atoms into suns

I walked into the bookstore the other day and for some reason wasn't able to make it past the first table. You know, the one they put right in front of the door, the one that has the shiny, expensive New Releases on it.

One book drew me in: a large photo book with a great picture on the front. National Geographic, so you know they're great pictures. The title was simply Work, and it was about people around the world doing the work they do to survive.

I started flipping through it, and one picture made me stop. Two young Buddhist monks, dressed in orange robes, holding out land mines in their hands for the photographer to see.

I stopped because while I've read the news stories about demining operations, I never imagined it looked like this. I had pictured troops in olive green, with thick flak jackets and kevlar helmets, with lots of specialized equipment. No doubt they're out there, too, but these boys were doing the same work with nothing to protect them. No vests, no equipment visible in the picture, only a walking stick.

In a way, it made perfect sense. These were people who had devoted their lives to a spiritual existence, to trying to transcend everyday life and help others do the same. But cloistered prayers only go so far. These kids were going out and doing dangerous work in order to save others. I believe that prayer is a great thing, but God still needs us to get up and do things so He can work through us, and these monks were doing that to the point of being willing to sacrifice their lives.

I stared at that picture for a few minutes in the store. I bought the book. It hurt a little to pay the $35, but at least I had a gift card for part of it.

Once I got it home, though, I found the photo that haunts me.

There is a picture of a baby. Grimy and naked, lying on the sidewalk with a cup next to her. Begging.

The caption simply says, "Baby left to beg alone, Guangdong, Shenzhen, China. 1992."

Where is this baby's mother? Her father? I know there are desperate people out there, so poor that I can't fathom it. But this? Who could leave their baby, alone and naked, on the street? I'd like to think that her parents care for her, that things have gotten better, that they really do love her like parents should. Maybe they put her there while they begged not far away, close enough to watch her, hoping to get more money from two begging cups than they would from one. I don't know. I involuntarily think of all the horrors that could happen to her while she lies there, defenseless.

There are people walking past, none looking at the baby. The cup doesn't have any money visible in it. The picture was taken 14 years ago. What is this child doing now? Shenzhen is one of the Chinese success stories now, with a business and construction boom that's transforming China and the world. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that this could happen there; there are desperate people in rich American cities, too. Besides, Shenzhen wasn't the boomtown in 1992 that it is now.

It's hard to tell for sure, but the baby looks like she's over a year old, even close to a year and a half. Why does she just lie there? Can't she crawl, or even walk? Does she get cold, lying on the sidewalk, naked? Does she cry sometimes? Do people ever play with her? Smile at her? Or do they just ignore her? Does anyone ever scoop her up in their arms and cry?

I wish I had a good way to conclude this, but I don't. I just keep trying to find the words.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Bibles-Oil.html

Seems someone has decided that

a passage from Genesis that quotes Jacob telling Joseph that God will give him "blessings of the deep that couches beneath"

refers to oil.

Call me crazy -- or heretical, or lacking in faith -- but I suspect God doesn't care much about oil.

My question is, if they don't find oil in Israel, will these people finally give up their overreaching literal interpretation of the Bible?

The link is to an NY Times article, which requires registration or a trip to bugmenot.

A bunch of news items have grabbed my attention recently, so I figured I'd clump them all together here.

Researchers tested drugs on foster kids

By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Government-funded researchers tested AIDS drugs on hundreds of foster children over the past two decades, often without providing them a basic protection afforded in federal law and required by some states, an Associated Press review has found.

The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren't yet available in the marketplace.

The practice ensured that foster children - mostly poor or minority - received care from world-class researchers at government expense, slowing their rate of death and extending their lives. But it also exposed a vulnerable population to the risks of medical research and drugs that were known to have serious side effects in adults and for which the safety for children was unknown.

What?!?!? Have we lost all sense of scientific ethics? Back when the story about researchers feeding mentally retarded kids radioactive cereal in the 1940s and 1950s came out, I thought that that sort of thing couldn't happen nowadays. Once again my faith in humanity takes a beating.

Do games and bad UIs account for rising IQs?

In this month's Wired, Steven Johnson talks about the fact that IQ scores have been on the rise for decades now, and seem to be accelerating. IQ testing companies need to "re-normalize" their tests every couple years, making them harder so that the average score remains about 100. There's lots of controversy over what, if anything IQ results mean, but Steven makes the point that IQ tests are certainly measuring something. Moreover, the area in which the general population is testing better are those tests that focus on reasoning out puzzles that resemble bad user-interfaces and/or video games.

If IQ scores keep going up, why do SAT scores keep going down? Because we're too busy playing games and programming VCRs and not busy enough reading and doing math? Naaah.

Student Organizes Time Traveler Conference

BOSTON - Attention, time travelers: Amal Dorai hopes you enjoyed the party he's throwing this weekend. Dorai, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is hosting a Time Traveler Convention on campus this Saturday. Make plans now, because it's the last such party.

This, this is why I lived in East Campus. I miss this kind of weirdness.

Trivia note: In the picture in the article, immediately behind his head is the door I used to go out every day on my way to class! Yay!

