Cost of communication

I was reading my sister’s post on language and it got me thinking about the effort we put into communicating. In contrast to sister’s skill, I always knew I was bad at language. English may be my mother tongue but I still remember problems with English pronunciation in first grade. Occasionally I still have problems though most peoples will hear what they expect to hear and not notice it. At most a few think I have an accent. Required foreign language course always seemed sadistic to me when they penalized beginners for spelling mistakes, as I was always severely behind in English spelling and to this day rely heavily on spell checkers. And as someone with Aspergers just mastering the mechanics of speech and writing didn’t lead to real communication. I was very lucky to be introduced to genre fiction where communication was stripped down to bare essentials, and it’s causes and effects all put down in black and white were I could study it and start to see patterns.

But for someone with Asperger’s syndrome I’ve been able to close a lot of the communication gap from my side, it could have been harder to deal with. Communication always has an internal cost that we pay to move our interior codes to symbols that are recognized by others. For people with a shared language there is not just the fact that they can communicate with each other but that they made an effort to arrive at a communication destination and that destination was the same. For our first language that effort was made mainly before we can remember and driven by instinct and necessity more than choice. But that effort was still there and consumed much mental power for several years of our life.

I would like to be able to speak a second language, and maybe someday I will manage to put in the time and effort to do that. But for now I'm just glad I can speak English, the language of my family, of the place where I was born. I'm glad that the people who move here from other places do generally make the effort to meet me and people like me at the communication destination we have already managed to achieve. Sometimes cherishing the amount of communication we do have allows us to really see things that never quite made it into and generally shared symbol system.

Rosettastone - Brtitish Museum
  Photographer: Nina Aldin Thune

To me there seems to be something elitist in an expectation that people should learn a second language just because. Aware as I am of those of us who cling precariously to the edge of a first language. If a second language is just a generic prerequisites of acceptable status, it's a drain of time and effort that falls most heavily on those that are already most marginal. I also think taking a language course in college just to satisfy the language requirement, surrounded by other people that were also just there to satisfy a language requirement yielded a very porridge return as far as comprehension gained for time and effort expended. The circumstances almost guaranteed that most of us would focus on short term memorization to get artificial test answers rather than working on true comprehension.

           Languages ought to be special valued skills that open up opportunities. And they are best taught in conjunction with the opportunity to explore those new opportunities. A specific language is a specific skill and should have specific goals it can achieve and specific values it brings. Studying a language without being able to envision a use to put it to makes acquiring a language much less motivating. It also makes it less valuable. We ought to value the specialness of knowing two languages rather than wanting make it less meaningful in normality.

φίλος

Part of why I’ve been away from blogging for awhile is that I just started a Bible study at my church using Living beyond Yourself: Exploring the fruit of the Spirit by Beth Moore. There can be as much as 8 hours of homework a week. But, not only do I enjoy fellowshipping with the other women at my church doing this study, I am also being stretched and seeing some surprising insights. A couple weeks ago we were covering love and looked at ἔρως (eros, romantic love), φίλος (philos, love in friendship) and ἀγάπη (agape, divine love.)

    In eclectic readings that included lots of authors influenced by classical ideas I’d encountered these different greek concepts of love before. Φίλος has alway been especially compelling to me. I’d read descriptions shared interests that created bonds between people. Friends that kept in touch with each other over decades, always invested in each other's challenges and concerns. Freinds that naturally maintained contact through marriages, moves and career changes.
    And these descriptions were compelling because I didn’t have that. Oh there were girls and later women whom I liked and admired who seemed friendly and welcoming towards me. We would meet through mutual involvement in various activities. I could get to hang out with them and discuss the topic that we shared. As I grew more skilled with social interaction we could have wide ranging general interest conversations and exchanges of personal hurts and triumphs. We would do favors for each others and be ready to do more. But though I would have liked a long term bond I never knew quite how to secure it. As soon as the mutual activity would end I would feel the relationship slipping away without that structure to keep us in contact. I wanted to remain friends but had a terrible time with the logistics of staying in touch. I would make intellectual models based on the relationships around me. But they felt so artificial and unnatural to me that I would end up executing them clumsily if at all.
    This has been a hurt in my heart. I could see this wonderful human experience being offered to me but I could never reach out and grab it. Αγάπη I could have as a free gift that I didn’t have to work for, that God offers to all. But my own ineptitude kept at least the highest versions of φίλος beyond my reach and that made it very desirable to me.

    In addtion to covering positive examples of φίλος “Living Beyond Yourself” used Luke 23:12 as an example of φίλος. Pilate and Herod bond over their mutual frustration and disdain for the whole Jesus situation. This, and a couple of other examples give of how φίλος can be used in a negitive light, helped me to see that I had been exalting freindship in a way that overvalued it. That I’d been idealizing it in a way that made it a rival to divine love in my mind. This bible study has made me more content with being who I am and allowed me to focus more great gifts God has given me.

mini Review: War and World History

      War and World History by Jonathan P. Roth is a audio course of lectures from the Teaching Company. The San Jose State professor takes you from pre-history to modern times in friendly engaging lectures that make it seem like you are part of his college class. It's a little longer than most Great Courses at 4 parts and 48 lectures. But this covers a lot of ground giving both the high points of history and also looking at the detail of the curiosities and controversies.
      Most world histories that I have read seem like unrelated stories just thrown side by side and not coming together until we get to modern times. But this book ties everything together, giving a sense of the world as whole throughout history, showing how developments and technologies traveled between cultures and impacted them similarly or differently. The course examine the causes and consequences of both general trends and regional differences.
      I originally picked this up because I like the history of warfare in particular and , as the title suggests, this course uses war as a unifying theme. However, not only does this work look at how the progress of war and it's aftermath influence wider history, but it looks at how the stresses and progress of wider society influence wars' progress and contribute to the causes of war. The focus is broad enough that, while war is used as unifying perspective, a good general picture of history is given.

