Poem (10.17.21)
Eyes wide open, I’m trapped under my blanket
Tossing and turning like an ocean under a storm
No poetry in my motion
No salvation in a bottle
No coolness in my pillow as a harbor from this affliction
When will sweet dreams call my name
And an intoxicating slumber steal me from this miserable wakefulness
To give rest to my eyes, and comfort to my soul
Removing from my heart this sense of undying dread
That looms over my being in the early morning hours
Before the sun scatters it away
Shadows drowning in light
Poem (10.16.21)
If I reached the horizon
What line would meet my eye
In the distance
Beyond mountain and sky
And everything in between
If I found the edge
What earth would I inherit
Softly speaking, in the forest
Branches breaking
Against dawn’s brilliant light
If we never spoke again
What silence would I reap
Drinking water, tasting dust
By a window
Near the sea
If I found eternity
What hours would pass
Years now gone
When we bloomed innocently
Under the morning sun
Old Navy and the Forces of Social Media (9.26.21)
I recently recall seeing an Old Navy commercial for plus-size women featuring SNL star Aidy Bryant. The purpose of the commercial is for Old Navy to promote a more inclusive brand. This makes business sense as the company’s ability to reach out to more people increases its potential pool of customers. But Bryant’s commercial would have seemed less commonplace a decade ago, even though it would have made business sense back then. This suggests that something in the wider culture has changed to enable the kind of authenticity-driven and just-be-yourself marketing that has become a standard practice for brands today. What forces have driven the change?
One answer involves social media. Social media offers a mirror for society, giving everyone a platform to express themselves. Marketers soon noticed the vast untapped potential of reaching out to people on social media for advertising purposes. They realized that rather than trying to sell particular images of how people should look, they should instead cater to how people see themselves as they actually are. And the truth is that women (and men) come in all shapes and sizes — even if some of these shapes and sizes are less healthier than others. So the result is that media and advertising is starting to reflect American society as it actually is than it should be.
The interesting question is to think of how far will authenticity go in advertising? What are the limits? What kinds of ads will seem commonplace a decade from now?
Writing Tips (9.23.21)
Simplicity. Write simply. This is an exercise in humility, requiring that you suppress the desire to unnecessarily use big words and fancy phrasing. This isn’t to say that these elements should be banished from your writing. Rather, you should use them to convey a particular meaning rather than to impress. Simple writing has the added benefits of being easier to understand and is more memorable.
Clarity. Say what you mean. This sounds obvious but can be surprisingly difficult to achieve in writing. Muddled communication happens when the recipient of your message didn’t receive the meaning you intended to convey. Often, clarity is lost when we use a pronoun where a name would have benefitted — “it”, “he”, “she”, “them”. So use proper nouns to achieve clarity. “John is coming over with Sam and then we’re going to go to his house”. Who’s house? Better to replace “his” with a name.
Focus. Focus one idea per paragraph. Think of a paragraph like a box and the label like a topic sentence. Put like-minded objects in the box that match the label. These “objects” are the supporting details. By following this approach, your writing will feel more organized.
Rewriting. Rewrite what you wrote. All of us have had the experience of viewing something that we wrote differently when we see it the next day. This is because are seeing the text with a fresh perspective and can therefore make the necessary adjustments to improve the piece. Any time a piece goes through multiple drafts, it invariably comes out stronger. If you don’t have the time to wait, then try reading the piece in a different format (for instance, if you wrote it on a computer, read a printer copy out or read a version on your phone).
Build sentences around verbs. Verbs are the most important part of a sentence because they express action. Strong verbs add verve to a sentence. The good news is that English contains plenty of strong verbs: pinch, shatter, sweep, mint, invade, strengthen, heal, destroy.
Reflections on reading “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson (9.18.21)
I just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. The book is 576 pages long, and it took me a few months to finish because it dove into the kind of detail that—while relevant in the interest of comprehensiveness—resulted in a lagging pace (the book also lacked literary flair and was written in a pedestrian style). Still, Isaacson’s book is worth the read if but only for capturing the life and personality of a visionary businessman who changed personal computing forever.
What particularly resonated with me about Steve Jobs was his fascination with the intersection of the humanities and technology. The combination of art and science, of beauty and logic, stimulates my own mind, and so I found it compelling to see how Jobs took this thinking to dramatic heights by creating an empire through Apple. I also appreciated that he was an artist at his core, driven by creativity while chasing a more perfect aesthetic, sometimes through a mean streak and a brute force at the expense of his comrades’ sensitivities, no doubt, but producing revolutionary products along the way like the Macintosh, the iPad, the iPod, and the iPhone.
I also liked the silent but impactful influence of Zen Buddhism on Jobs’s thinking, how he pursued a ruthless simplicity in his products to make them more user-friendly. His focus was laser-like and intense and gave rise to a technological and commercial genius while speaking to what’s possible when we cast aside the trivial from what matters. One area in which I didn’t connect with Jobs on, however, was the kind of hipster elitist culture that his company contributed to, centered around the “coolness” of Apple products (though to be fair, this is the result of savvy marketing). In all honestly, I’ve probably been a part of this culture at some point, but a part of me also connects to the horizontal, open, and nerdier culture attached to the world of PCs, where the aesthetics aren’t admittedly as sexy but the products are still sound (not to mention less expensive). In any case, I’m a believer in Apple’s products since I’m writing this blog on a Macbook while I look down at my Apple watch and my iPhone, two objects that are basically an extension of my body.
I also thought about time and how the hour I spent reading Isaacson’s book passed differently than the hour I spent surfing the web earlier tonight, even though both were measured by sixty equal increments on the clock. I thought about that wistful feeling I get whenever I finish reading a book, as if I’m saying some kind of goodbye, and how for a few moments I feel a stillness, silence, and reflectiveness when thinking back to how I first felt when I began the read. Perhaps this stillness is borne from the focus that comes from concentrating on the same task — reading the words on a page — rather than jumping from one hyperlink to the next, constantly indulging that part of the brain that wants the next rush, the next high, the next burst of excitement.
Whatever his flaws as a person, Jobs lived and died for something — which is to make great products. It makes me think: what am I living and dying for?
