OK. I did this on Facebook, and my answers there were rambling and long-winded... er, long-fingered? Hwhatever. Probably because I was sick and I was just letting my mind wander. Anyway, I rewrote a concise version:
1. At one point in my life, my hair was 54" long.
2. I was homeschooled all my life until college.
3. I am a National Merit Scholar.
4. I have a BS in Physics.
5. As a child, I was terrible at math, and hated it.
6. One of my favorite authors is the anti-schooling zealot John Taylor Gatto.
7. Kurt Goedel was awesome.
8. I grew up without a television.
9. My parents basically met through a band in high school.
10. Everyone in my immediate family is musically inclined and accomplished to some degree. All 6 of us.
11. I enjoy singing many styles from Jewel to Kansas to The Supremes.
12. My Dad was the first guy in his high school to have long hair.
13. He was also a bit of a pyromaniac, despite his Dad being the Assistant Fire Chief of the city.
14. My mom grew up on a farm and was FFA queen.
15. My Dad's side of the family is supposed to be descended from Charles Dickens' tutor.
16. Instead of watching TV/movies, my Dad would always read to us after dinner; we read stuff from Dickens to Tolkien to Peretti.
17. I have read the complete stories of Sherlock Holmes.
18. My sister has read the complete works of Shakespeare.
19. I've read the whole Bible.
20. I'm a Christian.
21. I'm currently obsessed with flowers. I don't see why there should be any need for beauty to have evolved. I'm glad God made flowers, and put an appreciation of them in me. The modern world and evolution seem to share a frantic obsession with advancement. I love Matthew 6:25-30:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
22. I'm ambivalent about the value of technology (which is the complete opposite of being indifferent).
23. I'm usually indifferent to current events.
24. My favorite political figure to date is Ron Paul.
25. I'm married to great guy who has many of the strengths that I lack.
Original MySpace comments:
ReplyDeleteMaece: I feel like I should expand a little bit upon my feelings for flowers, and how I find that bears upon the possibility of evolution and the meaning of life. First, a word on beauty. It is often said that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Given that, it really isn't surprising that, say, an artist, would find his own work of art to be beautiful. By extension, it's really not surprising that humanity as a whole should find works of other human beings to be beautiful. From an evolutionary and/or practical perspective, it's not strange that men and women should find each others' bodies to be attractive, and likewise a bee has every right to be attracted to a flower. But what right have I to find beauty in flowers? They are not a product of my mind, or of any human mind, and I have no need to interact with flowers. Given that there are so many people around, it really wouldn't be surprising that an aberration such as myself should exist, except that liking a flower is not considered an aberration. Plenty of other humans feel the same way (though, most of them don't seem to feel as strongly as I do about flowers). What can I conclude but that beauty is a real feature of the universe?
Now, there are different kinds of beauty. You could say, for instance, that an efficient machine was beautiful, even though that beauty coincides with practicality. However, beauty needn't be coupled with practicality. For instance, if I was as attracted to vegetable gardening as I am to flower gardening, that would make more sense, if the world is purely practical. I feel that evolution must be practical. As I said above, aberrations can exist, but in order for them to multiply and survive and become widespread, they need to convey some sort of evolutionary advantage. Wasting energy on whimsical pursuits is just, well, wasteful. If you already assume that evolution is true, then it's natural to conclude that there must be some practical benefit to pursuing whimsical pursuits, even if we don't know what it is yet. Then you go about inventing what such benefits might be, and if something seems plausible, you'll probably just accept it because there's no good way to go back in time and verify your hypothesis. Which isn't at all the same thing as proving it.
I'll never forget reading an article posted on a music professor's door that said that the universal human appreciation of music was probably due to the fact that mothers who could sing pretty lullabyes to their baby's could keep them quiet, and thus were less likely to be found and eaten by hungry sabertooth tigers. Well, I guess sabertooth tigers have selective hearing, and can't hear lullabyes. Furthermore, if this were really true, then singing lullabyes ought to be a universal cure for crying babies. Has this guy ever babysat?? *rolls eyes*
Anyway, back to beauty. Let us forget the idea of evolution, and instead assume creation. In which case, what does my attraction to the non-practical beauty of flowers say about such a creator? Well, He must be pretty cool, and maybe I belong in this universe after all, and maybe I was actually designed to like being here, even if I'm impractical at times :D
2 years ago
FB Comments:
ReplyDeleteChristine Giles at 10:25am February 2
Hiya, Jennifer . . . I like Brussel sprouts, too! And spinach. But not beets (yuck!) . . . I love your nerdy intellectualism . . . but I'm quite the utilitarian, while you seem to be a dreamer. I completely understand your #1 . . . I'm kinda that way, too, though now that I'm older, I'm much more likely to just wear the darn thing 'cause I ... Read Morereally don't care what people think so much. Or maybe I just have more confidence in my own sense of style. Now if I just had more money to actually some of the stuff I'd like to wear . . . I wonder if Uncle Don would ever be seen in public with me again . . .
