Thought 6
Sometimes the only way way to win the game is by not to play.
–Tye Warren, 18SEP2008
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Thought 5: More on Time
We define acceleration as the rate of change in instantaneous velocity. We call it “acceleration” when it’s an increase in the change of distance over the change in time over time (length/time²), and “deceleration” when it’s a decrease in velocity over a change in time over time (-length/time²), but physicists call “deceleration” negative acceleration because it’s a negative change in distance over time squared. Now since time is always flowing in the “positive” direction, then the only thing that makes the acceleration positive or negative is the change in distance. But what if time flowed in the opposite direction? What if time could be negative? Then, I think, what we call acceleration would then be negative acceleration (deceleration), and our idea of deceleration would then be positive acceleration. There’s no real point here; just a thought. Chew on that for a while.
–Tye Warren, 08 AUG 2008
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Thought 4
Never underestimate the value of silence.
-Tye Warren, 05AUG2008
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Thought 3
The supposedly “brilliant” scientists, mathemeticians, and professors of our day are sometimes convinced that they are somehow “too smart” to believe in God. God is outmoded– an archaic remnant of Man’s need to explain his own existence and purpose in the universe. But the mark of true genius is one’s acceptence of the fact that one’s brilliance is not a refutation of God’s existence, but, rather, a confirmation; and, dare I say, it only helps to magnify His glory. (Quite humorous, yet depressingly paradoxical.)
–Tye Warren, 01AUG2008
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Thought 2
Man didn’t create mathematices. Math, mathematical concepts at least, has always existed as one of the divine attributes of God. Einstein showed that matter and energy were equivalent. Matter is just a condensed, crystallized form of energy. In the same way, Man’s version of math is the “slowed-down, crystallized” form of the True Mathematics of God.
–Tye Warren, 01AUG2008
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Thought 1
It is only by combining one’s understanding of the physical with one’s understanding of the metaphysical that one can ever hope to understand the true reality of nature…or the true nature of reality.
-Tye Warren, 01AUG2008
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Freedom
Now that my college composition class is over (at least my first semester), it seems the purpose of this weblog has been realized, and, therefore, should cease to exist. But, as is my nature, I see a broader purpose behind my being led to create this weblog to begin with. I’ve decided that far too long have I kept my thoughts to myself. I used to consider the thought of writing in a journal (or something similar), and be completely and utterly frustrated by the thought that, no matter how fast I could type, I would never be able to keep up with the rate at which my brain produced thoughts. (I considered getting a tape recorder and talking into it, then realized that even that wouldn’t do. I am much worse at speaking than I am at writing! I wondered if it would one day be possible to produce an apparatus that would be able to record one’s thoughts as one was having them. That would be the ULITIMATE JOURNAL.) Therefore, to try and express them at all, would be a complete waste of time, and would probably drive me to the brink of suicide, or, worse yet, homicide. But, now that I’ve been forced, by way of my English 111 class, to start writing (as one can never attain any place of significance in this world without the “necessary credentials”–i.e., a degree), I’ve discovered a sort of therapeutic quality about it. No matter how much can’t be expressed verbally, at least something can. And that has to be better than nothing at all. Right?
I’ve decide to switch focus, and would now like to dedicate the remaining life of this blog to my random, useless, eclectic ramblings and philosophical thoughts. Some of them may mean nothing to you; but, hopefully more often than not, some of them will mean everything.
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What Path?
What path should I trod, Oh God?
Oh God! What path should I trod?
What path shall I trod? Oh God!
Oh God!?
Be honest with me!
I need to believe, Oh God!
I need to bleed!
I need the drops to flow,
Mixed in with my chemo
Like they did from Your Son so long ago!
I need them to see
The blood coming from me
Is the same blood He sweat in the Garden of Gethsemane.
I need them to feel
I need them to see
The agonizing pain You felt for me
When it was I who belonged on Calvary!
Without absolute appreciation for this moment in time,
It is impossible to get a taste for the truly divine.
One can not understand this matter, cut off and alone.
But the Holy Spirit leads one to understand
The sins for which Christ has atoned.