God, Religion, the Seasons, and Life (9.14.21)
As we settle into fall here in Missouri, I thought of how the tilt of the Earth is responsible for the four seasons. Because of that twenty-three-degree tilt, the northern hemisphere is further away from the sun’s most direct rays for half the year, leading to cooler temperatures that descend into frigidness and frost. For some people, these seasons and the gradualness with which they occur is proof of God, along with the fact that our planet happens to be at the perfect distance from the Sun for life to exist at all. Yet for others, these seasons and the existence of life on Earth were bound to happen on at least one planet when considering that thousands of others lack such conditions, a statistical explanation that eschews the recourse to divinity.
This leads to the discussion of whether divine explanations are sufficient for natural phenomena. Certainly, ancient religious beliefs were concerned with finding explanations for the behavior of the cosmos, though these gradually changed over time to incorporate–however grudgingly–scientific explanations that had greater predictive value. But even science had false explanations such as the geocentric model that placed the Earth at the center of the universe, something Copernicus finally supplanted by placing the sun at the center (while shaking the foundations of the religious establishment in the process).
Whatever the shortcomings of science, however, the method by which ancient scientists tried to understand the world around them was commendable since it didn’t content itself with revelation, but was rather was based on empirically verifiable observations that aimed to deliver the same results no matter the observer’s beliefs (additionally, science challenges its own findings in a way that revelation — which is more fixed — does not). Though this suggests that there may be scientific explanations that are wrong today, waiting to be superseded by something better, the scientific method remains a robust tool for acquiring knowledge for the reasons above. At the same time, however, even if we accept that many religious people today hold on to antiquated beliefs that fly in the face of science–such as denying evolution or believing the Earth is 6,000 years old–we must accept that an equally large number of reasonable and intelligent people, including doctors, lawyers, teachers, and engineers, continue to believe in God. Why is this so?
I suspect it’s because for many intelligent believers, science and religion are complementary ways of viewing the world. Science is the how, religion is the why, and there’s no reason the two need to negate the other. I also suspect many people continue to believe in religious explanations for natural phenomena because they provide a sense of beauty, wonder, and awe that science with its sterile approach cannot. Moreover, it’s easy to see how the improbability of life on Earth cuts both ways: that there must have been a divine intention behind placing life on Earth and creating natural wonders given how exceedingly rare such a circumstance is elsewhere in our corner of the cosmic neighborhood. But at the same time, I recognize with humility that there may exist more rigorous and logical explanations that very well could challenge such thinking, which I suppose is the kind of thing any person of faith should grapple with as a test of their beliefs. Whatever the answers, this much is clear: people seek explanations for the world around them, but some of these explanations are more reasonable than others. Let the fall begin.
The Pharaohs (9.14.21)
I was watching a documentary on the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, and I’m fascinated by certain aspects of these widely studied rulers. Starting with history, it’s startling to think that the First Egyptian Dynasty from which the pharaohs began their reign existed in the year 3100 BC, giving rise to a culture that endured for three thousand years and gifted to the world such wonders as the pyramids and the Sphinx.
I’m also intrigued by the notion that the pharaohs were considered intermediaries between the sacred and the profane worlds and were deified upon their own deaths. Of particular interest was the reign of Akhenaten from 1351 – 1334 BC, who rattled the existing religious order by abandoning polytheism for monotheism through promoting the worship of a single god, Aten the sun disc. Naturally, the Egyptian priesthood opposed this move, and interestingly, it was through the actions of Akhenaten’s son, Tutankhamun, that Egypt returned to its traditional polytheism. King Tut, as Akhenaten’s son is popularly known today, is of course the most famous of the pharaohs due to the discovery of his golden sarcophagus by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, adjacent to the Nile river.
I’m further fascinated by the purported intersection between the historical pharaohs and Islam and Christianity, with the Qur’an and Bible each mentioning an unspecified pharaoh as an enemy of the Israelites who opposed Moses. Interestingly, the Qur’an mentions Moses (also known as Musa in Arabic) more than any other prophet, and the story and ultimate drowning of the Pharaoh in the Red Sea is used as a warning from God against arrogance and tyranny.
In terms of monuments, the Great Pyramid of Giza is one of the seven ancient wonders of the world and was commissioned by the pharaoh Khufu who lies buried there. Made from stones weighing a combined six million metric tons, this 454-foot pyramid stood as the tallest human-made structure in the world for 3,800 years (by comparison, the 1,815-foot tall CN Tower in Toronto was the world’s tallest human-made structure for 32 years or less than 1% of the Giza Pyramid’s timescale).
Finally, though I’ve never visited the pyramids, I can imagine how being there must make a person reflect on the nature of time: how over thousands of years of history, all of us will meet the fate of the ancient Egyptians, vanished from the Earth, our bones turned to dust. The pharaohs in some sense are an exception, with their memories—and in some instances their actual bodies—having survived the passage of vast stretches of time, a testament to the human desire to outwit death and to outlast life, a fate that is guaranteed to elude us all.
Secular Religion and the New Age Movement (9.12.21)
I recently read a book called “The Universe Has Your Back” by Gabrielle Bernstein, a spiritual teacher and author with several publications to her credit. The book promotes placing your trust in the Universe and choosing love over fear to lead a happier life (Bernstein says the term “Universe” can be synonymous with God or whatever higher power you believe in). Her fundamental prescription of replacing fear-based thinking and judgment with an attitude of love and a positive focus appears sound to the extent that these are healthy mindsets in general. She includes several prayers designed to bring clarity and guidance and exercises to help you work your way through whatever negative emotions you may be stuck in.
Whatever the efficacy of some of her suggestions, however — the causal relationship between the prayers she outlines and a Universe-triggered improvement in mood and/or circumstances is questionable — the book made me think of how there is an appetite for spiritual solutions to worldly problems in the United States through a semi-secular religiosity, one that eschews any mention of Jesus Christ or Muhammad and yet includes reference to Hindu and Buddhist thought. While the book never mentions the Buddha, it reminded me of how the molecular biologist and meditation teacher Jon Kabat Zinn in one of his talks referenced “the Buddhists” in terms of their inculcation of mindfulness into their daily living. This is to say that there appears to be some link between those that advocate for meditation and inflections of Hindu and/or Buddhist thought.
What’s interesting is that Hinduism and Buddhism in their daily practice among adherents are often removed from the New Age context in which they’re mentioned in the United States. These are religions like Christianity and Islam: their adherents believe in supernatural beings, attend houses of worship, and structure their lives and communities around the practice of their faith. They name their children after their deities (Krishna, Govinda, Siddhartha), perform rituals, believe in superstitions, and turn to faith in times of difficulty and major life moments.