?
Jennifer 'Giles' Samson at 11:51am February 2
From what my Dad has always told me, Uncle Don isn't easily embarrassed, and it's more likely that others worry about being in public with him than the other way around ;)
Rachel Joy Giles at 3:21pm February 2
1 - you've changed a lot! you mean you actually don;t wear those crazy outfits anymore? why not?! :(
2 - you didn;t stop being boy crazy at age 9, you just went UNDERGROUND! ;)
4 - ok... from all of those people I think Jareth from Labyrinth is the creepiest. the other ones I could kinda see why... but HIM?!... Read More
5. if you can hit the notes at all it means that you're capable of hitting them well. just practice them more. and who knows, you might start to hit even LOWER notes... remember when I couldn't even scream/ screetch a high C? now I'm going so many notes above that! just because you can't do it RIGHT NOW doesn't mean you can't ever do it...
9. rofl... ok I've just recently discovered that my favorite colors are... pink and purple. lol so yes you will most likely be wearing purple in my wedding. sorry... :-P
19. you could always go get another degree online and not even have to LOOK at the stinky old proffessors and keep public education at arms length...
Jennifer 'Giles' Samson at 10:40am February 4
If you ever see a place that offers an online degree in architecture, pls send me the link. On the same note, Dad was telling me that a law license is transferable from state to state, and some states don't require you to earn a law degree, just pass the bar exam. I keep thinking it would be cool to take the bar exam for Louisiana or wherever it is... Read More, then transfer the license to Colorado (I think you'd have to take a 2nd bar exam here - but that's better than getting a degree), and become a lawyer without ever going to law school :P
2 years ago
Maece: The original, verbose version:
ReplyDeleteRules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged (well, that's what the rules say, but just see if Facebook lets you). You have to tag the person who tagged you.
(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people -in the right hand corner of the app- then click publish.
)
1. I have a love-hate relationship with attention. Like, alot of people think I'm shy, but I love singing on stage. Or, I'll think up a really wild outfit that I'd like to wear, but then be too reserved to actually wear it.
2. I'm obsessed with flowers. I pretty much hate roses, esp. red and pink ones. I also hate petunias.
3. I used to be boy-crazy up until I was about nine years old. I would chase boys around trying to kiss them. Then, I suddenly developed a capacity for embarrassment. Some would say I overdeveloped it.
4. I used to get crushes on fictional characters, especially bad or weird characters, such as: Jareth from Labyrinth, Caterwaul from Fieval Goes West, Hook from Hook, Data from Star Trek, Spock from Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes from the books, and of course the slightly deranged Captain Jack Sparrow. Ok, well, maybe I still do in a way. But, it's not the obsessional thing it used to be, and Adrian doesn't mind, so it's all good.
5. Rachel says I'm a contralto.
I'd love to actually be a contralto because Irene Adler was one, because it's a rare and unusual thing to be, and because they sound really cool! However, I can't hit the bottom notes of Toni Braxton's "Unbreak My Heart" without my voice cracking, so I doubt that I really am one :(
6.
I've performed a Led Zeppelin song (Rock n' Roll)
7.
I've performed a Kansas song (Devil Game)
8. I've performed lots of Margaret Becker songs.
9. I tend to hate really girly colors, like purple and pink. Green, brown, copper, ivory, etc are more my speed.
10. At one point in my life, my hair was 54" long. I cut it because Adrian wanted me to. I actually didn't want to, and we kind of argued about it for a while. I was worried that I would look "just like everyone else," instead of being extreme and unique. He just thought I would look better if I wore my hair down around my face instead of in a braid all the time. Now, I see that he was right, and I love all the fun things I do with my hair now that I couldn't before :D It's also caused me to go into a new phase of "discovering myself" fashion wise. I think the past several months I've felt prettier than I ever have in my life. Anyway, that was a long random fact about me.