*Author’s note: I understand that “trod” is the past tense of “tread.” I use it here for poetic purposes, obviously. Also, let it be known, that I wrote this last night while I was on, well let’s just say, more ambien than I should have been. In fact, I didn’t remember writing it until I saw it this afternoon after work. I know it’s not perfect, or probably even appreciable, poetry, but it’s all I have for now, and I figured I should write it down anyway. So, enjoy… or don’t. I don’t really care anymore.*
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Reflection 2: Time Dilation
I once believed in universal time. I thought, like most sensible people, that there was one, giant, God-like clock that kept the “correct” time for the entire universe. So, naturally, “right now” for me should be the same exact “right now” for a star in the Andromeda galaxy. It wasn’t until I was about 12 years old that I discovered the notion of time dilation. I was in the seventh grade, and I had always been fascinated by physics, so I checked out a book on Einsteins’s theories of special and general relativity from the school library. I don’t remember the title of the book, but its impact on my view of the universe, and therefore on life in general, has been remarkable. In a nutshell, the book explained (in terms a 12 y/o could understand) the basic principles that lay the foundation for Einstein’s theories; namely, that light always travels at a constant speed of 186,282 mi/sec (in a vacuum), regardless of the speed of its source. This may seem trivial at first, but it actually changes our entire perspective of space and time. By definition, speed is the rate at which the distance between two points changes, or simply change in distance divided by elapsed time. Distance is a measure of space, and time is, obviously, a measure of time. Now, if you’re standing still and I run toward you at 5 mi/hr, then throw a baseball to you at 10 mi/hr, the baseball will be moving at 15 mi/hr relative to you. This makes intuitive sense (you simply add the vectors), and had been understood for centuries before Einstein. But, suppose I ran toward you at the same speed (5 mi/hr), but this time instead of a baseball, I shined a flashlight at you. You would expect that you would add 5 mi/hr to the speed of light to get the speed of the light relative to you. But, according to special relativity, the light still travels at 186,282 mi/sec! If this is true, (and we know that it is from countless experiments over the last century), then time itself (and distance) has to behave in an entirely different way then we all thought it did. In fact, and I’ll spare you the details, time appears to “run slow” for objects that are at high uniform relative velocities. Time slows down more and more the closer you get to the speed of light, and actually, it stops at light speed! This blew my little fragile mind, and I’ve never looked at the universe the same since. It’s actually what influenced me to want to be an astroparticle physicist. For those who are interested, I would highly encourage you to do some research into these topics. Books such as The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, and The Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Einstein are excellent sources. As for me, I’m sorry to say, I don’t have the necessary verbal skills to explain all these concepts at the present time. But, God willing, one day I will.
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Who IS Responsible?
In the article “Devoid of Content,” Dean Emeritus of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Florida International University at Miami, Stanley Fish, argues that most students graduating from high school or college are “utterly unable to write a clear and coherent English sentence.” Assistant Professor of writing at Syracuse, Collin Brooke, in his article “Fish in a Barrel,” calls this statement a “load of crap, but probably not worth the effort that would be required to falsify the claim.” This is interesting. I wonder if it’s really not worth the effort, or if Mr. Brooke simply has no evidence to the contrary. The purpose of the rest of his entire article is based on his disagreement with this first axiom of Fish’s, so, of course, it is worth the effort. I also find Brooke’s choice of words to be starkly uncharacteristic of a writing professor—e.g., “load of crap”, “craptacular.” These are definately colorful phrases, but I don’t think BROWN is most readers’ favorite color!
I happen to agree with Fish’s claim. Most students can’t write well. I know this from my own personal experience of reading classmates’ writing in high school, and, now, in college level composition. I also believe that Fish’s credentials as a teacher of writing for more than forty years lends validity to his opinion. He’s graded countless essays and papers over the years at various colleges across the country, which provides a pretty good cross-section of the population of the “average” student in America, so he should certainly be trusted when he says that most students can’t write well. I do not, however, agree with his reason as to why. Mr. Fish states that most students are bad writers because they aren’t being taught form (sentence structure) in the classroom.
Teachers can neither take full credit for the education of their students, nor be solely blamed for the lack thereof. Most teachers tend to make the subject matter clear, but, even if they don’t, the student has plenty of other resources available to him or her— such as their text book, or the internet, which provides a copious amount of information on various subjects, including language structure. Students aren’t bad writers because the information is not available to them, but because they find the information itself to be boring and useless. Now, to be a truly great teacher, it should be one’s goal to inspire in his or her students an interest in the subject. This can be achieved by showing the importance of the material being studied, and how it can be applied to their lives in a practical way. It is, however, ultimately the students’ responsibility to ask themselves the “so what?” questions. “Why should I care about this?” And “how does this relate to my life?” If students can’t answer these fundamental questions, then no matter how great their teacher may be, they will never provide themselves with the internal motivation necessary to the learning of any subject, especially something as seemingly mundane as sentence structure.
Stanley Fish. “Devoid of Content.” The New York Times. !5 July 2008. 31 May 2008. <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/opinion/31fish.html>
Collin Brooke. “Fish in a Barrel.” Weblog entry. 15 July 2008. 31 May 2005. <http://www.collinvsblog.net/2005/05/fish-in-a-barrel.html>
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