Archive - May 2015
May 31st
Week in Review
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 05/31/2015 - 21:02This morning, I learned of the death of Beau Biden. On Facebook, I posted:
My thoughts and prayers go out to the Biden family as they more the death of their son to brain cancer. My thoughts and prayers also go out to other families who have lost sons to brain cancer. Beau's death is bound to bring back sad memories for many of them. Finally, I want to thank everyone who is participating in the Relay for Life this weekend. Please help the American Cancer Society as well as a mother mourning the death of her son to brain cancer, by contributing at this link.
A friend of mine, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and very wise woman wrote a letter to Megyn Kelly about an upcoming interview with the Duggars about sexual abuse.
I posted about this, and a link to the text of her letter in this Facebook post. Please read it invite others into a real discussion about sexual abuse.
Other random things: The Pease Place playground had its grand opening in Woodbridge on Saturday. I have a bunch of pictures I hope to share at some point.
I had an interesting dinner where we talked about Acousmatic sound, Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and György Ligeti
May 30th
The Reading
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/30/2015 - 21:14Today, the church I attend, Grace and St. Peter’s, in Hamden, CT, had its second annual International Food Night and Talent Show. This year, I read three of my poems, The Seals, Knitting, and ”Random Acts of Kindness”.
It was a friendly crowd. People who have known me for years, but who haven’t heard me read. Most, probably didn’t even know I wrote poetry. It was nerve wracking. The evening started off with people singing and telling funny stories. The flow of the evening settled down, so my reading which was near the end fit in better than I feared it might when we got going.
Despite having written for many years, and having had poems published in school literary magazines years ago, this was the first time I read in public.
It seemed to be well received, but now, I am exhausted.
May 29th
Attention
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/29/2015 - 21:15Pay attention, the teacher demanded
as one student stared out a window
and another fidgeted endlessly.
On the base
the soldier stood at attention
waiting to be put at ease.
At the coffee shop
young entrepreneurs
showing continuous partial attention
checked their cellphones.
But what do you pay attention to?
Classes? Officers? Details?
What about fears, desires,
messages before the break of day,
and beauty?
May 28th
Random Ingress Thoughts
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 05/28/2015 - 17:51This evening, I’m going heading off to an Ingress event. Ingress is an augmented reality game played on smartphones that I’ve been playing and writing about for quite a while. I haven’t written much about it recently because there hasn’t been much to say. I still play regularly and meet with friends I’ve met through Ingress.
There are things I could say about my strategy, but Ingress is a team sport, and I don’t want to advertise my strategy to people on the other team that might take advantage of knowing how I approach playing. I could talk about various milestones. I’m level 15 out of 16 levels. I’ve walked over 1800 kilometers playing the game. People who play Ingress mostly know this already and it probably doesn’t mean much to those that don’t play Ingress.
One of the things I was very interested in, when I started playing, was the story line of the game, but I never got as caught up in the story as I thought I would. I’ve also mostly chosen to simply play and not get involved in some of the drama. There is a lot of drama between players in the game.
It raises some interesting questions about how you manage the community around a multi-player game. I touch on this in a post on an Ingress related forum the other day, but haven’t really thought out the details. This is probably an area well worth the research, and I wonder if any of my old Internet Research friends are starting to do studies on Ingress.
May 27th
Science and Awe
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/27/2015 - 20:11Recently, friends share two interesting articles on Facebook. The first, The surprising links between faith and evolution and climate denial — charted analyzes the relationship between different faiths and their views on evolution and climate change. Essentially, there is a close relationship between rejecting evolution and rejecting man’s role in climate change. The author then attempts to connect this with the relationship between religion and science.
At one extreme is the position that science denial is somehow deeply or fundamentally religion’s fault… At the other extreme, meanwhile, is the view that religion has no conflict with science at all. But that can’t be right either: …it is pretty clear that the main motive for evolution denial is, indeed, a perceived conflict with faith
It seems as if he is confusing a “perceived conflict with faith” with religion. Indeed for those who view science as a means of understanding truth, and who believes that all truth comes from God, there is no conflict. The real problem, it seems, is that too few people are talking about how faith and science truly complement each other.
The author goes on to say
The main driver of climate science rejection, however, appears to be a free market ideology — which is tough to characterize as religious in nature.
In fact, I would suggest that a free market ideology runs counter to traditional Christianity, and, I suspect many other beliefs. Free market ideology seems to be based on the love of money, which 1 Timothy says is the root of all kinds of evil.
The second article, Why Do We Experience Awe?, explores the relationship between experiencing awe and the idea that “awe is the ultimate ‘collective’ emotion, for it motivates people to do things that enhance the greater good.”
The article cites interesting research and suggests
We believe that awe deprivation has had a hand in a broad societal shift that has been widely observed over the past 50 years: People have become more individualistic, more self-focused, more materialistic and less connected to others.
Are they suggesting that awe deprivation leads to a free market ideology?
How do address this age of awe deprivation? For me, I’m feeling drawn more towards contemplative prayer and poetry.