I really liked this course and would recommend it to anyone interested in timing their sense of world history together.

Today's Lasangua

My husband and I both think this is my best attempt at creating my own Lasangua recipe yet:
My husband and I both agree that this is my best attemp yet at creating a no tomato lasangua


Fry together
Tbsp veg. Oil
About 2c. Chopped oinions
2 yellow squash
A large zucchini
a cup sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup chopped cellery leaves
Pound hamburger meat
T. Butter+T.flour+bouillon (made into roux)
t. Dried rosemary
t. Salt
t. Time
1/2t. Celery seed
1/2t. Margiorim
1/4t. Dried parsley

When cooked add:
Can of peas
Can of water chestnuts
Half can of cream of mushroom soup


In separate bowl:
Scramble 2 eggs
Add container of ricotta cheese
3T. Chopped cilantro
Parmesan cheese or Italian cheese blend

In baking pan layer:
Meat veg. Sauté
Mozzarella cheese
No boil lasangua noddles
Ricotta mixture

Bake in preheated oven at 325 for one hour.

This is posted from my iPad and I'm havering an extra hard time editing for spelling.

How should I continue this blog?

So this summer I committed to doing a blog with at least a post every Wednesday. I only missed one week, which considering How much trouble I used to have with essay deadlines in college I consider pretty good. Now the summer is coming to an end and I have Bible studies starting up again. I’ll probably change my regular posts to a different night as I’m looking forward to a Bible study on Wednesdays. As I consider if and how I'm going to keep up this blog I'm thinking of establishing a theme. So, does anyone have an opinion on what theme I should try?  Some ideas I have had:

• Book reviews (It would end up being a mix of general interest books and the Science Fiction I like.)
• Asperger’s Syndrome and my thoughts on my experience with it
• Original fiction (Could I finish a novel if I disciplined myself to post a chapter a week?)
• the Bible and my speculations from Bible study and looking at Theology
• Philosophy and general speculation

Any other Ideas of what it would be interesting to hear from me on? Which of these would you be interested in reading and commenting on? Let me know your vote in the comments.

Memories of St. Nicolas of Myra, Bishop and Martyr

I just finished reading Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, which is an anthology of stories featuring better werewolves and Christmas. So it wasn't required element in the story,many of the stories ended up featuring Santa Claus. What really caught my attention was that, while many of the stories speculated about either the real Santa Claus or where the story Santa Claus to come from, only one story based their version of the story on St. Nicholas of Myra, in fact no other stories even mentioned him at all

I remember as a school child recognizing that the Santa in Santa Claus sounded like it might be part of a saint's name but not being able to figure out which saint was mentioned. Tracing it back only to a figure in Holland’s folk tradition and not to the saint whose saint day is December 6. Growing up in the Protestant home, I remember Santa Claus being treated as a pagan figure and not knowing anything about the bishop and martyr who was steadfast in his faith and a champion of orthodoxy.

It was not until recent years that I finally found out about this figure discovering of that funny floppy pointed hat with a puffball was traditional in the area around Myra and that the red and white Suit was based on bishops liturgical garments. It was only then that I found out about three gold balls he gave as dowries help destitute orphans and about the stores of them saving children's lives

I found this information on the Internet pretty easily once I figured out where to look. I think it says something about America sense of history and about the sense of the roots of their traditions that this information is so little-known. So did you know about Nicholas of Myra? Do you think the internet will help people explore history and tradition or make them even more focused on what’s now?

St. Nicolas

mini-Review: Why Nations Fail

A while ago I became aware of the idea there was a mystery in economics. This is the way I remember it: For a long time technology would improve but this would just lead to a change in population so that the standard of living remained pretty much the same over millennium. But then, during the industrial revolution something changed and technological changes began to lead to sharp rises in living standards. All the explanations for why Briton in the 18th and 19th century was the turning point, rather than any other place of time in history, seemed unsatisfactory to me. With this intellectual problem came a practical one. For not every place that came in contact with industrialized societies experienced the standard of living gain.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson opened a whole new and promising view point on this for me. Looking at both political and economic processes as they interact with one another, the authors show how societal institutions can self perpetuate in ways that tend either towards wealth or towards poverty. Including how the problems of hanging onto power can pit a ruler’s own economic interests against the general economic interests of society. It looks at who well intentioned efforts to help poor nations can be ineffective or even backfire. It looks at the importance of empowering broad and diverse coalitions and developing stable inclusive political and economic institutions to sustainable economic growth.

The book is written in understandable and engaging style aimed at a lay audience. There are historical and contemporary stories that can tug at your heartstrings for call for cheering. It is a long book; this is a complicated theory and the authors go through lots of different examples to explain the subtleties. There is no quick fix proposed as the problem is not simplified into a one dimensional issue. I would still recommend that every responsible citizen read this book and give consideration to its ideas.

*The review was based on the audio version read by Dan Woren