Pythagoras' Secret Cult Religion

Today I focused my activities on the one's based around Pythagoras, the famous mathematician, who brought us the Pythagorean theorum, a squared + b squared = c squared. Despite his fame, he believed that only a select few should be allowed to study the secrets of numbers and that mathematics should be kept secret from the general public. So, he formed a cult of sorts with which he shared his secrets.

Personally, I think that keeping knowledge like what Pythagoras discovered away from the public is wrong. I think it should be shared so that everyone gets a chance to grow mentally. I believe that all knowledge that could be useful in helping a community grow should be shared. That way no one can say that they are better than someone else because they have a secret knowledge that only they were entrusted with.

Philosophical Questions

This week is all about science and philosophy. Zeno, a scientific philosopher, had two problems which he gave to his students that have been passed down to us since then. I am going to ask them and post the answer tomorrow. Please comment with your answers.

1) If a man shot an arrow at a target, and every second of travel the arrow went 1/2 way to the target (1/2 of the distance it had left to go), how long would it take the arrow to reach the target?

2) If a man had a boat, and as the boat began to wear out, he replaced each worn out part with a brand new part until at last teh entire boat was replaced with new parts and all the original parts were gone, then would his boat be the same boat he had in the first place? At what point could you say he had a different boat and why? What if he had licensed the original boat, would he then have to re-license the boat at some point? If someone asked him how long he'd had his boat, what would he say?

Other teachings of Zeno were that is was foolish to try to change things from the way they were to the way we would like them to be. He believed we should just accept things as they are. These were the beliefs of the Stoics. I think that this might be true about some things, but others, like war, or poverty, or other problems should be changed and not just accepted. I think it is important to accept some aspects of life the way they are. But we should always strive to better the bad things of life. That way everyone is able to bask in the glory of the world God gave us.

Spartan View of Life

When Spartan women had children, they had to have them inspected by the authorities. If the child was sickly looking, weak, small, or had birth defects, it was thrown off the edge of a cliff. This ensured that only the strong and vigorous were allowed to live. They did this so the Spartans developed a shield against guilt for killing another human being. It also encouraged a contempt toward those that weren't perfect.

In today's society, we do not kill people to create a callousness against others, but we develop one just the same. Slamming those that are different than us, or do something wrong, builds a contempt in us towards someone that does those things. Some people teach their kids that people of a certain color, race or tradition are bad and therefore are inferior to them. All these things do to us exactly what throwing a kid off a cliff did to the Spartans: we just don't care about those that aren't like us or aren't perfect.

Spartan Helmet

This week, as I study Sparta, I was tasked to make a Spartan helmet. After three days of work, I finally finished it. It looks pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

Here is the first part of it.

Finished. The visor is a little small, but I might be able to adjust it.

Greek Final Project

As of last week, I began working on my final project to show what I learned in Greece. If all goes well, I will have a 7-10 page report about ancient Greece's battleships, battle tactics, and overall naval power, several models of the above described items as well as army weapons, and a feast comprised of food they would have eaten in ancient Greece. I was debating about a slide show, and I might still do it to illustrate the either items I don't have models for or pictures from battles. Fingers crossed it all turns out well.

Know a Person Before you Judge Them

It is important that, when you portray someone in a book, or a poem, you know them from facts instead of rumors. Dante showed what happened when you judge someone off rumors in his Inferno, in which he portrays Odysseus (Ulysses) as being the exact opposite Odysseus he is in Homer's writing. If you judge someone off of something someone said to you, chances are that the judgement is wrong. It's just that person's personal opinion. To get to know a person's character, you need to know more than one thing about them. I personally have never known someone that has had this done to them, nor do I think anyone has ever done this to me. Before you speak out against someone, check with other people about them, or see if there is anything on the news about what they have done. Do a background check if the person is well known. If it is someone at school or something, check with teachers or other kids in the school.

Father-son relations

This week, (week one of my study of Greece) I am studying a lot of the Greek myths. Two of them were those of Daedalus and Icarus and Theseus and the Minotaur. The assignment is to write about the father-son relationships of Daedalus and Icarus Aegeus and Theseus.

Daedalus and Icarus' relationship shows a lot of the disobedience most boys develop as they grow older. We boys are trying to prove ourselves and are trying to be more independent. Our fathers advise us and tell us what to do often. They don't do it for their health. They do it to steer us in the right direction. Daedalus tried to do this with Icarus, but Icarus' disobedience kicked in and he ended up dieing because he didn't listen to his father's advice.

The relationship between Aegeus and Theseus shows how much fathers love their sons. Aegeus loved Theseus and therefore didn't want him to go to Crete to defeat the Minotaur. Theseus, however, who was impulsive and loved danger and adventure, wouldn't listen. He promised his father that, as a sign that he had lived, he would fly white sails instead of black when he returned. However, as he returned home, he forgot to change the sails. Aegeus, believing his son was dead, killed himself by jumping off a cliff. In my opinion, he did this because he had never really known Theseus, having left before he was born, and he believed he would never be able to. I think he regretted leaving.