The Lost Entries

Hurrah, at long last! I finally have the pictures from my spring break a few weeks back (actually several weeks back, now that I look at it), and here are the posts that go with them. Bear in mind that I actually wrote these posts back at that time, and was just waiting on the pictures. So if the timing seems a bit off in the posts, that's why.
This is a picture of a sarcophagus from the Met that I was really blown away by. I couldn't find a tag for it, so I'm not sure where it came from or who was supposed to be in it, but it looks pretty impressive, doesn't it? I was very impressed ...

Barnard Talk

So classes are over for the break tonight, and this is the first evening looking forward to a week without school. It seemed appropriate that I begin the week with something VERY different, so I went tonight to hear Professor Jennifer Flynn Boylan speak at Barnard College, which for those who might not know is the college across the street from Columbia. Barnard was originally started by a President of Columbia, because up until the 80’s, Columbia didn’t admit women. Incensed that he couldn’t convince the board of regents to admit women, in a fit of pique he went across the street and started a school for girls. (Strangely, Columbia does of course now admit women, but Barnard does not admit men. I have at times found it very strange that such an uproar is raised over all-male institutions like West Point, yet places like Barnard still exist. This is especially strange to me given that schools like West Point come under fire from the angle of ‘equality’, or ‘equity & fairness’. I think one has to wonder at what point what’s fit for the goose is also fit for the gander …)
At any rate, Prof. Boylan is an English instructor at Colby College in Maine. (I was going to include a link to her site, but I can’t seem to find it right now). She was on campus to do a reading from her book “She’s Not There”, in which she talks about her journey from being a man to becoming a woman. And yes, I mean that literally; she was born a man, and at 43 had surgery to become a woman.
Honestly, it was a fascinating evening, from many different angles. I found her to be funny, very articulate, thoughtful, and she raised some very interesting questions. During & after the book reading, much of the discussion focused on issues related to transgendered persons, which is an umbrella term that could loosely (yet politely) be used to describe persons from cross dressers to those who have had sexual reassignment surgery like Ms. Boylan.
One of the reasons I went to the talk was to gain some perspectives that would be very different from ones I had encountered before. I really appreciated her wit and humor, because she touched on this very thing with a really funny anecdote where she said (and this is going to be a paraphrase quotation), “People have a hard time approaching, talking about, or even thinking about transgendered persons. I mean they’re almost like aliens. People’s first three questions usually seem to be, ‘Why are they here, what do they want, and do they mean us any harm?’” She really hit the nail on the head; everyone laughed good-naturedly, but what she said was so true.
I sent her an email afterwards and thanked her for coming, which she replied to both quickly and graciously. It would take far too long to get into here all the things it gave me to think about, but it was a very illuminating experience, and I appreciated her willingness to share a bit of her life with us that evening.

The Met

Today is/was Tuesday, and my buddy Levon and I went down to the Met, which is short for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s one of the best known Museums here in NYC, along with the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art (which I’ve also been to and decided I didn’t care for very much). The trip was particularly enhanced by the fact that admission is free for Columbia students. Tough to come up with a good excuse not to take advantage of that.
Now, I’ve been to the Louvre in France last summer, and was absolutely blown away. I didn’t think any museum after that one had the ability to impress me … but I must admit, this one did. It’s also quite large, larger than I thought it would be, and had a great collection of all kinds of stuff from many different periods in history. Including a very respectable Greek sculpture garden, which to me might almost represent the highest form of ‘classical art’, if I could call it that. The realism one finds in those statues, the way they look as if they could walk right off the pedestals, is extraordinary. I was deeply moved when I saw them at the Louvre, and was moved to see similar works here. They also have a very nice Asian wing, with art & artifacts from China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
This particular piece caught my eye, as I've never seen a sculpture set out in front of such a lush painting like this with such great effect. I'm not sure if the pieces are actually tied together historically or artistically, but if not the people in the museum did a very good job laying things out.
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile trip. I highly recommend it if you’re in New York and museums are your thing. You won’t be disappointed.