So how did these religions and their chakras and mantras find their way into the New Age movement in the United States? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it involves the hippie movement in the 1960s and its fascination with Indian spirituality. Indeed, it only makes sense that a movement which defined itself in reaction to the mainstream culture (hence “counterculture”) would similarly reject the moralizing worldview of (Protestant) Christianity, in which the path to salvation lies through the Cross and those that deviate according to particular interpretations are labeled as sinners or the damned. In comparison, Hinduism, with its recognition of numerous gods and multiple paths towards salvation, appears more tolerant (though anyone seeking an example of Hindu extremism should look into the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1992).
Returning to “The Universe Has Your Back”, one message I can extract is that we as people can never control all of our circumstances, whether that involves an illness, an employment challenge, or a natural disaster. Accepting this reality should at the very least be humbling, and to the extent that it forces us to stop trying to control things that we can’t, help us shift our energies elsewhere and thus bring some relief. If the Universe responds in kind, let’s hope it has our back.
Nike, the iPhone, and UPS (9.11.21)
I’m intrigued by the sophistication of business and the interconnectedness of the American economy, which is something I experienced in a normal transaction the other day that for many people goes unnoticed: returning a pair of Nike shoes through the UPS store. The transaction was simple and yet I appreciated the innovation, complexity, and planning that went behind making it so.
For instance, the shoes that I bought came from a company started by a man named Phil Knight–one of the wealthiest people in the world today–and his track coach in 1962 as Blue Ribbon Sports but later renamed to Nike. That company created a multibillion-dollar brand with the help of endorsements from the top athletes of various eras, most notably Michael Jordan. The value of the brand and its widespread recognizability is why customers are attracted to it and willing to spend money on Nike products.
To better serve its customers, Nike hired computer programmers to develop an app that I used to order and then return the shoes, all from a device that I consider to be the definitive piece of technology so far in the 21st century: the iPhone. The iPhone is the flagship device of Apple, delivering half of the company’s revenues in 2020, and as the premiere smartphone on the market, it embodies all that is revolutionary about this technology, combining numerous gadgets including a phone, a camera, an internet browser, a GPS, a music player, a flashlight, a wireless hotspot, voice and motion activation, face recognition, and 128 gigabytes of capacity, all in a sleek casing with a touch-sensitive screen featuring brilliant color and a powerful operating system running on a computer chip embedded within. With a few clicks on the Nike app, I was able to print a free return shipping label which I taped onto the box before driving to the UPS store.
The service that UPS offers–shipping–is a masterwork of logistics: somehow the company is able to take a package that I dropped off in O’Fallon, Missouri and deliver it to a precise location in another state in two days with no effort on my part. For this to happen, the company has to have numerous delivery trucks and cargo planes traveling to various destinations, which means it also has to take things into account like fuel prices, the weather, and local traffic patterns. Of course, someone has to drive the truck, fly the plane, and scan the package at a facility, meaning my transaction that began earlier this week with the desire to buy a pair of Nikes, executed through a few clicks on an app, triggered a chain reaction that brought into play the products and services of the three companies that I mentioned (though I could have also mentioned others).
What struck me about this transaction was its simplicity and how it was designed to make the returns process effortless for the customer. I dropped the package off on Thursday afternoon and received a confirmation email on Saturday morning saying it had reached its destination in Lebanon, Indiana while my money was also refunded. All of this points to the sophistication of business in the United States and the interconnectedness of what is the world’s wealthiest economy as it continues to innovate and deliver for we the consumer.
Film Review: The Matrix (9.10.21)
The Matrix is a landmark in the canon of science-fiction films. Its special effects were (and still are) cutting-edge, and its story is unsettling, intriguing, complex, and philosophical all at once.
The title of this stylishly dark movie by the Wachowskis refers to an elaborate artificial reality created by malevolent machines in the future, designed to distract humanity so that the machines can use people for energy like batteries. Indeed, the Matrix is so expertly constructed that the majority of humanity is blissfully unaware that everyday reality is actually an illusion.
This isn’t the case for computer programmer Thomas Anderson, aka “Neo”, played by Keanu Reeves. His existential angst and questions about the Matrix eventually lead him to Morpheus, a sage-like figure who offers to awaken Neo from his illusory slumber to show him the real world, which, as it turns out, is a morbid, dystopian place ruled by the antagonists. As a result, Neo joins Morpheus and his band of resistance fighters to battle against the machines, which manifest in the Matrix as suit-clad men known as Agents. Because the Matrix is not real, Neo learns to bend the laws of physics as if he were in a dream, lending the subtext to some of the film’s striking special effects scenes including dodging bullets.
Aside from obvious references like the names “Trinity” and “Nebuchadnezzar”, and the Hindu notion of Maya (i.e. that reality is an illusion), religious undertones figure throughout the movie including the themes of prophecy, truth, belief, and the epic fight between good and evil. In this same vein, Neo resembles a prophet who is called to a mission by those who believe in him more than he does himself.
The Matrix went on to spawn two sequels along with a third scheduled for release this Christmas 2021. Though there is something missing from this movie that prevents it from receiving a 100% rating, it’s more than worth watching for its special effects and intriguing plot about the future of man versus machine.
Logic and Creativity (9.5.21)
In his bestselling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey (d. 2012) discusses how the right half of the brain is more creative and the left half is more logical. He says that while one half is dominant in most people, the goal is to tap into both halves throughout your daily living. I’ve always considered myself a “whole-brained” person in the sense that I’ve always been creative and logical (though I lean right-brain). As a kid, art was my favorite class in school, and over the years I’ve devoted time to various creative pursuits including guitar, photography, cooking, and writing. I love creativity and I’m a fan of color, patterns, textures, flavors, sound, language, and light. At the same time, I’m an analyst and love to piece together facts to construct arguments and understand theories while learning about history, politics, economics, physiology, human nature, biology, philosophy, mathematics, and current events.
