Home | Join! | Help | Browse | Forums | NuWorld | NWF | PoPo   

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Day 19: The Soul
Tuesday. 2.19.13 6:24 pm
Ok so it's late and I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'll just copy and paste part of an email that I was writing to someone about how I conceptualize the human soul. Because I write emails about that kind of stuff.

Within a mathematical context, I tend to think of people as finite volumes with continuous properties (easily explainable according to ordinary physical laws) except for a single, discontinuous point which goes to infinity-- this would be the equivalent of the "soul". In complex theory, when we have such a discontinuous point it often represents a "source" or a "sink". An example is your bathtub. If we want to describe fluid flow inside the bathtub, we can describe it with continuous equations until we get to the drain. We can't deal easily with the drain, so what we tend to do is to draw a circle around the drain and then to calculate the flux of water passing through the circle to quantify the strength of the drain. I feel like the soul is a such a discontinuous, infinitesimal point: it represents a "source", and in that way, our link to Infinity. While you cannot point to your soul physically in your body, you can understand its effect because of the flow of [spiritual] material outwards. I think of this as just another way to phrase the common analogy that a Christian is like a candle burning. You can tell that you are a Christian because your "light is shining": the Holy Spirit is shining through you.

I started thinking about this kind of stuff, as you might imagine, when I was taking a course in complex mathematics (real and imaginary numbers). I started writing an adventure novel about the interaction between imaginary concepts and real concepts, based on an analogy with the delightfully rich vocabulary and theoretical framework provided by the math I was learning in class. As I continued writing the novel, I started to see how I could clarify my understanding of the Universe if I thought about it within a more mathematical framework. Before I did this, I often felt like I wore two hats, my "Christian hat" and my "scientist hat". I felt like I held two sets of somewhat conflicting beliefs in my mind at the same time. Then I read the book "Flatland", written by Edwin Abbott in 1884. It is a short and rather strange book about a square who lives in two dimensions who is visited by a sphere who lives in three dimensions. It opened my mind to think about the possible geometries of Heaven and Earth and how that fits into the context of modern physics. It is not in the least a "religious" book, and it has a lot of other stuff in it about Victorian society and stuff, but I think that makes it a very good way to allow scientifically-minded people to consider a broader picture of reality without having to sweat the details of the historical development of the Christian religion.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Day 18: It's a Trap
Monday. 2.18.13 5:38 pm
So today I was actually doing work. Hard to believe, I know. For the second time since Lent began, I managed to get out of bed before 8 am. SACRIFICE.

There are like five papers that I simply MUST write, but I don't have time to write any of them, and the ones I really want to write aren't the ones I'm being paid to write. :C

I had a lovely lunch with my friend Victor the Russian today, along with the our resident Spaniard. I like to spell his name Viktor, and apparently everyone else in the lab likes to spell it that way, too. He asked, "But isn't my way of spelling Victor more common?" and we said, "Yeah, but VIKTOR just seems more RUSSIAN." Especially when you pronounce it Wiktor.

Wiktor is from Siberia. Apparently his town is only an hour away from Chelyabinsk. His friends all saw the meteor in the sky apparently. This weekend everyone went out to the woods near where the meteor landed to look for pieces. I asked if they found anything in the woods and he said that they found "something" out there in those woods, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. I told him that by the next time he visited Siberia all of his friends would have super powers. At first he would regret that he wasn't with them when they found The Object, but soon it would become clear that all of their brains were being eaten from the inside out and he would actually be the only survivor. He likes it when I talk about his friends like that.

He said that it was funny, because EVERYONE'S windows were broken. He and all of his friends were saying that a lot of people probably just busted their windows with a crowbar after the fact so that they could collect insurance money, because Russia.

I told him that I wanted to go to this comedy show that is going to take place in the basement of the cathedral of Saint Sulpice. He was like, "A bit suspicious to have a comedy show in the crypt of a cathedral. Remember what happened to Pussy Riot when they tried to have a show in a church?"

Me: "So... do you think this is a trap?"

Wiktor: "If it were in Russia, it would definitely be a trap."

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

Day 17: Inhabiting Bodies
Sunday. 2.17.13 3:47 pm
So I walked all over town today. AAAaaAaAaall up over town.

Last night I went to a modern dance show. It was pretty cool. It definitely challenged the latent gender biases which I previously thought that I did not have. One cool thing about the show was that it involved a huge amount of non-sexual, non-violent touching, of which I feel like our culture has too little. The dancers moved their bodies in ways that I never thought about moving a body, which made me think, like they always say of our minds, that we only use about 10% of their capability. We have an entire world to explore, but our bodies tread on worn out cow-paths from position to position and function to function. The friend that I went with said that there was a whole technique that performance artists used to inhabit their own bodies in different ways. I can't imagine trying to inhabit my own body in a different way, but she reminded me that each of us does something like this when we change clothes. Are you wearing sport clothes? Fancy clothes? Nail polish? How does this change the way that you inhabit your body?

Since I'm more familiar with traditional dance, I kept trying to figure out what their movements were supposed to symbolize... are they fighting? Planting seeds? Waltzing? Courting? As soon as I felt like I had figured it out, the dancers would do something to throw me off again. I felt like it was a microcosm of our post-modern urban reality where all of our interactions have grown so far from their pastoral roots that what was one a stylized representation of a traditional behavior is now a hyper-stylized flourish with no underlying meaning left at all.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. Since when do I "get" modern dance? Since when do I use terms like "gender bias" and "post-modern urban reality"? What has become of me?

Don't worry, I'll shortly return to the theme of existentialism and depression, because both of them got a bit shortchanged in my prior entry about them.