11. I'm a National Merit Scholar. I'm simultaneously proud and ashamed of this fact. Proud because it wasn't the easiest thing to achieve, and people tend to admire me for it; ashamed because I've come to believe that standardized testing is nothing more than a measure of one's fitness for following orders, and responding to carrot-stick reward systems.
12. When I was a kid I was really bad at math and I hated it. When I took Saxon algebra 1/2 at our co-op in 6th grade, I went from a C- in one trimester to an A+ the next. Though I was glad to finally be good at it, it still took a few years before I realized that anything beyond basic arithmetic was actually useful.
13. I have a degree in physics. Physics is very interesting, I never understood all of it, and even much of what I once did understand, I have forgotten. In my experience, physicists (those who hold Ph.D's in physics) are more likely than the rest of the population to develop megalomania.
14. I used to dream of being the first person to win a Nobel Prize in physics without first earning a Ph.D. Now I don't really care.
15. Einstein was a really cool guy. I particularly like his quote about college "..after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year...It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom... It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted through means of coercion and a sense of duty." After graduating with his Ph.D, he had such bad grades that no university would hire him. So, he worked as a clerk in a Swiss patent office for 7 years before publishing 3 papers that rocked the scientific world.
ReplyDelete16. Kurt Goedel was probably the most logical person who ever lived, and Einstein was one of his few friends.
I think he was amazing, and so did Einstein ;)
17. When I was a freshman in college, I found the book Flatland in the OSU library basement and read it. Trying to visualize the fourth dimension seemed so fascinating to me. Knowing that the fourth dimension was supposed to be time, it was always fun to think about why time was such a different kind of dimension? I mean, the x y and z axises are more-or-less interchangeable. If time is really a dimension, shouldn't it be interchangeable too? Yet, it's not. Like, you can slow down and speed up in time, but you can't go backward or stop. In all the other dimensions stopping and reversing direction is not really a problem, at least theoretically. In practice, gravity does make it pretty hard to have unlimited movement control in the up-down direction, and since the Earth is always moving, we can't ever really stop either. So, what force makes us move in time? In all my physics classes, I never got an answer to that question. Of course, I wasn't very outspoken about asking it either.
18. I've been trying to finish The Federalist Papers for about the last 11 years. I guess "trying" might be too strong of a word.
19. I was originally an architecture major. Sometimes I wish I'd stuck with that. It would've been cool to spend my life building earthships. Now, I've accepted that I'll probably never do that. At least I finally got to see a couple of them, as well as Arcosanti, and Biosphere II (thanks to Adrian for taking me for our honeymoon).
20. When I was a kid, I wanted to be pretty much everything. A doctor, a store keeper, a ballerina, a singer, a Spanish translator, a writer, a computer game programmer, fashion designer, interior designer, etc.
21. When I was a kid, I was the pickiest eater in my whole family. I pretty much would not eat any kind of cheese, nuts, fish, salads, casseroles, dressings/sauces etc. I didn't even like mashed potatoes. My mom says I never even ate baby food. Yet, I loved the weirdest vegetables: pickled beets, brussel sprouts, and slimy boiled okra. I've changed alot. Recently, Adrian actually got me to try sushi (mind you, I didn't like it enough to want to eat it again).
ReplyDelete22. I didn't fall for Adrian because of his accent.
23. He didn't fall for me because of my hair.
24. John Taylor Gatto is probably my favorite author. John Holt is also very cool. I like "anti-education" writers. I'm usually more interested in non-fiction than fiction, though lately I've been making an effort to familiarize myself with some of the classics. I guess I'm just afraid of wasting my time with "non-reality", though the classics have enough popularity and influence that I guess they've become part of reality. Though, if something is really funny, I don't mind the temporary diversion from reality.
25. I have a sore throat today. Which is kinda cool because it means I don't have to go to work and stay on the phones - but I really hope I'm better by tomorrow, and that it doesn't get worse. Of course, I don't remember ever having been sick for just one day (except stomach flu), so that's probably not going to happen. While the Pollyanna habit of finding something good about everything is a good habit, I must have a pretty sad life if I'm glad to be sick :( I need to find a new job.
2 years ago