Sunday, April 24, 2011 Lethbridge
5:25 am
The temperature is +1 C, with a high predicted of +16 C.
Great! This is the first day of about normal temperatures in a very long time. We will fire up the barbeque for a nice steak later today.
From the Environment Canada website:
Today Sunny. Wind southwest 20 km/h. High 16. UV index 6 or high. Tonight Clear. Wind west 20 km/h becoming light this evening. Low plus 3. Normals Max: 15°C Min: 1°C
5:45 am Morning Musings
With my second cup in hand, it is time for a few thoughts. I am spreading myself across too many activities. My Activities List has a total of 11 different categories. The iPad is quickly becoming a major player in my time on task activities. It has become an important component in my reading (History, Literature, Science) as well as for Puzzles (NYT crosswords, Go). Birding is also on the rise as the ice is now off the lakes and the waterfowl migration is in full swing. Keeping track of our observations on the eBird website has added a new dimension to this activity. Mathematics is more problematic. I occasionally sit back and ask myself why I am doing this. I seriously doubt that I will ever use any of it in any situation other than that of studying it for its own sake. In many ways it is analogous to the Puzzles category. I like spending time with it. But at the moment I seem to have too many competitors for my time. This brings me back to the iPad. I have about 6 books on it that I am reading at the moment. The same question I posed a moment ago merits consideration - why am I doing this? The primary answer is the same. Because I enjoy it. Mark Twain is one of my favorite authors. Thus reading his autobiography is simply a delight. Many of his insights are timeless. The ebook I downloaded a couple of days ago, "A New Culture of Learning" is interesting. It is a natural extension of my professional life which focused on the utilization of technology in education, with a special emphasis on learning. Similar comments apply to the other two books I downloaded at the same time, "Alone Together" and "The Power of Pull". "Quantum Man" is a biography of Richard Feynman and is a slower read as there is a lot of physics embedded in the book. But his life has always been a fascination for me and provides many examples of personal learning at the forefront of scientific thinking. Gleick's book on "The Information: A Theory, A History, A Flood" is another book that looks at the impact of technology on society. ... While browsing a few of the titles in the iBook store I downloaded the sample chapter from the Indian religious classic "Bhagavad-gita" or "As it is". I was particularly intrigued with the general format where the author first provides the original Sanskrit text, then a translation, and then a Commentary on the significance of the passage. I have now downloaded the entire book of over 1800 pages (!) for $7.99 Not only that, but the weight of the iPad after downloading this file has not changed! The ebook permits both yellow highlighting as well as a notepad for making comments at any point. Much better than writing in the margin. This is a genuine improvement over the paper version. I too have played with the idea of an appropriate format - for this website as well as a format for making notes. My preference is still for a two-color approach where the content is in one color (green background) and my commentary is in another color (light brown). But since I changed the overall format for each day of this website to a more narrative style I have lost that feature. I am ambivalent about bringing it back. The coloring may detract from the narrative flow. Then again, it may improve the clarity of the message by highlighting the difference between my efforts to summarize content from my views on that content. The idea is the same as in the English translation of the Bhagavad-gita. That author used centered headings to separate the two types of content. I am going to play with this for a couple of days. Light green for personal commentary, white for content. In thinking my way through this I obtained one more ebook to read - the Bhagavad-gita. Another comment about this. It is Spartan. Just a few additional boxes in a different color. Mechanistic. I recall seeing web pages with a strong sense of the Tao that were light pastels with no abrupt transitions of color. Perhaps a better approach would be to simply change the font to italics, or to just a different font. Or maybe just an additional indent? Is there an optimal format or is it largely a matter of personal preference? |
9:00 PM Philosophy
I have begun reading "Bhagavad-gita". The first few chapters provide background and the setting for the actual book.
The wikipedia description provides a succinct statement on the book's historical background. Traditionally the Gita was thought to originate about 3000 BCE, but recent scholarly assessments have put the date closer to the beginning of the Common Era.
The ebook version that I downloaded is considered to be one of the best and most thorough translations into English of the Gita from the original Sanskrit.
A few quick comments.
My knowledge of early Indian history and culture is appalling. But this looks like an excellent introduction into the religion and philosophy underlying one of the oldest human cultures still in existence.
The contrast between the Gita and the ebook is striking. The Gita is one of the oldest manuscripts in existence. The ebook version is less than a year old, although the original hardcopy version was copyright in 1972. There is also a huge difference between concise summaries such as wikipedia (which also includes photographs of early versions of this manuscript) and the approach taken by Prabhupada in providing this 1800 page document.
Both Prabhupada and wikipedia provide a brief statement about the setting for the Gita. I like Prabhupada's introduction on the first page:
"It was at the beginning of this age, some fifty centuries ago, that Lord Krsna spoke Bhagavad-gita to His friend and devotee Arjuna. Their discourse - one of the greatest philosophical and religious dialogues known to man - took place before the onset of war, a great fratricidal conflict."
It is clear from the outset that this is not just a story, or a book, but a very important one.
I think it is fair to say that there are 5 major religions: Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. Each religion has a foundational document and personage from which it has spread its beliefs. The last decade has seen a dramatic rise in secularism. I do not consider myself that knowledgable with any of these religions although I have do have a slight familiarity with 4 of them. Hinduism is the exception. The Gita, particularly this version with its extensive commentary, looks like a good way to rectify this omission.
Three of these religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) come from the same roots. Judaism and Hinduism appear to me to be older than the others although it might be fairer to view all five religions as appearing at roughly the same time. Buddhism is the only religion that does not have God as a core belief.