A while back*, I volunteered to have Umm Yasmin give me five interview questions to answer here. Now, the next five people to tell me in the comments that they'd like to be interviewed (are there even five people who read this thing?) will, in turn, become my victims, answer the questions on their blogs and offer to interview five of their readers, and so on. Here goes:

* Have you done any Ruhi Institutes? If so, what did you think of them?

I did Book 1 (Reflections on the Life of the Spirit) last summer and am in the middle of Book 2 (Arising to Serve) right now. My first experience with Ruhi was a very brief introduction several years ago when Ruhi was new in the US. Frankly, I wasn't impressed. It seemed really simplistic -- read this quote, rephrase it, ask a question by rephrasing it again, talk very briefly about what it means, move on to the next quote and do the same thing. For that reason, I resisted doing more with it for quite a while, even though several people reassured me that I'd just had a bad experience and it really was great fun.

Finally, I gave in and did a study circle for Book 1, and had to grudgingly admit that I liked it. There was still a little bit of the simplistic feel, but we moved beyond that and into some really great conversations about meanings, implications, and real-life applications. We also got to know each other a lot better. Now that I'm doing Book 2, we don't spend any time at all on the simplistic stuff. The focus is on getting in-depth into the meanings and themes of the Writings and how to apply them to our lives.

Perhaps the part I like best, though, is that it isn't just about study. Each study circle has a service and a social component. Each group chooses a service project to perform together, and also spends time just socializing. For me, that's important, because I believe faith is supposed to be lived, not just talked about. The social aspect is great for building community, which is such an important theme in the Baha'i Faith.

[Edit later, since I forgot to mention this part:]

It's also nice to finally have a set of courses for people to go through to get a systematic, solid basis in what the Baha'i Faith is all about. When I became a Baha'i I didn't really know where to look to learn more. People helped, but there was no system to it, so I felt like I was always missing important parts. Plus, Ruhi works no matter what level of understanding the person is at, from those just starting to learn about the Faith to those who've been knowledgeable Baha'is their whole lives. In fact, it seems to work better that way.

* Is your hubby a Baha'i? If so, was he born into a Baha'i family or was he a convert? If not, how do you find having a non-Baha'i partner?

Bill became a Baha'i about a month after I did. On the night I declared, he congratulated me and then mused that he should really learn something about the Faith. I gave him a book or two, which he devoured. Before long, he came to the conclusion that he already believed in everything the Faith taught, so he declared.

* How big is your local Baha'i community and what do you do together on a regular basis?

The community I live in has about 20 people -- 15 or so adults, and five youth and children. Beyond that, our cluster contains something like seven or eight communities for, oh, 150 people or so.

We have all the standard activities -- Feast every 19 days, Assembly meetings, and such. We've also committed to a couple of service projects working with nonprofit groups and maintaining a small meditation garden in a city park. The community is fairly close-knit, so dinners, hanging out, and other non-official social events are pretty common, too.

Within the cluster, we have weekly devotionals and children's classes, study circles, and periodic cluster meetings to learn what everyone else is working on and how to work together better. We also usually celebrate holy days as a cluster rather than in our individual communities.

* What does equality of the sexes mean to you?

It's evolved over time. When I was little I couldn't quite understand all the fuss -- if women wanted to be equal, then why didn't they just go to school and get the jobs that men had now, and then it'd all be equal, right? Sometime during college I realized that it wasn't that easy.

Since becoming a mother, I've come to the conclusion that men and women sometimes have different roles that one naturally does better than the other. For example, taking care of a baby involves nursing, and babies seem to naturally prefer their mothers for a while. On the other hand, if I remember right, the Baha'i Writings say that the father is responsible for providing for the education of the children. Both parents have specific, equally important roles in the lives of their children. I think this carries through to the rest of society. The roles of men and women may not be exactly the same, but they are equally important. I think true equality of the sexes is when both men and women acknowledge this and respect each others' roles. On a higher level, I think it also involves the understanding that we're all created by God and deserve equal levels of love and respect.

This is not to say that women aren't supposed to be engineers or that there shouldn't be stay-at-home dads. I think every person and every family has to figure out what works best for them, and that each situation is different.

* Have you been to Haifa for a pilgrimage? If so, what is your most outstanding memory of your pilgrimage?

We're scheduled to go next February, so instead of outstanding memories I'll tell you what I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to finally seeing this place that I've heard so much about and turn to every day in prayer. To looking up the slope of Mount Carmel at the Terraces and the Shrine of the Bab, shining in the sunlight. To looking out over the bay to Akka. To walking through the gardens at Bahji. To feeling that radiance from deep inside that comes from seeing, feeling, touching places imbued with such spirit. ("Blessed is the spot...")

On a more worldly level, we're planning to meet up, maybe in London, with a close friend who moved to New Zealand a few years ago and who is scheduled for the pilgrimage after ours. Also, this will be my first trip outside North America -- and I've been dreaming of travel since I was young -- so I'm looking forward to seeing a bit of the world and being surrounded by a culture not my own.

*That was a while ago, and in the meantime I thought I'd do this quick little upgrade to the site and then post my answers. Instead, I got swept up in that little upgrade that took a couple weeks to complete, and, well, here I am posting my answers rather tardily. My apologies.

You know you've just gotten an email from a hip Australian Muslim when the email starts out, "Salams and g'day lovely bods". :)

(I'm working on the interview questions, Maryam, and will post them as soon as I can.)