that this is actually depicting Noah's reticence, and thus lack of ultimate faith in God.  It's always interesting to me to see how different groups (whether along religious, cultural, or other lines) can interpret the same story in vastly different ways.  Neat.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 13: Socrates

I'm finally making my return after Thanksgiving and a boatload of computer trouble. Next up is Socrates. I had no idea that he was a soldier at one time; that completely goes against the stereotypical view of Socrates that I've always held. I like that he apparently focused on taking down people who pretended to know things they didn't actually know.

Unfortunately I can't claim to know much about Socrates, as I've never really cared for philosophy much. It often seems like it degenerates into word games when compared to science or math.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 12: Melody

We return, after much slack!

This topic should really have gone to the Professor, as he's much more musically inclined than I am.  I'll give it a shot anyway.

So, melody.  Melody is a sequence of notes that are "tuneful" - whatever that means.  In my mind, they sound good in the particular order that they're arranged in.  Within a melody are musical "phrases", and something these phrases sound (I guess to the more musically inclined) like a question and corresponding answer.

According to the ID (and I disagree with their wording here), melodies were, and still are, often "shared" among composers, especially in the middle Ages.  In particular, it cites L'homme_armé as a frequently shared melody.  To me, "sharing" is a bit of a misnomer - someone obviously came up with this melody first, and many other borrowed it for their own compositions.

In modern day music, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is an oft-shared melody, according to the ID.  However, in further reading the Wikipedia article (and we all know that Wikipedia is never wrong!), Twinkle is actually a poem put to an older melody, "Ah! vous dirais-je, Maman" that was written some 40 years before the poem.

An interesting English translation of one of the original French versions:

Oh! Shall I tell you, Mommy
What is tormenting me?
Daddy wants me to reason
Like a grown-up person,
Me, I say that sweets
Are worth more than reasoning

Not quite the happy-go-lucky poem about stars that we're used to!

Intellectual Devotional, Day 11: Eratosthenes

Day Eleven covered the story of how Eratosthenes estimated the size of the Earth by measuring the angle of a noonday shadow on the summer solstice. I had definitely heard the story before (in fact, I seem to remember a geometry problem based on this in middle school), but I'm not sure if I ever knew that he specifically was the one to do so. I'm pretty sure the only other time I'd ever heard of Eratosthenes before was in reference to prime numbers (the Sieve of Eratosthenes).

It's pretty amazing that with a bit of insight and some careful timing and measurement, he was able to estimate the Earth's size to a <1% error margin. This, and the story of Archimedes, make me wonder how much farther ahead we'd be if we hadn't lost so much knowledge when the Roman Empire fell.

Intellectual Devotional Day 10: Bust of Nefertiti

Until reading today's article, I didn't realize that most of the evidence of Nefertiti had been destroyed.  Apparently this was because she and her husband,  Pharaoh Ahkenaton (originally Amenhotep IV), were big fans of a new monotheistic religion.  The old polytheistic priests tried to destroy all evidence of them after their deaths.  Crazy.

This sort of situation makes me wonder what else has been lost in the sands of history because it was an unpopular opinion or viewpoint.  When groups like priests were some of the few who could read or write, what popular sentiments did they neglect to convey in their writings?

Slayer

This past week I finally got to see Slayer live, and holy shit did they ever live up to my expectations.

The opening band was pretty weak, but Gojira got the crowd going pretty well. I've never cared for them much before when I've checked out their albums, but they kept my attention for their whole set. I'm going to have to give them another listen or two.

The venue got absolutely packed while we waited for Slayer to set up, which seemed to take forever. Once they finally started playing, though, I was pretty amazed that four dudes who are getting on in years could keep up such an amazing amount of energy for the whole ~2 hour set. I'm not a super-huge Slayer fan, but I was able to recognize the majority of the songs. They had a good amount of classic stuff in the set, Mandatory Suicide, Seasons in the Abyss, Raining Blood, South of Heaven, and Angel of Death. Probably there were a few others that I've forgotten by now (blame the proximity high... so much weed in that venue).

Of course, the crowd lived up to its reputation as well. There wasn't exactly a mosh pit... it was more like a mosh system, with satellites and orbits and shit. At one point I counted at least four simultaneous pits going on that I could see. When Slayer first started their set, a fairly large one opened up behind me. There was a pretty scrawny little dude on the very edge who looked a bit panicky about how rough it was getting. I couldn't help but laugh a little bit, and I guess he noticed cause he started grinning too, and then FWOOSH some gigantic dude plowed into him and I never saw the kid again for the rest of the show :).

