Believing Things

Today I realized that it seems like often people choose to believe or disbelieve things in a completely irrational manner.
A teenage girl told me this week that she didn't believe in the big bang because scientists just say "it happened." I didn't deny that this is what they say... but I think they say it because (in my non-expert opinion) it seems like they don't know all the answers, but the answers they do know are so complicated that a girl in junior high just wouldn't have the background to understand the answer if they did try to explain it.
I also recently heard someone say that they didn't have any idea how cell phones work, they are just grateful they do.
My nephews after countless warnings to not touch cacti (and having done so themselves in the past) insisted on doing so again only to get a hand full or spines instead.
I just looked for random facts on google, and found this one "There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball."

Sometimes we can't understand things so we believe them to be false (like the teenage girl).
But sometimes we can't understand things and we just take it for granted (like cell phones).
Sometimes things are simple and ordinary and yet we still can't quite take someone else's word for it... or even our own (like my nephews).
But sometimes things are not ordinary and we have no understanding to base even an assumption on but we believe them anyway, for no reason, except that someone else said it (golf balls).

So we don't always believe things just because they are ordinary, or extraordinary. We also don't believe things just because we have first hand knowledge or have no knowledge of the subject. So really why do we believe some things and not others?

Brain Powers

This week the work I've been doing has been exhausting mentally. It consists of solving unending small problems or at least making decisions about what to do about them. In between all the problem sleuthing and solving and decision making it is mindnumbingly dull.
Every afternoon I'd come home and ignore the last box of junk that I had not unpacked yet because I didn't know what to do with it.
I thought these things were unrelated until I realized that they take the same kind of brain power (decision/problem solving brain power). No wonder I just couldn't bring myself to unpack after working all day with that kind of stuff.
A while ago a friend told me that she only had so much executive brain and being the president of a club was just too much planning on top of everything else she was doing with her executive brain.
As an undergrad I often tried to take some sort of math or science class along with my more writing or art based classes every semester. I liked the change of pace that they provide for each other. It almost feels rejuvenating when you can use your brain in a different way.
So that then begs the question what kinds of brain powers are there? Decision/problem solving, mathematical, creative, patience, social?

Desk Space

So I am moving out of the grad cubes this week (they are kicking me out for new blood), thus I decided I would take a few pictures first.

My desk for the last two years (I had this desk before I had an apartment here)

This is my desk. Most of the papers on the right are fun personal mementos from people, the ones on the other sides are references for school stuff. My paperclip change is on the right and my textbooks and folders are on the shelf. My rocks, bones, and dinosaur figurines re in the left corner. The drawers are filled with snacks, scrap paper, old school papers, useful things (like calculators, rulers, etc.). The bottom left hand corner drawer is opened slightly (not intentional), that is the drawer I always pull out to rest my feet on.

I think it is a pretty neat desk, overall, with some personal touches. I think the grad cubes are interesting because each person has the same desk but they use (and decorate) their desks very differently.

One guy likes using his desk but if he is not using it currently everything is spotless, there is nothing on his desk, everything he has is hiding in a drawer (he even took his name tag down for a while... which caused confusion).

Then a couple of the guys use their desks as storage area, so they just get piled with junk and they never use it for anything else.

Another guy has junk all over his desk but his shelves are a well displayed rock collection.

A couple of other people have super organized desks with their school stuff and office supplies are perfectly in order but they also have family pictures enshrined on the peg board.

I like my desk clean, and I don't mind a little personalization but most of it is in the way I display my rocks not in personal items per se (except for the paperclips :) ). What is interesting, but unsurprising is that how we use our desks reflects our personality, displaying quirkiness, organization, openness, etc.

People are different. 

"Words are Hard"

This is the phrase that one of my mission companions would always say when either of us stumbled over our words.
This week I came across two different words that are commonly used but still used vaguely (at least I use them vaguely). It makes it difficult to communicate ideas when you and your audience may not understand a word in the same way.
First: Exactness
In the LDS church people often talk about obeying commandments (and rules) with exactness. I have never particularly liked the phrase I always read it with exactness being synonymous with perfectness, which is just humanly impossible (and God does not ask the impossible) Then, this week someone said that obeying with exactness meant there was no gray in life, only black and white... and nice(?) as that thought is I just don't see the world as black and white.... So I looked up exactness on google. It reads "the quality of being accurate or correct; precision." Which as you may notice says nothing about perfect.... I looked at another article about accuracy and precision. In my words accurate means being correct while precision means consistent. And I think I can obey with correctness and consistency even when I can't obey with perfection. The best thing about the above mentioned article, at least for my purposes is the image showing what accuracy and precision looks like when you are shooting at a target. Notice how even with high accuracy and precision the shots are not all dead center. So, I guess I have no problem with the phrase obey with exactness anymore... I just had to look up the word I though I knew.
Second: Mature
A group of my geology friends were talking about which of us was the most mature. One girl was nominated as the most mature (even though she is the youngest of us), but then I got wondering if we were just judging on who the most controlling person was. This one was a little trickier to find the right definition (we were obviously talking about physical maturity or the maturity of an industry). But I found this definition on the Merriam-Webster online dictionary "having of showing the mental and emotional qualities of an adult." I think that is roughly what we were all thinking of for as the definition of mature.... but it is still a vague term. I mean does that mean we should have been judging on the adeptness of planning out our lives and jobs, or the ability to control our stress in appropriate ways, or being consistently reliable in what we say we will do... I have no idea... I guess that one we would have to define for the moment.
Sometimes I am just floored that communication is possible at all with how messy and imperfect words (and nonverbal communication) are.

