Straight out of Curious George

It makes me really happy to know that some people pursuit the impossible. Here is the story of a professional hang glider who rigged up a helium balloon chair. It only cost him $1500 in fines.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,376721,00.html

Key Points about Fundamentalism

Our flight to Portland was cancelled today, so I took time to catch up on interesting reading. I read an essay entitled The origins of fundamentalism: toward a historical perspective by Ernest Sandeen (1968). In reading I realized a few important things:

1) I am NOT a fundamentalist.
2) Theological fads are only as influential as the people who support them.
3) I am terrified of writing. (This blog should help)

So what is fundamentalism? And how did it start?

Lyman Stewart, a chief stock holder in the Union Oil Company of Los Angeles devoted his life to bolstering the Christian faith through the printed word. Both he and his brother published a series of twelve pamphlets entitled "The Fundamentals." They printed and distributed over 175,000 copies of these pamphlets in the U.S. The essays they contained came as a reaction to Modernism, a theology of putting scriptures into their historical context and only living by the standards which seem to still hold true today.

Two groups reacted very strongly to this mentality by falling back on biblical innerancy. These groups, the dispensationalists and the Princeton Theologians, united to prove the bible's innerancy. They asserted 3 main points:
1) Verbal inspiration of the Bible
2) The inerrancy or every reference, statistic, and quotation in the Bible
3) 1&2 hold true for the "original autographs" of the Bible.
These three main points became the tenets of fundamentalism.

The "five points" of fundamentalism come from the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1910. This group never intended for their five points to become the benchmarks of fundamentalism. The five points Christianity has now adopted as its "fundamentals" are:
1) the inerrancy of scripture
2) the virgin birth
3) a substitutionary atonement (Jesus died to forgive all of our sins)
4) Jesus' physical resurrection
5) Christ's miracle-working power

Despite the youthfulness of dispensationalism and the Princeton theology, fundamentalism became the twentieth century theology most closely resembling nineteenth century theology. Fundamentalists focused on returning to the practices of the early New Testament churches, just as their fathers had.

Who were the dispensationalists? Sandeen did an excellent job explaining their beliefs:

"Dispensationalism refers primarily to the division of history into periods of time, dispensations, seven of which are usually named. The Scofield Reference Bible, the most influential dispenser of dispensationalism in America, named them Innocence (the Garden of Eden), Conscience (Adam to Noah), Human Government (Noah to Abraham), Promise (Abraham to Moses), Law (Moses to Christ), Grace (Christ through the present to the judgement of the world), and the Kingdom or Millenium. Proponents argued that God judged man not on an absolute and unchanging standard but according to ground rules especially devised for each dispensation. For example, under the dispensation of Grace, men are required to repent and turn in faith to Christ, while under that of Law they were commanded to obey the law."

Overall, an interesting essay with a lot of pedantics. I am not a fundamentalist because I have a much looser hold on the inerrancy of the scriptures, and a lot of rebellion against the absolute authority of the scriptures. The scriptures have about as much authority in my life as my father does right now. I have no lack of respect for everything they say, but I really like reserving the ability to pull rank and choose to set some parts aside for the time being.

I don't even know if I want to pray that that changes. I currently live like a fundamentalist, but I don't want to be one, if that makes any sense.

Consolidation: Proust was a Neuroscientist : part 1

Half of the reason why I started this blog is because I realized that I keep forgetting really awesome information because I don't take the time to assimilate it and write it down in my own words. Ergo, I plan to write simple summaries of the things I learn in my reading endeavors this summer.

Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer
Cool facts:

• In 1968, Dr. Motoo Kimura discovered that the rate of genetic change in species undergoing natural selection was 100 times the rate predicted by the equation of evolution.
• Why do identical twins have different personalities? Firstoff, the process of going from DNA to a complete structure doesn't happen the same way twice. This is why your left thumbprint differes from your right. It also explains why different parts of identical twins' brains will light up on the same task, and the brains will actually have different structures.
  
• Fred Gage discovered little pieces of junk DNA that jumps around the genome called retrotransposons. These scraps insert themselves into 80 percent of our brain cells, arbitrarily altering the cells' genetic program. The chaos contributes to our individuality.
• MSG specifically adds the flavor "umami," a Japanese word meaning "deliciousness." It is not dangerous for one's health.
  
• Odor receptors encompass over 3% of the human genome.
• Philsopher Henri Bergson's speech at Columbia University cause NYC's first traffic jam in 1913.
• Every time a rat recalls information, it must reform the idea and recode it, otherwise the memory shall be forever lost. Rats injected with a protein-blocker at memory retrieval lost long-term conditioned fear responses.
• It takes 3 months to die of sleep deprivation. Extreme insomnia, mad cow disease, and excellent memory skills are all caused by prions, or pieces of protein that can change form and function on their own.
  
• van Gogh drank kerosene, turpentine and absinthe on a regular basis.
  
• 10 times more fibers connect the cortex to the eye than the bundle that connect the eye to the cortex (all via the LGN).