Grey Lady

On Thursday, Levon and I went to the Statue. You know, THE statue.It worked out a little differently than I’d thought it would. To go up inside the statue (which I very much wanted to do) you need a time pass. The time passes are free, and you can get them with your ticket. Here’s the thing though, they only have so many of them, and they’re given out on a first come, first served basis. So generally, if you want a time pass, you have to reserve your tickets in advance, because they don’t often have extras if you’re buying your tickets onsite.
Weds night, I call Levon & suggest we go to the statue on Friday, which means we can buy the tickets online and reserve our time passes early. He says yeah fine, let’s do that. However, Thursday he calls me up and asks if we can go today, because something has come up for him. Being the good friend that I am, and since I was planning to do homework and could switch the days easily, I said yes. However … what that meant was, no time pass. Now, I’m sure I’ll be back there again, but I did miss having the chance to go up.The day was windy & cold, and we had to wait for almost 1.5 hours from the time we go the tickets till we got on the ferry to go out to Liberty Island. And we had to pass through a security checkpoint that was like the ones at the airport, but much less efficient. And the guards didn’t have a good handle on what they were doing. (I asked the guard ahead of time, do you want me to take off my belt and/or my shoes. He waves me forward. I walk through the detector, which beeps, and get yelled at for not having taken off my belt.) But, guards & weather aside, we got out there ok.
And it was impressive, I must admit. The view of the city from the island is really cool too. It’s one thing to see her in pictures, but quite another to see her in person. Levon complained that she wasn’t as big as he’d imagined or been hoping, but I’d say she was about the size I would have imagined. (Although I have always thought her face doesn’t look very feminine, and I thought that again when seeing her there in person) The most deeply moving experience I’ve ever had at a national monument was at the Lincoln Memorial in DC when I was there some years ago, and I don’t think anything could top that for me; that one was almost like a religious experience. This wasn’t overwhelming, but being there and thinking about what she has meant & what she means today, was very cool. So it was a good spring break week. Got to catch up on work, chill out a bit, and have some good adventures. Other than the food poisoning bit at the end, couldn’t really ask for much more. (Although Levon and I have decided that next year we’re going to go somewhere and do something crazy during the spring break of our senior year. That’s something else I’ll be looking forward to …)

True Patriotism

It would have been impossible for me not to put this picture up. This was taken inside a shop on Liberty Island; Levon is clearly having fun goofing around. Who says that foreign nationals can't be patriotic?

Trading

Two years ago, my economics professor encouraged me to apply to some of the larger schools, and took me on a trip to see NYC where I first had the chance to visit Columbia. He has continued to do the NYC trip each year, and this year he asked me to come meet his group of students and talk to them a bit about my time here in NYC. It was a great day, we met up on the top of Rockafeller Center, where you really can see almost the entire city.
Then as an additional favor, Phil got me on the list to be able to go in and see the trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYME) from the gallery. The Merc Ex is much like the stock exchange, but instead of trading shares of ownership in a company, the NYME trades in commodities like oil or precious metals. Being able to see the trading floor was crazy, it was like some type of crazy bazaar, buyers and sellers shouting, getting in each other's faces, throwing order tickets ... Just nuts.
Unfortunately they didn't let us take pictures while we were inside (for security reasons); this shot is of Two World Financial Center, to which the NYME is connected. It's also an impressive building, many of the large financial houses maintain offices there. I'm not sure that I'd want to be a trader, but it was a cool experience and I'm grateful to Phil for getting me on the list. I'd also like to thank Warren Hochbaum (a friend of Phil's who works for the state banking department) for his help with getting in, I understand he had a lot to do with it as well.

Trinity

This is a picture of Trinity Church at the intersection of Wall Street & Broadway. You can't see the church itself much at all (it's hiding behind the trees on the right), but it was a beautiful day today when I was there and I felt I had to get a shot, which turned out even better than I'd hoped. The cemetary you see here is in the churchyard on the northern side of the building; some of the gravestones go back to the 1600's and the Dutch settlers who first settled Manhattan Island. (New York's original name was actually New Amsterdam.)
It is somehow interesting to me that this famous church has remained here while the temples of capitalism grew up around it. The churchyard is entirely surrounded by financial institutions on every side, in the heart of the bustle of the city. And yet somehow, there remains a peace and tranquility to it once one steps inside the gates.
A few other fun facts about the church: The church that is here now is actually the third 'Trinity Church'. The first one burned down in a fire just before the start of the Revolutionary War; the blaze spread from another nearby building and wasn't contained quickly enough because all the firefighters had followed George Washington to fight the war just days prior. The second church was torn down after being weakened by heavy snows during the winters of 1838-1839. Columbia University, which was originally called King's College, held its first classes here before moving to the campus in Morningside Heights where it is now. Alexander Hamilton, who dropped out of Columbia to 'go do more important things, like help run the country', is buried here. And at the time the church was chatered by the King of England, the official rent was one peppercorn per annum, payable to the English crown. When Queen Elizabeth II visited the church in 1976, she was paid an honorary 'back rent' of 279 peppercorns.

