The Pavilion

My professors and classmates at school throw the term “spiritual” around a lot. They use this term in the context of discussing the actions of a particular acupuncture point or the needs of a patient that comes for treatment.

What they are really referring to is the mental and emotional needs of the patient, rather than their spiritual needs, but they don’t know this. I think they default to the “spiritual” term because it is easier or shorter to say, or perhaps because they define their understanding of spirituality in a very visceral sense. I’m not even convinced that the loosest definition of spirituality (ie. “my place in the universe”) applies to how they use the term, but they would probably argue that with me.

I find this interesting because I’ve been coming back to 1 Corinthians 1-4 for a number of days now. This passage speaks about spiritual wisdom and contrasts it with human wisdom and understanding. Part of the passage mentions that spiritual wisdom is expressed in spiritual words - implying that the language is different, even if the vocabulary itself hasn’t changed. I’ve been looking for a good example to help me understand this passage, and I think I may have found it.

I have this old church hymnal from 1937 that I kept when my parents were getting rid of the last of theirs.

I was flipping through it yesterday as the topic of church hymns had come up. In particular, I was comparing some of the hymns that I found there with some of the ones in the current hymnal that our church uses.

There have been a lot of changes. Many of the songs that are present in the newer hymnal have slightly altered lyrics, or entirely missing verses. The older hymnal obviously has a very different selection of songs too - including some even older chants and male quartets that were probably antiquated by 1937 standards. The book even draws its F clef differently.

I find this to be an interesting piece of nostalgia. There were a lot of songs that I grew up learning that aren’t sung anymore, and in another 10 or so years, the ones that are starting to become old or obscure now will probably not be sung either. Those will get replaced with something else. And I can pull out an old hymnal and see the same exact process happened in 1937.

I have found that, as it comes to fantasy gaming settings, I have an affinity for those that give some nods to the old school roots of where the mythos of different creatures come from. Not in the stereotypical, high-fantasy way, but in the older, faerie-world-is-weird-and-needs-to-be-respected way. When I come across a world like that, I can’t always pick out the nods to the old mythos, but when I do I find it somehow more replete and interesting a world.

But there are some worlds that are so weird and fantastical that I have no idea when the author is pulling from reality and when he’s pulling from fantasy. In The Chronicles of Amber, for example, the author has one particular area of his world where one main character finds himself in the middle of a desert land with many rocks that move around in the land as though it were water. The rocks were the primary means of transportation in this place.

Imagine my surprise when I find out today that this phenomenon of rocks moving randomly in the desert actually happens [wikipedia.org], and no one can explain how.

Glorify the superhero movies enough, and eventually people will start to emulate [cnn.com] them.

I suppose this was bound to happen. I notice that the article takes great pains to indicate that said superheroes work within the law, rather than being vigilantes. At least the ones that were interviewed.

But seriously? Do we really need to go here?

It’s like we want to take aspects of Watchmen and make it real life.

It appears that just as humans have circadian rhythms, so do plants. A number of flowers, for example, will regulate the time when they open and close their petals to the sun.

Once humans figured this out, it was not too long before someone came up with the idea for a floral clock [wikipedia.org], where groups of flowers are arranged in such a manner that you can tell the time by observing which flowers are blooming.

Pretty neat idea.

In Merrimack there is a small park with a ballfield and a wooden playground. It is very close to the Merrimack Public Library, being more or less across the street.

I ate lunch there this past Sunday, needing a place to stop my car to have my sandwich (irrelevant story). Upon sitting down at one of the park benches, I noticed the sound of running water and a slight breeze, indicative of a stream. There was a path very close to me that turned off into the woods, away from said ballfield and playground.

After I finished eating, I walked down this path. Apparently there are a number of small trails and a small stream. It is very pretty. There were a number of people walking down those paths with children in hand.

I shall have to return with the camera. Now that the weather is warmer I have been anxious to resume my investigation of the small forgotten places of Nashua. While this is technically in Merrimack, perhaps I will investigate this one as well.

So today I ran across Geek Chic. [geekchichq.com]

This site sells gaming furniture to hardcore pen-and-paper or tabletop gamers. I didn’t think such a thing as gaming furniture existed until now - at least furniture outside the realm of elaborately ornate and sculptured novelty items.

I was wrong.

Any gamer out there, please take a look over their furniture. Quite succinctly, it looks awesome. I just wish it wasn’t so expensive.

So the company I work for wants to send me to work onsite.

This is the natural progression for a support adviser, so this is not an unexpected thing. It’s not a terribly common thing either, but it does crop up from time to time. Still, I had hoped they were going to pass me up because of my school commitments. I was able to get out of one attempt to send me onsite because of my comprehensive exams.

As you might be able to guess, I don’t want to go.

It’s not that I mind traveling, because I don’t. Seeing new places is always enjoyable. The problem is that each class I miss I have to make up. This may involve gathering a student partner, paying a TA, replicating clinical work, and potentially/likely taking time off from work to do this (which increases my demands at work). Then there are the non-work-related costs, like spending time away from family, or needing to find a substitute instructor for ILMA. Overall, it’s entirely not something that seems like its an effective use of my time.

I wouldn’t mind it if I have to go when I’m not in classes, but I’m not sure I will have that kind of control over the decision of when I go.

OK, ending rant.

So while perusing through Target yesterday my wife and I saw a single DVD case containing the following: all four Lethal Weapon movies.

The price of this “box set”? 10 Dollars.

Absolutely outrageous. I have never seen a more blatant example of how overpriced movies are, until you see the “discounts” they offer on old ones.

In an unrelated story [bbc.co.uk] about swine flu, the reporter dropped the news that in an effort to curb the disease, Egypt has begun slaughtering all 300,000 pigs in its country.

Except there are no reported cases of swine flu in Egypt.

Perhaps we could spin this to be some form of mass-animal sacrifice to the swine gods, rather than just leaving it as a completely overreactionary measure to prevent a non-local disease.

Update: I just found out something interesting. It appears that in Egypt there is a branch of Christianity called Coptic Christianity. This branch is in the minority in Egypt and suffers considerable persecution there. One of the larger vocations for these people is the raising of pigs, which Muslim Egyptians consider to be unclean. Mass slaughtering of pigs cuts jeopardizes the Coptics’ livelihood.

So the public-facing reason for the pig slaughtering is swine flu, but there may be an ulterior motive of persecution.