Physical Learning

So this week I spent some time hanging out with a few of my nephews. We ended up hiking some pretty steep side hills. One of the boys is not to much of the adventurous type so he and I hiked them together hand in hand. The whole time. The problem with this is when it got really steep he had a tendency to lean back away from the mountain, instead of in towards it, and when he was holding my hand he was pulling us both back, so I told him, "lean towards the mountain," "lean in," that sort of thing, and he did catch on pretty fast. I just thought it was fascinating because I don't ever remember learning that but I'm sure I did, but did I learn it by myself or did someone tell me, just like I told him. I have no idea? But it got me thinking about physical learning.
They say once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget because it is all about muscle memory. However, no one really seems to talk about other muscle memory type stuff. I remember teaching myself to brace myself with my feet on the school bus so I wouldn't have to hang on. When I worked on the train a month or two back I had to get used to spreading my wait and walking with very deliberate footsteps as I walked the isles as the train jiggled from side to side, and forward of course. The same sort of thing goes for walking on ice (slipping and sliding and knowing when it's thick enough) and walking down talus slopes (those rocks do move but with a surprising amount of consistency).
So here are my conclusions about physical learning. (1) In general it seems more like you learn it through experience than instruction and (2) once you learn it, you more or less always have a feel for it no matter how long between uses. Which really is unfair because book learning seems like it flies away quite fast if you aren't using it on a daily basis. So maybe our bodies are smarter then our minds...

Shooting for A's B's or the Stars

Recently I told someone that I got an A- in a class which I thought was pretty good but then he asked what I had been shooting for. I said "an A. That's what I always aim for."
Shortly before that someone had told me that you (in the general sense) "should always shoot for a B" because then you don't get stressed about little things that don't really matter.
Then there is the saying that I will purposefully misquote* "shoot for the stars and even if you miss you will land on the moon."
So which is it? Should you aim high, super high, or just moderately good. Or does it all just depend on your personality.
I had a conversation with a friend who said that if you have the mentality that you are below average, average, or above average in a certain area, no matter what group you are in (whether a really skilled/talented group or a dull one) you will find yourself in that place within the group. So basically if you think you are average at school (easy example) instead of telling yourself to be above average you should just start hanging out with a smarter group of kids and you will end up being average in that group and doing better overall in school.
So I guess you could just shoot for average but seek out skilled groups.
Or just don't set expectations at all :)


*"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." But that really doesn't make sense...

The Meaning of Night

I'm sitting here in my apartment with the setting sun shining in on me after a storm. And it makes me happy.
Sometimes at night if the moon is ever shining in through my window I sleep backwards in bed just so I could fall asleep with the moonlight on my face.
There is something incredibly compelling about light. It is bright and obvious and beautiful. Is it any wonder that it has been used in comparison with darkness since the beginning of time as a visualization of un-articulateable ideas, especially involving good and evil?
Of course not. But as my dad says I'm a rebel and I have to root for the other side.... and darkness does get a bad rap.
As a senior in high school I wrote a poem entitled Night is a Blanket* for an assignment. I tried to emphasize the healing, peaceful powers of night and darkness.
Then I wrote a novel about a people who are nocturnal** and are thought to be evil because of it... but really they are just people.
I think the main reason why dark is seen so negatively is because humans are bad at seeing in the dark so the dark often means the unknown and unexpected.
But the thing is complete light with no darkness (shadow/contrast) is just as blinding (more so really because it can last longer) than complete darkness. (Remember don't look straight into the sun).
Just like winter--the time of dormant plants--is necessary for the health of some plants, night is our daily time of physical and often emotional rejuvenation.... So if I take the next step it begs another question. Are times of confusion and uncertainty in our lives, often compared to times of darkness,  really times of unnoticed growth. A type of staging ground for the next step?


*Night is a Blanket

Night is a blanket,
Covering the world,
Thick and dark.

Night is a blanket,
Underneath to hide
Secret longings, hidden from the day.

Night is a blanket,
Comfortable and warm,
To rest in.

Night is a blanket,
Children lie under,
Scaring each other with phantoms.

Night is a blanket,
To snuggle within
And listen to sounds all around.

Night is a blanket,
To look through,
Trying to see the world anew.

**If you ever wanted to know how much being diurnal has affected our language try writing a book about nocturnal people. Today, Morning. Three days ago. Seeing color. How do you tell what time it is when the sun isn't up?