Street Fair

Street fairs are kind of a cool thing. They seem to pop up mysteriously a couple of times each semester like the caravans of the Silk Road, and they take over the street for several blocks when they appear. They’re really quite fun, and you can find some good (if overpriced) food as well as all kinds of other interesting stuff. This one was being held yesterday, and it was fun to go and wander through.
A bunch of new material today, use the sidebard to get to it all, as it doesn’t all fit on the first page. The last of the new posts from today is entitled ‘Ravi”. I didn’t mean to let such a glut build up, but I’ve just been busy. There have been more than a few noteable events, and I’ve been glad to have pictures to put up with them. One other thing, my posts from spring break are written, but I don’t have the pictures yet, since I took them with Levon’s camera. He keeps telling me he’ll get to them and then putting me off. Hopefully in the next week I’ll get them, and I can put the posts up.

State of the Planet

Two things happened this week (or actually last week, by the time I’ve gotten around to writing about it) that deserve mention.
I wholeheartedly enjoy skipping classes from time to time, especially if I have a good reason. Professors often seem to forget that we are the ones paying them, and that if there comes a day that we have something better to do with our time than be in class, that is our prerogative. Attendance policies that are built into course grades are two things: tyranny and cowardice. Tyranny, because nowhere else would you find a class system that you sign up for, pay money for, and are then charged fees if you don’t show up for class. And cowardice, because good classes don’t need them. I’ve never taken a math class that had one, because with math, unless you already know the material, if you don’t show up to class, you’ll fail. It’s as simple as that. So they don’t need something as artificially punitive as grade docking to see that students show up. The only classes I’ve ever had that require them are ones like humanities and languages, and frankly I think in many cases they are nothing but smokescreens that let instructors pressure students to attend in order to prop up their own somewhat shaky egos and feel better about themselves, because they actually aren’t very good teachers and wouldn’t be able to get students to come any other way. Utter nonsense …Anyways, back to SotP. SotP was a two day conference held by the Earth Institute here at Columbia, which is headed by Prof. Jeff Sachs, who is pictured below. I won’t go into all his accomplishments, but I’d known about him before coming here and have found him even more impressive in person than I’d hoped. Briefly, he is an economist by training who worked with some of the very difficult transitional issues in the eastern European nations after the fall of communism, and now focuses mostly on Africa. He is a brave, modest, and brilliant man, an excellent communicator and speaker, and someone who cares deeply about what he does. I respect him greatly. This conference was organized by him primarily, and invited scholars & leaders from around the world to address a number of very important topics that affect us all, such as global warming & sustainable economic development. (IE, econ. development that won’t destroy our planet in the long run) The topics covered would be too numerous to address here, as would be the impressive list of speakers and the things I learned. (Among them that the issue with fossil fuels isn’t availability, there is still plenty of oil around, but pollution, if we don’t change something soon the global warming will have serious consequences. Also that ‘socially responsible investing’ is going from being a niche market to something that brings in serious dollars for companies like Goldman Sachs) Long story short, this was a great learning opportunity, and on these two days a far better use of my time than being in class.
I should say too, in order to be fair, that my instructors were all very gracious when I told them (not asked, told) that I would not be in class those two days. I still think attendance policies are head-hammeringly stupid, but even a bad policy can be applied with decency, and all my instructors did so with me. This was a great event, and I’m glad I had the chance to go and learn.
I just saw that much of the content from the lecture series is available online. Anyone interested can go check it out at www.stateoftheplanet.org

Jeff Sachs

Professor Sachs really is an extraordinary man (he's the one on the left with the red tie) Anyone who is interested in developmental economics, I highly suggest looking up or reading some of his stuff.