In this same line of thinking, I’ve come to appreciate how some of the best consumer products are made of a marriage between creativity and science. This is something Steve Jobs intuitively understood as outlined in his biography of the same name that I’m reading by Walter Isaacson. Indeed, the proof is in the computer: I’m writing this entry on a 13” Macbook Air, and it’s clear this machine was borne of a mind that appreciated the humanities and technology. Colors, fonts, and icons are emphasized in Apple’s software in way that heightens the experience and aesthetic appeal of the company’s products. And as Jobs mentions repeatedly in the book, his obsession with integrating the software and hardware clearly resulted in a robust computer whose value holds up in spite of years of use and which clearly has its own physical beauty.
But this relationship between logic and art extends far beyond computers. It can be found when the presidential candidate, relying on a carefully built political strategy, launches into a speech with soaring rhetoric, reaffirming the observation that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. It can be found in the hopeful art hanging on the walls inside the hospital, a sterile environment where measurements and classifications are enthroned. It’s also symbolized in art itself, such as in the paintings of Jackson Pollock, with their loud and rebellious lines of color neatly contained within the ninety degree angles of the canvas. Finally, this creativity can also be found in the body itself, whose functioning requires the interplay between numerous systems all designed to keep you alive, and yet whose shape itself is a thing of beauty, whether in the form of a newborn or an adult.
When Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”, he was referring to this interplay, affirming the importance of creativity over logic (which played a big role in his thought experiments where his mind was unrestrained and free to form novel connections). I’ve always viewed analytical writing as a blend of creativity and logic as well. I hope to continue exploring how these two orientations of the brain harmonize.
Asceticism and the Pleasure of the Soul (9.4.21)
I’ve observed that there are two kinds of pleasure in life: instant gratification and delayed gratification. The pleasure that comes from seeing a notification on your social media page is an example of the former, a pop of excitement that dissipates like smoke. Then there is the more diffuse and deeper pleasure of hard work, coming from some sort of delayed gratification like the view after climbing a hill or getting an A after studying for a test. This earned pleasure is an example of the latter.
I was thinking of these kinds of pleasure in the context of asceticism and religion. The world’s major religions have ascetic traditions in which the denial of instant gratification is part of the pathway to attaining the pleasure of God. For instance, in Hinduism, the Sadhus are holy men who have renounced their worldly lives, choosing to spend their days in spiritual pursuits aimed at achieving moksha, liberation from the cycles of rebirth and death. In Islam, all able-bodied Muslims fast from sunup until sundown during the month of Ramadan, denying themselves the pleasures of food and drink with the aim of attaining God-consciousness.
If elevated forms of pleasure are possible through asceticism, what must they feel like? I’m reminded of a passage featured in a song from DJ Cheb i Sabbah in which a Sadhu says, “There is a pleasure in being mad which none but the madman knows of”. I was also thinking that in the context of American capitalism, the mantra may as well be, “You can have what you want”. Whatever sensual pleasure you desire, whether it involves food, music, fragrance, film, or sex, all are available at our fingertips. But is it true, then, that we are indulging ourselves into a materialistic stupor that deadens the senses, and separates us from the higher pleasures of the soul that can only come from the kind of self-denial anathema to our wider culture?
Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond comes to mind: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Capitalism 101 (9.3.21)
Capitalism is a system of economics in which the free market determines how a nation allocates its resources. In the free market system, buyers and sellers “meet” in the market to agree on a price. That price motivates sellers to supply their goods and services in the hopes of earning a profit and it motivates buyers to use as little of their money as possible to satisfy their wants and needs while preserving their purchasing power.
The result is an equilibrium in which the supply of a good or service is equivalent to the demand for it as both parties in the aggregate arrive at a mutually acceptable transaction. If demand exceeds supply, a shortage results, which in turn drives up the price since people are willing to pay more for something that they want but which is less readily available (think of a popular toy during Christmas that’s out of stock). Conversely, if the supply exceeds the demand, then a surplus results which forces sellers to drive down the price since too much of something is less valuable than not enough of it (think of a clearance rack in a department store). An economy that would consistently produce surpluses and shortages without the self-correcting mechanism of price would be wasting its resources on things that people don’t want enough of while not allocating enough resources towards that which people want more of. This would be an example of an inefficient system.
The pursuit of profit is key in capitalism as it motivates entrepreneurs to invest their money in land, labor, and machinery to create a business that offers a good or service. Put another way, greed drives business. But as Adam Smith said in the “Wealth of Nations” in 1776, a remarkable aspect of the free market society is that even as each businessperson pursues their own ends with no intention of promoting the greater good, society benefits through an “invisible hand” which results in equilibrium, meaning everyone got what they want.
Capitalism rewards efficiency, meaning money is allocated towards its most productive use since this maximizes profit while minimizing expenses, both of which ensure survival if not prosperity. Capitalism also fosters competition, which forces companies to compete for customers, which compels them to offer something newer, better, and faster–i.e. innovation–which in the aggregate results in a higher quality of living for a society.
But as with the bright side, the dark side of capitalism involves the increasing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, which paradoxically can result in snuffing out competitors and thereby reducing competition. Not only does this result in less innovation — when you’re the only game in town, your customers have nowhere else to turn — but it can also result in growing inequalities that begin to compromise the fairness of the system. While inequality of outcomes is not necessarily bad, inequality of opportunity is.
Universe (8.30.21)
The universe encompasses the totality of all existence in an ever-expanding directionality, rippling outward from the annihilating force of a cataclysmic beginning. All there ever was, contained in an infinitely small point that exploded with the fire of a thousand novas. The dark vastness of the cosmos, the subtle humming of the galaxies as they spin, radiating light, and life.
Faith (8.29.21)
Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been intrigued by religion. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always had a philosophical bent, but something about religion and its concern with the ultimate truths of life, with what’s unseen and profound, has pulled at me. However, like many who have had my metaphysical inclinations, my doubts about the truthfulness of any one religion including my own of Islam began to grow because I wasn’t convinced with the forms of evidence used to support my beliefs.
For instance, Muslims point to the incorrigibility of the Quran, the fact that not a single letter has changed in the book since its revelation more than fourteen centuries ago, as proof of its divine origin. But on its own, there is nothing in that fact that moves me to belief. Even if this was true, all it reveals is that Muslims didn’t alter the lettering of the Quran (this is to say nothing about the fact that the meanings of words change over time). For if divinity is based on textual incorrigibility, then the United States Constitution is a divine document since not a single letter in it has been altered in over two centuries (and I suspect no letter will be altered in that document ever).
