The System of the World and Shinto

This week I finished The System of the World by Neal Stephenson. In an episode of Family Guy Peter turns down a boat for a mystery box then about 2 minutes later he turns to Lois and says, "hey remember the time I turned down the boat for the mystery box?". This book has a few lines like that, but they are referring to the first book in the series, which I read over a year ago so it actually made sense. I was going to write about how it seemed weird reading the series over the course of a year, but I realized that it is nothing to compared to what all the Harry Potter fans have been going through.

Anyway, Neal did pull a bit of his classic style of starting crazy and then ending super crazy, but it was a bit more muted since the starting point was real history and the end point had to fit into history. I give Neal credit for doing something different, but I do hope he gets back to futuristic novels. The series talks a lot about alchemy and at work we had sorted some parts into piles we called gold and silver then we found a way to make silvers into golds so I started calling it alchemy and it caught on. So now a few people at work refer to the group that figured it out as alchemists.

And apparently Randall Munroe is also spying on me (yeah I know the alt-text is about Cryptonomicron, but close enough).

I also read Shinto by Scott Littleton. Those who know far more about Shinto feel free to correct me. It's odd, other than Jess talking about it, I don't think I had heard of Shinto before, but apparently it is the major religion in Japan. One of the main things I got from the book is that in Japan they are much more willing to mix religions. Both taking parts of others and incorporating them and being both Shinto and Buddhist and picking which parts of each to celebrate. Such as, most marriages are the Shinto custom and most funerals are the Buddhist tradition (in general Shinto is more about what happens when alive and Buddhism is more about after death).

Shinto has a huge number of spirits of varying types and ranks. To me it is interesting since Judaism prides itself so much on being the first monotheistic religion that growing up Jewish it gave me a sense that monotheism is in some way more advanced, but really there's no reason that's true. Also having tons of gods and spirits seems way more interesting. It also seems to allow for better stories since the gods are not all powerful and interact rather than just having this unknowable all powerful force.

Spying

I think Scott Adams is spying on me.

Will It Blend? - iPhone

Santa Barbara for the 4th

At work they were nice enough to give us the 2nd and 3rd as well as the 4th as vacation days. So on Sunday I headed up to Santa Barbara and stayed with my Uncle's family and came back the morning of the 5th. It was great to see everyone.

In addition to enjoying time with my Uncle, Aunt, and two Cousins the trip provided a great break from my normal schedule. For the 4th we went to the beach to hang out and again at night for the fireworks. The day before I went biking with one of my cousins down to the wharf. I won a game made up by my other cousin thanks to my mad dice rolling skillz. I found it ironic that between riding in a convertible and spending time on the beach, it was when I sat outside reading a book that I got a sun burn (it was a pretty funny burn since it was the difference between that day's shirt and my normal tan line and was only on one side).

Thank you to my Uncle's family for hosting, feeding, and entertaining me.

Oh, and it was the first time I took public transportation in Southern California. I took the train there and back. It was a bit slower than driving with no traffic, but I'm guessing there was some traffic that weekend and it was great because I got to read instead of staring at the car ahead of me. They also had outlets for every seat so on the way back I watched a few episodes of the Sarah Silverman Program.

Buddha

I figured that if I'm going to visit two countries where I'll see a bunch of Buddhist stuff it would be nice to know something about Buddhism other than that Buddha was a fat, happy, Chinese guy (oh, guess it is good I read a book, since he was actually a skinny Indian guy who thought that life is suffering).

Well I'm not claiming to be an expert, or really know much at all about it since I read Buddha, A Very Short Introduction and well it was very short. What I did pick up is that Buddhism assumes reincarnation and a lot of the religion is instruction in how to meditate and what you should be searching for when meditating. At least how the author presented it, unlike Western religions that are mostly about god and the instructions he hands down by talking to people, Buddhism developed more like philosophy. Buddha worked with many teachers of different religions and methods of meditation and using reasoning he developed a new set of views. While there was some divine intervention, the teachings are presented as Buddha's thoughts and findings.