Peter Singer

One speaker deserves special note. That speaker is Peter Singer, the Ira DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton.
Mr. Singer is primarily a philosopher. I was previously familiar with Mr. Singer’s work from my days at BCC where I read an essay of his taken from his well known book that I believe is called “Animal Rights”. In this essay, the main thrust of his argument was that all people everywhere in the world are morally compelled to become vegans. I’m not going to go into all the things I found wrong with his arguments, except to say that I came away from the article feeling that the man was a stone’s throw away from utter lunacy, and was shocked that someone would have printed his work.
When I found out that he was speaking at this conference, I was very curious to hear him, and I must say that I was not at all disappointed. He was thoughtful, articulate, a very good orator, good speaking voice, and did a very good job of staying on target. His talk was only 20 minutes or so, and he presented a basic argument for why we should be morally compelled to help in places like Africa, where people still die from diseases that are easily preventable. (Basically, to boil it down, he took the argument that if you saw a child drowning in a pool, and you could save the child’s life, assuming the only cost to you was one of convenience, i.e., you’d ruin your shoes & pants, you should do it, because his life is worth more than your pants. Expand & extend, and you have the idea. Much of the death in Africa is easily preventable at fractional costs, therefore we in the West who have so much should do so.)
Even though I still completely disagree with him related to animals, I was glad to hear him speak, was impressed with his presentation, have a healthy amount of respect for him now. I see that I was out of line to have thought so lowly of him previously, and have been glad for the chance to have my mind changed.

The Opera

After the SotP conference, and before the Armenian Festival, I had a chance to go to the NYC Opera and see a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
I'll grant you, I wasn't terribly looking forward to this to begin with. This trip was part of a class assignment for Music Hum, and while I'm glad they want to take advantage of the city and use it as a learning tool, I wish we could have gone to a different opera. This one is a story about a shameless womanizer who gets chased around because of his villiany and eventually goes to hell as punishment for his misdeeds. And then the story ends. I've heard it's supposed to be a sort of 'dark comedy', but I didn't find it particularly entertaining. (I actually left during the intermission, but don't tell my instructor that).
After having been there, I can comfortably say that opera is just not an art form I enjoy very much. Oh, and someone apparently forgot to tell the ushers there that the highbrow/lowbrow distinction in art is gone now, because they were quite rude to me. I assumed that I couldn't take pictures during the show, but why not take pics 15 minutes before the curtain goes up? It's a beautiful building (this is a shot of the main stage taken before they shut me down). After I took it, I was told by two different ushers quite pointedly that pictures were not allowed in the auditorium at ANY time. I wasn't given a reason. Because I was there for a class, I decided not to make a scene. I just also decided not ever to go back.
I hear opera in NYC is very good if it's your thing, but if you've got limited dollars and time, go for Broadway or something else and leave this to the snooty upper class and their killjoy rules.

Armenia!

Levon, my best buddy here at school, is from Armenia, and a few days after the SotP conference, the Armenian club held a festival in the main part of campus that was really quite impressive. I’ve put up here a few of the pictures I took, but they don’t truly reflect how great an event this was. They had Armenian food, traditional dancers, historical notes, the entire thing was really beautiful. They truly are a beautiful culture and a beautiful people.Levon has been doing a good job of schooling me in Armenian culture & history. Armenia, for those who don’t know, is located next to modern day Turkey, on the eastern border. It is an ancient culture, going back some 3,000 years. It has fluctuated in size over time, and been subject to conquests by a few different empires (Mongols, Persians, etc). Ethnically, the Armenians are their own people, I think they are more closely related to Russians & the people from the steppes than anyone else, but I can’t quite remember. And they have a culture that is also quite distinct; it has a near-eastern feel to it, but they aren’t Arabs and there are significant differences. Getting to know Levon has been one of the highlights of my time here, and I look forward to being his friend even once he returns home to his country. We joke that he will one day become the President of Armenia, but we’re only half kidding. Levon has a deep love for his country and his people, and they will be fortunate to have him serve them in any capacity. He worked hard to pull this festival together, and it came off great. The fact that the weather was beautiful helped too, but mostly it was Levon. *grin*

Armenian Beauty

These two girls were among the dancers at the festival, and graciously let me take their pictures when I asked. The girl on the left is actually applying to Columbia, so I spent a few minutes talking with her about it and giving her some tips, for whatever it was worth. I hope she gets accepted.
(The hair, while lovely, isn't real BTW ...)