Additionally, one of my many questions about the origins of Islam concerns the fact that no codified version of the Quran existed until several years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. This causes me to question how many versions of the Quran were in circulation, and upon which criterion was the decision made to select the version in current circulation? Can we be so certain that the differences between the various versions weren’t substantive? The answers to these questions matter because they suggest that politics and power, as much as any divine origin, played a factor in the evolution of the faith, which means Islam is no different than any of the other major religions in this regard.
I say all of this with respect for Islam, for I believe a God that exists will appreciate the skeptic’s quest for the truth, which requires the use of one’s reason and intellect to slash through the half-truths and falsehoods that lure the faithful from the straight path. As I’ve matured as an adult, I can also see how religion serves as a source of comfort for the grieving, a source of hope for those that suffer. But on its own, it again seems like this has less to do with the veracity of religion than with its ability to function as an emotional prop to compensate for our psychological needs.
I’m a skeptical believer, a Muslim by choice but one who is still trying to reconcile reason with revelation. So far, I find my thinking in this regard melds with Reza Aslan’s, who says faith is a choice. I can’t prove my religion, but something about “proving” it seems like it’s getting at the wrong effort. I recognize my weaknesses, my vulnerabilities, my fears, and how all of them inform something about my faith. This is a story unfinished.
Movie Review: Passengers (8.27.21)
SPOILER ALERT: The black vastness of the universe frames the backdrop to this 2016 sci-fi/romance by director Morten Tyldum. Starring Chris Pratt as mechanic Jim Preston and Jennifer Lawrence as writer Aurora Lane, the movie takes place on the space shuttle Avalon as it travels towards a colony planet, Homestead II, for space pilgrims seeking to start a new life. The passengers are hibernating in pods for the 120 year-long journey, but a malfunction onboard the ship causes to wake Pratt up.
All alone, Pratty scrambles throughout the gyrating spacecraft desperate to find any signs of life, only to discover that all 4,999 of his fellow passengers remain in a deep, restful, air-locked slumber. Soon he befriends an impeccable bartender, Arthur, played by Michael Sheen, his only form of semi-human contact (Arthur is a robot), and the two develop a bond as Pratt shares his feelings over a daily drink. When Pratt’s loneliness drives him to the brink of suicide, he happens to see a pod with Lawrence in it and thinks of waking her up.
An ethical dilemma ensues since he knows any passenger that wakes up will die before the remaining 90 years of the spaceship’s journey are complete. But alas he wakes her up, only to hide the fact from her. An inevitable romance kindles between our two attractive space passengers, who learn to enjoy life on what amounts to a futuristic cruise ship until one day, the bartender, oblivious to the consequences, tells Lawrence that Pratt in fact woke her up.
Hysteria ensues as Lawrence brings to the surface various shades from her emotional palette: anger, betrayal, panic, disgust. The romance chills as Lane finds Winston insufferable. Then one day, another passenger happens to wake up, Lawrence Fishburne’s Gus Mancuso, a member of the ship’s crew whose brief appearance is designed to help pinpoint what went wrong with the ship and how to fix it.
Though the film has an interesting plot with moments of suspense, it has an isolating feel and needs to be further fleshed out, lacking the grandiosity and emotionalism of, say, Interstellar (a film that benefitted from a better soundtrack, no less). Most of the movie hinges on the performance of just three characters — Pratt, Lawrence, and Sheen — and Fishburne’s appearance is almost a tease. To be sure, Pratt is always convincing playing workingman characters like Jim Preston, but he fails to descend into the kind of genuine madness one would expect in the circumstances (though not for lack of trying with his scruffy beard), while Lawrence brings softer edges to what amounts to a one-dimensional, almost cliched portrayal of the writer looking for the greatest story never told, seeking to plumb beneath Preston’s exterior to uncover his motives for voyaging on this ship.
The spacecraft itself is very sleek and impressive, and the scenes of outer space, though brief, are awe-inspiring. Overall, this movie fails to soar to the heights of the cosmos, but as we dawn on the age of commercial space exploration, it offers a glimpse of the kinds of journeys that will one day be possible.
The Islamic State Strikes Back (8.26.21)
On August 26th, the Islamic State’s Khorasan-Chapter launched a horrific suicide bombing against Kabul’s international airport, killing at least 100 people including 13 U.S. service members. The attack is the deadliest against American forces since 2011 and points to the continuing terrorist threat against Afghanistan just days ahead of the U.S. withdrawal. It also underscores the internal rivalries within the Afghan militant landscape, and the challenges facing the Taliban in upholding its pledge of preventing terrorists from using Afghan soil for attacks abroad.
An offshoot of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS-K is the global jihadist organization’s South Asia branch. ISK-P competes with the Taliban for territory, bringing it into conflict with the Taliban’s own aims of territorial conquest (Currently, ISK-P’s strongest concentration is in the country’s eastern Nangarhar province). The organizations have different aims as well: whereas ISIS-K dreams of establishing a worldwide caliphate, the Taliban are focused on establishing Islamic law in one country, Afghanistan. Due to ISIS-K’s limited footprint, it conducts high-profile attacks in the capital where international media is present to suggest an exaggerated sense of its abilities as a terrorist organization.
Doubtless, the timing of ISIS-K’s attack has at least three motives: logistically, the throngs of people at the Hamid Karzai International Airport created an ideal target for suicide bombings, while the fact that the United States is scrambling to achieve its August 31st withdrawal gives the organization a final opportunity to embarrass the departing military power. Finally, the attack is designed to demonstrate the organization’s relevance after the defeat of its parent organization in Iraq and Syria.
As the Taliban make the transition from insurgents to the administrators of an impoverished nation of 38 million people, their willingness to condemn these kinds of attacks is crucial to instilling confidence in the international community of their so-called peaceful intentions (the failure of which may jeopardize crucial foreign funds from the likes of the United States, World Bank, and other global actors). As such, Reuters quoted the Taliban as saying the attack emanated from “evil circles” that the organization would deal with once foreign forces withdraw.
If the Taliban can make good on their promise, they increase their likelihood of gaining acceptance into the community of nations, especially diplomatic recognition from the United States, their long-elusive goal towards legitimizing their government. American forces are on heightened alert for more attacks in the days ahead, even as the Taliban have cooperated with the U.S. evacuation effort. ISIS-K will remain an actor in the Afghan militant landscape, but it will be up to the Taliban to prevent it from ever realizing its larger aims.