Tom Araya sounded kinda bummed at first when he would address the crowd, which is pretty understandable given that they lost a founding member this year. I'm definitely disappointed that I never got to see them while Jeff was around, but I thought Gary Holt did a great job filling in. I hope they stick around long enough for me to catch another tour.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 9: Ernest Hemingway

I can really say much here, except to admit that I've never read any Hemingway. The few things I've ever heard about him generally are pretty critical towards his apparently overly-macho style, but that actually makes me a bit more interested in checking out his work.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 8: Hammurabi's Code of Laws

Josh here.  I've been remiss in posting my thoughts, so I'll try to get us back on track.

This article was enlightening.  We often think of Hammurabi's Code to be "an eye for an eye," and that's a component.  However, by today's standards, it's a little more cruel for that.  For example, according to The ID, the death penalty applied to many crimes that seem minor today; for example, a woman could be killed for entering a tavern, as could a woman who left her husband without good cause.  It's not explained what good cause might have been, or who got to make the determination on the goodness of the cause.

Crazy punishments aside, Hammurabi did something no other ruler had done before - he established laws that were written down, and expected them to be upheld even after his death.  Previous to this, rulers generally did what they pleased, when they pleased, and there was no continuity between regimes.

In my judgment, Hammurabi had a great premise, even though his implementation lacked some ... finesse.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 7: The Torah

Continuing our Intellectual Devotional series, I get to make our first post on the Sunday readings in the Religion category. Coming from a very religious background (which I eventually rejected), I feel like I'm fairly well-informed on this topic, at least from a fundamentalist Christian perspective. Depending on how you look at it, religion is either one of my least or one of my most favorite subjects, since my discussions on it often turn into angry rants.

Thankfully, the Devotional approaches the topic from a secular vantage point. While it briefly mentions traditional beliefs regarding its origins, it spends more time discussing actual historical/archaeological facts and theories.

A few new facts for me are the division of the Torah itself versus the Mishna (which I had never heard of before) and the Talmud (of which I was vaguely aware). Like I said, I'm definitely coming from a Christian, rather than Jewish, background.

I'm definitely curious to see whether the authors touch on anything controversial in future Sunday readings.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 6: Appearance and Reality

Josh here.  As Professor Miskatonic (PM) told you last time, we're reading through the Intellectual Devotional (ID) together.  I suggested we try having our conversations in a blog format.  My personal hope, both in the reading and the blogging, is that it helps improve my critical thinking skills, as well as my ability to write coherently.  In this age of instant messaging, texting, and informal emails, I've found that my writing has really suffered.

The topic of Appearance and Reality falls under the Philosophy category of the ID.  This is particularly difficult for me; my tendency is to try to think of things scientifically, not philosophically.  The text primarily discusses the beliefs of the "Presocratic" philosophers with respect to their views on the nature of reality.  It essentially boils down to: what we perceive isn't reality.  I'm more familiar with this concept couched in the terms of Platonic Ideals.  I'm going to make a mess of this, but Plato's contention was, for example, what we see as a 'chair' is a chair because it has some inherent property of "chairness."  We may never know a true "chair," just some approximation in our reality of one.  I came across this fun little article while reading up on these topics.

This is not quite what the Presocratics were talking about.  For example, the article discusses the views of Thales, who held that, no matter the appearance, all matter is in fact ultimately made of water.  While I don't think this is true, you could draw a parallel to modern science - we know that everything is not made of water, but we have strong evidence that there are some number of basic particles that form all of the matter around us.  Heraclitus, on the other hand, believed that everything is constantly in motion.  Again, I see a parallel with modern science; we know that the atoms that make up everything have smaller constituent particles that are moving all of the time!

As an aside, like PM, I've noticed the articles are pretty basic so far.  The ID's purpose appears to be to give you little nuggets you can throw out in conversation; my intent is to use the articles as a jumping-off point for discussion and thought.

Intellectual Devotional, Day 5: Basics of Music

My friend Josh and I have been working through the book The Intellectual Devotional together. The book is a pretty neat idea; it's a series of short articles on a variety of topics. Each day of the week has a different theme. The book is patterned after a religious daily devotional, but covers secular/intellectual topics. Josh and I have already discussed the first few articles offline, so I'll start off the blog with my thoughts for Day 5: The Basics of Music.

Like the other articles we've read so far, this has been a bit basic. The article covers what you might expect out of the first couple days of a junior-high music class, just the bare basics of Western music theory. There are a few footnotes that hint at more interesting facts, including one that has a tidbit about the differences between Indian and Western music theory, which was new to me. But overall, anyone who knows much of anything about music theory has heard all of this multiple times before. That said, I'm hopeful that future articles are going to be more interesting, as the book devotes every Friday to a discussion of music.

One topic I hope to see discussed is the relationship between music and math; for example things like the Circle of Fifths always reminds me of the fact that the 12-tone system is an example of modular arithmetic.

Welcome

Welcome to Miskatonic Studies, where a few friends and I are going to discuss any random thing we feel like. To start off, we're going to alternate posts discussing topics from The Intellectual Devotional.