Armenian Dancers

There were several different dances, and different types of dancers at the festival, all of which were great. I didn't have a chance to get pictures of all of them, but they were all beautiful. Some were women only, some like this one were mixed. All were very well done.

Armenian Flag

The colors in the Armenian flag are:
-) Gold, which represents the wheat of the land, because Armenia has a long history as a prosperous and bountiful agricultural society.
-) Blue, for the sky, which I'm guessing represents hopes & dreams, this one I didn't get explained specifically.
-) And Red, for the Armenian Genocide at the end of the First World War. The genocide is a VERY controvertial topic, it was perpetrated by the Turks, but Turkey today still disputes the facts of the matter bitterly with Armenia (they say it was due to the chaos of war, that it wasn't a directed campaign of extermination, and that the numbers have been exaggerated.) I won't get into it all here, but suffice to say that hundreds of thousands of Armenian lives were lost during that period of time, and the country has never forgotten it.
Incidently, this also means the flag was not used until after 1918, Armenia has a crest that is much older that sometimes appears on the flag when one sees it in Armenian homes, to represent the country's long history.

Ravi

Columbia has been an interesting experience so far. There have been high points, and low points; some ups, and some downs. There have been setbacks, and there have been some fairly serious disappointments. However, one thing that has NOT been a disappointment has been the speakers who have come through here. In some ways, I’d almost say the speakers have been among the highlights. And this week, I had a chance to hear Ravi Zacharias speak. And it was extraordinary.Ravi, for those who may not know, could best be described as a Christian apologist and philosopher & thinker. He’s spoken around the world at places like Oxford & Harvard, and has written a number of books, including “Jesus Among Other Gods”, which compares the claims of Christianity with Islam, Hinduism, & Buddhism. He’s a powerful speaker and has an extraordinary mind; I haven’t been so impressed with a thinker since C.S. Lewis, and believe me, that’s saying something. He’s known for being thoughtful, brilliant, and for doing Q&A sessions at the end of his talks in which he pretty much takes all comers. Additionally I think it is significant that he isn’t white; he’s from India originally, which gives him (in my opinion) an especially valid platform to do analytic comparisons with Eastern & Western religious traditions. He has also been able to draw out some very powerful insights from the Gospels that would not be obvious to Western minds.
The first night here, he spoke on God and suffering, and the second on his topic Jesus among the Gods. I was late to the second night and only got to hear the second half of his speech, but I had front row seats to the first night and wasn’t disappointed. A great speaker, fantastic orator, excellent diction, and did a very effective job of balancing appeals to the head and engaging one’s feelings on a matter. I’ll include here a few of the things he pointed out during his first talk that were illuminating to me:
-) That ‘evil’ is not just a problem it is a mystery. A mystery is such that a problem encroaches back around on itself and the questioner eventually becomes the object of the question. None of us can ask about ‘evil’ without both the question and the answer involving ourselves. [As a further illustration, he put it this way: Getting to Mars is a problem. Falling in love is a mystery.]
-) No worldview poses an answer to this problem without smuggling in, implicitly or explicitly, and answer to the purpose & meaning of life. Any worldview must encompass four things: origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. [Where did I come from, why am I here, how should I behave, where am I going?]
-) The statement, ‘There is no such thing as truth’ is meaningless because the statement itself purports to be a true statement which it cannot be by its own definition. In the same way, without some sort of framework, one cannot even talk about ‘evil’, for how does one define what is evil? In simple terms, if ‘evil’ is defined by people or by groups of people, then no one is in a position to criticize ethnic cleansing when it is done by the majority; in other words, we have morality by vote. If evil is absolute, if some things are always evil everywhere, then one must appeal to a super-human standard. Such a standard only makes sense if there is a God. Ravi went a step further to say that since moral truth and absolutes do exist, therefore so must God. I’d personally always felt this was where the analysis comes out, but it was refreshing to hear it confirmed by someone who is much smarter than I, and has spent more time thinking about it. -) He said that if love is the supreme ethic, which he believes it is, then the freedom to reject love is systemic, i.e., it must be a part of the system or the framework.
-) And he said that if the object of one’s love is forced, i.e., if love is not a choice, then the lover suddenly finds themselves alone.
It was a great evening, and I had a chance afterwards to go and have him sign a book for me, and get a picture with him. I would consider him to be perhaps the greatest apologist alive today, and would highly recommend him to anyone who wished to see him. He’s well worth the time.