Anatomy of the Heart (8.25.21)
Note: I’m not a medical professional. Consult a doctor for any advice or information regarding your cardiovascular health concerns.
My fascination with the human anatomy has grown recently and I was reading about the heart and the cardiovascular system and learned some interesting things. First, the heart is a pump that moves blood through a network of blood vessels that connect to tissues throughout the body. Consider that from the moment you’re born until the moment you die, the heart will pump continuously, potentially over several decades, without any effort on your part.
Every tissue requires oxygenated blood for nourishment and releases deoxygenated blood that needs to be removed. The heart has four chambers that carry out these functions. According to Webmd, the right atrium receives deoxygenated blood from the veins. It then sends the blood to the right ventricle sitting below it through a valve, and this chamber pumps blood to the lungs for oxygenation. Next, the left atrium receives the oxygen-rich blood from the lungs which it then sends to left ventricle, the heart’s strongest chamber which then pumps the blood to the rest of the body through the arteries. The force of this action creates blood pressure.
Aside from arteries and veins, the capillaries are the third kind of blood vessel, the tiniest and most numerous in the body. Resembling tree branches, the capillaries connect to the tissues where they deliver oxygen-rich blood from the arteries and receive oxygen-poor blood for transport to the veins, which then deliver this blood back to the heart. Incredibly, the adult human body contains 100,000 miles of blood vessels—if laid out in a straight line, this is enough to wrap four times around the Earth!
As an organ, the heart itself requires oxygenated blood to function and this is delivered to it via the coronary arteries. A blockage in a coronary artery through plaque can lead to a heart attack, also known as a myocardial infarction, which is when the supply of oxygen-rich blood is blocked from the heart causing a part of the heart muscle to die. Numerous other disorders of the heart exist including arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), congestive heart failure (weak or stiff heart unable to properly pump blood), and pericardial effusion (excess fluid buildup in the pericardium, the sac around the heart), to name a few. Because the heart sits slightly to the left in the chest, the left lung is smaller than the right lung. Exercise strengthens the heart muscle, improving its ability to pump blood throughout the body.
What further fascinates me is how the heart and the cardiovascular system is one of many interlocking systems in the body that act harmoniously like the musicians of an orchestra to perform the complex tasks required to keep you alive. The human body is truly a thing of wonder.
Why are so many Americans are refusing to get the Covid vaccine? (8.24.21)
The coronavirus pandemic has killed 631,000 people in the United States since last year and infection rates are rising due to the disease’s more potent delta variant. Still, vaccination rates are uneven across the country with some states in the American south failing to reach 40%. This is unfortunate because the vaccine is effective: in June, the Associated Press reported that “Nearly all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. now are in people who weren’t vaccinated”. Why have so many Americans refused to receive the vaccine? There are several reasons.
One is a belief that the government is infringing upon personal freedom. Freedom is a paramount value in American life, based on the idea that individual choice rather than the dictums of government elites leads to a happier existence. Such thinking was influenced by the American independence movement, which culminated in a war of revolution waged against the British Empire so that the American colonies as victims of “a long train of abuses and usurpations” could achieve liberation from a distant king.
Flowing from this struggle was an abiding skepticism of government if not outright suspicion among large swaths of the public that has lasted to the present, especially regarding personal decisions such as those pertaining to health. Far from representing radical thinking, however, this suspicion of government is actually embedded in the Constitution. The nation’s supreme charter is remarkable for placing restraints on the government’s power in the Bill of Rights with the aim of safeguarding personal liberties. This includes the freedoms of religion and speech and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and self-incrimination. While the American experiment in freedom has delivered unprecedented results in the form of the wealthiest economy and most powerful nation in the world, the realization of this ideal has a dark side, too: it’s found expression amongst those refusing to get vaccinated, which paradoxically hurts the country through the freedom of choice.
Because the United States is a democracy, the people that are skeptical of the vaccine and refuse to wear masks and practice social distancing happen to be voters. This explains why the issue has become politicized. Unsurprisingly, conservatives—who by definition are suspicious of greater government involvement in their lives—fall disproportionately into this camp. And so it is that Republican politicians like governors Rick DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbot of Texas have defended personal choice on the issue of wearing masks, in particular. The problem with politicizing the issue, however, is that it means leaders are sending the wrong message to millions of already skeptical people (though to be fair, both politicians are recommending the vaccine). It would be one thing if refusing to wear masks and get vaccinated only put oneself at risk—though that issue alone would still result in too many hospitalizations. But given that Covid-19 is a communicable disease, ignoring these precautions puts those around you in harm’s way, too.
A third reason explaining why people are refusing to get vaccinated is a combination of misinformation, conspiratorial thinking, and concerns over efficacy and safety. The FDA’s Aug. 23 announcement that the Pfizer vaccine is safe for use will hopefully sway a substantial portion of the unvaccinated to get their shot. However, to be fair, an Atlantic article challenges the notion that all unvaccinated people are anti-vaxxers, illuminating such “structural barriers” including limited access to health information via internet access, distance from a vaccine clinic, and socioeconomic factors that disproportionately affect communities of color such as not getting paid sick leave at their jobs. The anti-vaxxers, according to this article, are a loud vocal minority whose conspiracy theories (including that the vaccine will implant a microchip into your body or alter your DNA) and misinformation are drowning out the saner voices. Still, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll revealed that 53% of unvaccinated Americans believe the vaccine is more dangerous than Covid-19, while 88% of vaccinated Americans believe the disease is worse than the vaccine.
Interestingly, the top ten states and territories (i.e. the District of Columbia) with the highest vaccination rates are all blue states from the 2020 presidential election, while nine of the ten states with the lowest vaccination rates are red states. This points to the partisan nature of vaccinations at a time when what may be good Republican politics is leading to bad public health outcomes. The coronavirus pandemic is testing the nation in a way no challenge has in generations. The longer a sizeable portion of the electorate delays getting a vaccine the more the virus and its newer incarnations can spread, causing more hospitalizations and deaths that are mostly preventable. If you haven’t already gotten your vaccine, now is the time to act.
Beat Bobby Flay (TV show review – 8.23.21)
Beat Bobby Flay is one of my favorite shows. It features incredible food, lively personalities, and an engaging competition with one of the world’s great chefs. The premise is simple: two accomplished cooks compete for the chance to make their signature dish against Bobby.