But now I'm tired. Because I walked all up over town.

Goodnight.

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

Day 16: Sandwiches
Saturday. 2.16.13 11:36 am
Today was Sandwich Ministry Saturday.

We saw a man with a sign that said, "I'm hungry"

Me: Would you like a juice box?
Homeless Man: Yes, thank you.
My Friend: Would you like a sandwich?
HM: I would like the drink but not the sandwich.
My Friend: Oh, you don't want the sandwich?
HM: I would like to eat the sandwich, but... I don't have any teeth. I can't chew things.
Us: Oh.
My Friend: What do you usually eat?
HM: Soup... drinks.... Thank you so much for the drink.

No wonder the poor man is hungry

:C

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

Day 15: Disasters
Friday. 2.15.13 5:03 pm
Over Christmas I let a random stranger from church store some stuff in my basement and in my storage space. She had to change apartments and she was going home for a month so she didn't want to pay Parisian rent during that time. Apparently over Christmas her grandma died, and then she's been having a real hard time getting her deposit back from her landlord, among other difficulties. She wrote a thank-you note to me on the church Facebook page. Now when I go to church all these people are like, "Oh, wait, I know your name... you're the angelic saint that I read about on the Facebook page".

I'm like, "uh... not really."

In other news, a giant meteor hit Russia. Which is awesome, unless you are two of my most contrarian friends, in which case you can't say that meteorites hitting Russia is awesome because some people got glass in their beards:

"I went to see what that flash in the sky was about," recalled resident Marat Lobkovsky. "And then the window glass shattered, bouncing back on me. My beard was cut open, but not deep. They patched me up. It's OK now."

I would respect their positions except for the fact that this is the first time they've given even the tiniest crap about anyone getting hurt anywhere.

It's not awesome because people got hurt, it's awesome in spite of the fact that people got hurt. Just like when the tsunami in Japan caused a giant maelstrom and you're like, "Oh my Lord I hope everyone is ok... and that maelstrom is AWESOME"

Or when you see an entire Norwegian hillside become liquified:

And you're like whaaaa? You can skip to about 8:25 if you don't feel like listening to the awesome British guy. Around 18 is also cool.

I told my French colleague that since they finished taking the masterpieces from the basement of the Louvre in case of a flood that I now wouldn't mind seeing the flood happen before I left. She said very seriously, "That's so selfish."
I was like, "Oh for Pete's sake, I'm joking." Geeeez.

Oh well, I'm a saint and the devil.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

To Mars, With Love
Thursday. 2.14.13 10:59 am
I am still working on my secret paper. It requires me to comb through hundreds of utterly gorgeous images of the surface of Mars while listening to crazy latin music. Many of the things that I am seeing on the surface of Mars are things that have never before been seen by any human eye. I feel the splendor of exploration, the sheer delight of discovery.

I wish I could research these kinds of mysteries forever, no longer in secret.

Soon.


Soon.


Mars and I will be together at last.

Comment! (4) | Recommend!

Day 13: Winning the Future
Wednesday. 2.13.13 4:59 pm
Valentine's Day is coming!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I painted my nails red, pink, and purple. I invited some people to go to a cool museum of technology with me. It seems like a kind of "steam punk" museum, judging from the website and the metro stop. Afterwards we're going to come back to my place and drink champagne and eat Ben and Jerry's and rootbeer. Yeaaaaaah!

I was looking for funny Christian valentines because I was writing an email to my church friends, and I found this old fashioned humor video "How to Make the Most of Being Single and Christian". It was pretty funny, but while I was watching it my friend came in to ask a technical question about the model. I just left it running because whatever, he could see that I was watching a funny old how-to video, nbd. But after he was gone I realized that it said in really big letters, "HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF BEING SINGLE AND CHRISTIAN". Shit.

Well, anyway, here are some of the Valentines I found:





I'm listening to the State of the Union Address right now. I have to admit that I had to yell, "THAT'S A LIE!" several times in my empty apartment.



Here are the three things I took away from it:

1. I'm really glad Joe Biden isn't the president.
2. John Boehner is kinda hot, no? No? Ok then. Just a little?
3. At least this year we're not "winning the future".

And now, a word from Stephen Colbert:

Comment! (5) | Recommend!

Day 12: The Quick and the Dead
Tuesday. 2.12.13 1:08 pm
Today I went for a run again. I ran to a cemetery. Then a guy yelled at me because he thought I was going to jog through the cemetery. To be fair, I was considering jogging through the cemetery when he yelled at me. I really liked the tombstones with pictures of the people who died on them. I thought it was kind of cool to actually be able to see what the people looked like, and, if they were buried with their relatives, what traits ran through the family. There were even a couple that told you how the person died, which I would definitely put on my tombstone and in my obituary unless it was "syphilis" or something. Some people put cute little poems or sayings or something. A lot of people had ceramic flowers, which I thought was kind of against the point of putting flowers on graves.... I think cut flowers on graves are beautiful because they are ephemeral, just like human life.

I've been working all day on my secret paper on my favorite part of Mars. I gave myself until the end of February to finish it, but February is such a short month! Oy! On the plus side I am doing my favorite activity, which is staring at picture of Mars for hours at a time.

Off I go to pizza night at the church!

Comment! (14) | Recommend!

Zanzibar's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

NuTang is the first web site to implement PPGY Technology. This page was generated in 0.042seconds.

  Send to a friend on AIM | Set as Homepage | Bookmark Home | NuTang Collage | Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Link to Us | Monthly Top 10s
All content � Copyright 2003-2047 NuTang.com and respective members. Contact us at NuTang[AT]gmail.com.