atoms into suns

Waaaay back, I answered some interview questions and Daniela bravely stepped up to be subjected to my questions. Here they are, finally:

* You're originally from Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, right? Where all have you traveled to? What are your favorite places?

* If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?

* Describe your perfect Feast. (This question was stolen/paraphrased from Umm Yasmin)

* There's often tension between the mystical and more orthodox sides of faith. Do you think this is inevitable, or can there be a balance? If they can't be balanced, which is more important?

* Okay, I give up. What on earth is a gaddar?

---

Update: Daniela's answering in installments. Here are her responses to Questions 1, 2, and 3.

I just saw something tonight that got me thinking, again, about the Second Commandment, which I learned as, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." I was taught that that meant that using the names of God or Jesus as exclamations or expletives was a sin. Sure, I may have been taught a little more, but that's what I remember.

Once I got older and started thinking about these things again I suspected that what I'd been taught may not cover it all. I eventually decided that I thought it really meant that God really doesn't want us attaching His Name to our doings in order to give them a sense of legitimacy -- especially when we fallible humans can never quite be sure that what we're doing is really what God wants.

I liked this interpretation and stuck with it for a long time.

Tonight, as I said, I saw something that made me start wondering about it again, so I decided to do a little research, never suspecting the can of worms I'd open up.

First off, I'd forgotten that the Ten Commandments are given two or three times in the Bible. In any case, the relevant passages in my NIV Bible are:

You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

--Exodus 20:7, same as Deuteronomy 5:11

The footnote (okay, it's my NIV Study Bible) says:

20:7 misuse the name of the Lord. By profaning God's name -- e.g., by swearing falsely by it (see Lev 19:12; see also Jer 7:9 and NIV text note), as on the witness stand in court. Jesus elaborates on oath-taking in Mt 5:33-37.

And here in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (I was raised Catholic), it seems to say that we're not supposed to lie under oath nor "use it for trivial matters". (But hey, it's 2:30am, so my interpretation/paraphrase could be wrong.)

Religious Tolerance has a section on possible interpretations (scroll down), including:

• This verse originally meant that one is not to use the name of God for "any frivolous or malicious purpose or in magic."
• Until recently, the phrase "taking God's name in vain" related to contracts. They were sworn "in the name of the Lord". If the terms of a contract were broken, the offending party was said to have taken "the Lord's name in vain."
• Again, the Westminster Larger Catechism interprets this Commandment broadly to include believing in false doctrines or opposing God's truth.
• Today, it is often mistakenly interpreted as prohibiting swearing. This has nothing to do with its original meaning.

And heck, just to add more to the mix, the Religious Tolerance site offers several verses of the Qur'an for comparison:

2:224: Do not use God's name in your oaths as an excuse to prevent you from dealing justly.
73:8: Remember the name of your Lord and devote yourself to Him exclusively.

76:25 Glorify the name of your Lord morning and evening.

So now we seem to be up to several possible interpretations and variations of interpretations:

• Don't lie under oath
• Don't take an oath just to make yourself sound more honest than you are
• Don't break contracts
• Don't use the Lord's name for trivial matters
• Don't use the Lord's name to make it sound like what you're doing is His command
• Don't believe in false doctrines
• Devote yourself to God
• Don't swear

There may be more, but, like I said, it's the middle of the night and this is all my brain can handle right now.

So basically, my question to all of you is this: What's your interpretation of this Commandment?

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!

The plane ride back was miraculously uneventful and the kids made friends with people all around us on the plane (really!), but it was nice to finally land in Denver. We were the last ones off the plane, of course -- us and the lady sitting in our row. I asked her if she wanted to get past us and out, but she said no, she could wait.

She followed us down the aisle of the now-empty plane, and once inside she asked if she could walk with us to the terminal. Sure, of course. I wondered why. She was friendly, grandmotherly, but after herding Small Children through three airports (while carrying two backpacks and a car seat), the paranoia was still flowing.

Before long it became apparent that she didn't really know where she was going, so I figured that was why she was walking with us. I made small talk, asking if she lived here or if she was here visiting family.

Sad news, she said. Her granddaughter had been in a bad car accident and was in the hospital. I got the impression that they weren't sure if she'd live or die.

We came up the escalator to the place where we were going to meet Bill. She asked how to get to baggage claim, and as I told her, her family walked up to her with tears in their eyes. The kids and I kept walking, toward a happy reunion with Bill.

Prayers (energy, mojo, good thoughts, etc.) for the woman's granddaughter are welcome. Her name is Alicia, and she's in a hospital in Aurora (southeast Denver, Colorado).

I'm currently in North Dakota visiting family, so any blog posts I think about get half-written before I get distracted by other things. The change of pace has been nice, and I've been spending my time deconstructing David Blaine, eating lots of popsicles, learning to knit, catching up with friends and relatives, wondering why ND is currently windier than Wyoming, acting as chew toy to a teething baby, and marveling at how birds visit me when people die.