Amazingly, Bobby usually wins.
In the first round, Bobby gives the two competitors a single ingredient of his choice that they must make the star of their dish. They have 20 minutes to prepare something and never fail to impress. Two fellow chefs (or sometimes a chef and a celebrity) judge the first round and decide who will compete against Bobby. As a wordsmith, I love hearing how the judges describe the dishes using terms like “bright”, “sweetness”, “freshness” and “depth”.
In the second round, the show features a moment of suspense as Bobby stands face-to-face with the first round’s winner and asks “What’s your signature dish?” In response, the chef answers, “My signature dish is…” before taking a pause for dramatic effect and naming the dish. Then Bobby and his opponent have 45 minutes to cook the best possible version of that dish.
During this round, the two judges do something silly to distract Bobby, whether it’s making fun of him, stealing his ingredients, or praising his opponent. In the end, three industry experts judge the dishes in a blind taste test to choose a winner.
Bobby is a phenomenal chef. He often wins even when he makes a dish he’s unfamiliar with based on his deep knowledge of cooking techniques and a clear vision of the end product. And he almost always takes risks by adding a twist to even classic dishes.
Throughout the show, I enjoy hearing each chef discuss the techniques they use, and I’ve come to appreciate how cooking is an art form in which ingredients as disparate as Calabrian chiles, pickled shallots, honey vinegarette, and duck eggs can go into food in a way I never would have thought of using.
Good food, I’ve come to realize, is all about knowing how ingredients complement each other, how the sweet balances the savory and how acid balances fat. The chefs further demonstrate their creativity through their artful presentations with simple yet effective techniques like smearing sauce on a plate and sprinkling a garnish on top of their creations.
The only time the show falls flat is when the judges from the first round lack personality or chemistry (it’s obvious when a judge is purposely laughing out loud for entertainment value at comments from a fellow judge that aren’t that funny). And I roll my eyes when a chef’s signature dish is something boring like chicken pot pie or some kind of soup.
But the range of dishes throughout the show’s many seasons is vast so there’s something for everyone’s taste from Italian and Indian to Chinese and Greek.
Watching the show has given me an appreciation of how good cooking is honed through endless practice to create delicious food to savor and remember long after it’s gone from your plate. So if you’re in the mood to watch a master chef prepare, say, Spanish-style eggs benedict with olive oil fennel toast, smoked paprika, and lemon hollandaise, turn on the Food Network and watch Beat Bobby Flay.
Pakistan, the Durand Line, and the Question of Pashtunistan (8.21.21)
The Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan brings the Islamic fundamentalist movement back to power after a two-decade-long American war. During the course of that conflict, Pakistan emerged as a complicated ally that Washington accused of playing a double game: on the one hand, Pakistan accepted billions of dollars in American aid in exchange for logistical, military, and intelligence support. But on the other hand, Pakistan protected the Taliban, the very enemy the US was fighting against. A geopolitical assessment unveils the strategic rationale behind Pakistan’s enduring support for the Taliban in spite of Washington’s harshest condemnations over the long war. This is based on advancing the country’s self-interest to promote its territorial unity as a core element of its grand strategy rooted in history, geography, politics, and economics.
The Durand Line and the Question of Pashtunistan
Pakistani support for the Taliban is tied to the historical issue of the Durand Line and the question of Pashtunistan. In 1893, the British diplomat Mortimer Durand drew the Durand Line as the boundary demarcating the northwestern frontier of British India from Afghanistan. The line, which runs along the Spin Ghar Mountains, conspicuously cut through the region’s Pashtun tribal communities. A half-century later, once Pakistan gained independence from the British in 1947, Afghanistan claimed that the Durand Line was a colonial-era boundary whose legitimacy had expired and which had to be redrawn (Peshawar was once the winter capital of the Afghan Durrani Empire in the 18th century). Pakistan rejected this notion, explaining why the boundary became a perennial grievance that Afghanistan harbors against Pakistan to this day.
In the 1970s Afghan president Muhammad Daoud Khan supported the creation of an independent Pashtun homeland called Pashtunistan to unify the Pashtun regions on both sides of the Durand Line to irritate if not weaken Pakistan. Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto retaliated by sponsoring Islamist proxies to destabilize Daoud’s government under the theory that religion superseded ethnicity as a marker of identity and that Islamists would eschew Pashtun nationalism in the name of God. Bhutto’s successor General Zia-ul-Haq would advance this strategy by partnering with the United States in the 1980s to sponsor the Islamist mujahideen against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. Preserving Pakistan’s territorial integrity was especially salient in the minds of Pakistani strategists after the debacle of 1971 in which the country’s more populous eastern wing gained independence as Bangladesh with India’s help in Pakistan’s civil war.
Hekmatyar and the Taliban: Picking Favorites in the Afghan Civil War
One Islamist on Pakistan’s radar pertaining to Afghanistan was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. His ruthless discipline amongst his fighters earned him the favor of Pakistan’s intelligence agency that was managing the covert Soviet operation, the ISI. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Afghan mujahideen plunged Afghanistan into a civil war, first by continuing the fight against the tottering government of Soviet-backed Muhammad Najibullah, and then—following his government’s collapse in 1992—fighting amongst themselves. In turn, a warring Afghanistan would eventually complicate Pakistan’s ambitions under Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to forge trade and energy routes across Afghanistan linking Pakistan with Turkmenistan. When Hekmatyar failed to emerge victorious in settling that conflict, the ISI threw its support behind the Taliban, a reactionary movement of religious students (“Talib” means “student”) that was born in southern Afghanistan in 1994 under Mullah Muhammad Omar and which intended to purge the country of its warlords. With support from Pakistan, the Taliban in a mere two years ruled over 90% of Afghanistan. Even so, a resistance movement called the Northern Alliance under the resilient commander Ahmed Shah Massoud remained an obstacle for the Taliban to extend its rule over the northeastern Panjshir Valley. This movement of mostly non-Pashtun Tajiks and Uzbeks, ethnic groups that had chafed under the historical dominance of Pashtuns in Afghan politics, received material support from Pakistan’s archrival India.
In 1996, the Taliban government made the fateful decision to host the wealthy Saudi exile Osama bin Laden after he was expelled from Sudan. Bin Laden railed against the United States for its interventions in the Middle East, but it wasn’t until his Al-Qaeda organization bombed embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that the White House began taking him seriously, with President Clinton launching Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan targeting him (he escaped unharmed). Once bin Laden orchestrated the September 11th attacks against the United States in 2001, President George W. Bush confronted Pakistan with the choice to side with the United States and turn on the Taliban or to maintain its support for the fundamentalist movement and face the consequences. Cornered over its ally, Pakistan thus began a long and delicate balancing act in which it covertly preserved its relationship with the Taliban while becoming the frontline state in the erstwhile “War on Terror” by offering logistical support to NATO supply convoys and offering intelligence sharing in the hunt for Al Qaeda fugitives such as Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.
Pakistan’s support for the Taliban was essentially a continuation of the US strategy during the Soviet-Afghan War from the 1980s: covertly sponsoring Islamist militants against the government of Kabul. Only this time, Pakistan found itself on the opposite side of the United States, which was the primary sponsor behind the government in Kabul. Whatever threats and inducements the United States used to alter Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, the country’s politically powerful generals stayed the course with the same objectives in mind: promoting the rise of an Islamist client government that would abandon the notion of Pashtunistan, accept the Durand Line, and keep India at arm’s length to avoid encirclement. Now that the Taliban is back in power, Pakistan will want to see these objectives realized as the price for its support of the fundamentalist movement throughout the 20-year long war in a dynamic that will shape the geopolitics of South Asia.
The Strategic Implications of Taliban Rule for India (8.18.21)
In the geopolitics of South Asia, Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban is concerning for India because it empowers archrival Pakistan through the development of a client state. India’s strategy for keeping Pakistan off balance involved maintaining friendly relations with Afghanistan. Over the past two decades, India’s $2 billion in aid to Kabul has positioned it as the largest regional donor to the impoverished country, funding the construction of the Afghan parliament building and the Zaranj-Delaram highway. For former President Ashraf Ghani, engaging New Delhi was beneficial for Afghanistan, which as a weak state sought to diversify its foreign relations beyond Pakistan, its domineering eastern neighbor, while extracting development funds. Still, India never sent troops to Afghanistan in line with its foreign policy of avoiding involvement in international conflicts while seeking to avoid antagonizing Pakistan.
Even so, India’s outreach to Afghanistan has vexed Pakistan. Islamabad sees this as a means of establishing an intelligence presence in the country to coordinate with secessionists in Balochistan, Pakistan’s vast southwestern province and the site of major projects under the China-Pakistan-Economic-Corridor (CPEC), a flagship of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Seeking to thumb Pakistan in the eye, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned Balochistan in his 2016 independence day speech, while an Indian think tank seminar entitled “Balochistan Dialogues” in 2020 was reported to suggest that New Delhi “should provide all-around support to Balochistan”. Pakistan, for its part, claims to have caught an Indian spy in 2016, Gulbushan Yadav, who was allegedly coordinating attacks against CPEC (India denies the allegation). Yadav is currently on death row.
In the Indian strategic imagination, the link between Afghanistan and Kashmir is also of concern, with India worried that Pakistan can train and recruit jihadists for deployment in the decades-old insurgency against Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan territory. In any case, even if India “loses” Afghanistan, it pre-empted this development by “gaining” Kashmir through Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock decision in August 2019 to revoke the autonomy of Jammu & Kashmir, bifurcating the state into two centrally administered territories and thereby exacting tighter security control while encouraging demographic resettlement. Aside from calling for an inclusive government, India’s options are limited in Afghanistan. It can, however, try to establish a diplomatic relationship with the Taliban-led government, something Pakistan wants to prevent. How the Taliban will proceed with the India relationship therefore will offer a sign of the new government’s independent-mindedness when it comes to following Islamabad’s wishes, especially in light of Pakistani concerns of losing influence over the Taliban.
The Strategic Implications of Taliban Rule for Pakistan (8.17.21)
The stunningly rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban as the U.S. completes its withdrawal after two decades of war has strategic implications for Pakistan, the insurgent movement’s primary sponsor. Pakistan has long sought to shape a friendly government in Kabul that will accept the Durand Line as the legitimate international boundary and keep India at arm’s length to prevent encirclement. A Taliban government can advance these objectives, hence why Pakistan supported the insurgency in spite of the United States’s strongest protests. Indeed, Pakistani support for the Taliban has hounded American policymakers who failed to coax a change of heart in Islamabad, and yet all the while were forced to rely on Pakistan for logistical access for NATO convoys traveling from the Arabian Sea into landlocked Afghanistan. Now that the Taliban is in power, Pakistan hopes to reap the strategic benefits of its support for a movement that ruled Afghanistan for five years under Mullah Muhammad Omar before being toppled in 2001 when the U.S. invaded in response to the 9/11 attacks.
The Sun and the Earth
I saw a captivating sunset recently during a bike ride on a clear Texas evening that made me think of the rotation of the Earth. A bridge near my apartment offers a broad view of the highway going towards downtown Austin eight miles northeast. I often stop my bike on a walkway in the middle of that bridge to admire the view. I find pleasure in seeing things in the distance. Cars racing towards the bridge appear to move slowly from miles away. The Austin cityscape is faded but visible. And the sky, which remains the same even as everything else shrinks, offers a sense of grandeur as it touches the horizon.
The sun had already sunk to the west leaving a glowing orb in its place. Interesting to think that the sun at that exact moment was rising for someone on the other side of the world, while for someone else it was already high in the sky or perhaps hidden behind clouds. The sky was several pleasing shades of color, each fading into the other with such gradualness that it’s difficult to pinpoint any boundaries. But these warm colors faded into a blue of deep brilliance that gradually darkened moving east, giving a sense of the eternity hidden behind the fading sky soon revealed in the constellations. I thought of how the sun’s apparent journey across the sky was among the grandest of illusions when considering the sun is fixed — relatively speaking — and that it is our planet that is moving. I couldn’t blame the ancients for thinking our world was at the center of the Sun’s orbit.
With equal wonder, I thought of how the rising and the setting of the sun is a process that has taken place each day for billions of years, a powerful example of the unbroken consistency found in the physical and natural world. In the morning, I walked to the bridge and saw the sky awaken with light in the east as that same glowing orb peaked over the horizon, beginning the cycle anew.