In a Catholic environment like this one, sooner or later I had to remember the scandalous theories of Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene, or at least fathering a child with her. While I have to admit that the claims to historical evidence for this marriage don’t really convince me, I found the spiritual-religious argument striking. And I think it does a pretty good job at explaining the shortcomings of institutionalized religion with the incompleteness of the Jesus it chooses to believe in:

[…]

One detail from a „Informed Comment“ discussion of Obama’s recent Middle East address (already briefly mentioned in a tweet of mine) stuck to me and got me thinking. It is the explanation of why Obamas (moderately) critical stance towards Israel and his push for pre-1967 borders as the basis for peace negotiations are politically daring:

[…]

This will be a loosely connected narrative with a lot of pictures of what I did the last weeks apart from going to school. There is always something going on, especially in Justus‘ life, and even though it’s sad I sometimes don’t get to see him too much because of all his commitments, it is great how many doors are open for me in his company. But I’ll start with the place where I am spending most of my time right now — home (whatever that means this year).

[…]

It is a great pleasure to finally share publicly here parts of the book I loved most out of my final exams reading list (and, maybe surprisingly, I loved quite a few), and which I come back to over and over again, making it uncontestedly the most influential book for my thinking that I read during my whole studies. It is „Acts of Meaning“ by Jerome Bruner, published in 1990 as an elaboration of a series of lectures, and was assigned for the exam in Cultural Psychology (thank you, Gabriele!).

It has so many important things to say about science, culture, and psychology that I believe it should be on every psychologist’s and non-psychologist’s bookshelf, but one part I like to refer non-psychologists to most frequently is about „relativism“, or as I prefer to say: Constructivism.

[…]

I have taken exams of all sorts before, I have helped administer exams and have composed exercise questions for students in tutorials. But never before have I composed an exam that will result in actual grading of students. So here I am, after a mere three weeks of teaching Physics in grade 8 and 10, doing just that. Following the format of the national examinations that will be so important for the students‘ futures, because depending on the results they will be able to attend the advanced levels (A-levels), and go to college/university from there.

I am quite scared, to be honest, much more than when taking exams recently. Because in a way I’m giving myself an exam of my teaching success here, and also I hope to encourage and not discourage the students. A colleague who looked at them told me he liked them, and liked that they aren’t too easy… But then, this is what I taught, and very close to the priorities I had in the lessons.

Please cross fingers, and feel free to comment. In Form 3 (grade 10) I only taught reflection and refraction, but this is the final exam for the year, and they had electricity stuff earlier apparently. Well, here are the exams for Form 1 and Form 3.

I had a delightful time helping the Form 4 (last year of secondary school, before the A-levels) students with questions from their „Mock“ National Exam in Mathematics, which will soon decide about whether they can go on to the A-levels. One of these questions surprised me with the amount of creative thinking it involved. That is, I am wondering if there is a standard way to solve this that I overlooked. So here it is, any inputs are welcome (train your brain!):

In a geometric progression, the sum of the second and third term is 6, and the sum of the third and fourth term is –12. Find the first term and common ratio of the progression.

I will post my solution after some comments come in, or I get bored waiting

Ziemlich genau zwei Wochen nach meinem ersten aufwühlenden Schultag fühlt es sich schon ein bisschen an, als wäre ich immer hier gewesen. Dabei strömt immer noch eine konstante Flut von Eindrücken auf mich ein, selbst (vielleicht gerade) hier im unglaublich ruhigen Dorfleben.

[…]

• David Pogue is pessimistic about Skype’s future http://j.mp/lM6VMY How do iChat and FaceTime work again? And didn’t Google have something? #
• Paper-size (and –thin) computers are becoming reality http://j.mp/ivzDav #
• Thema Immigration und Islam: Mir waren wichtige Details des „Anwerbeabkommens“ von 1961 nicht klar http://j.mp/lbUb01 krass! #
• Heiße Diskussion um einen ZEIT Leserartikel zum Islam http://j.mp/jnabEp Die (meistempfohlenen) Kommentare stimmen mich großteils bedenklich #
• #travelinsight 46: A teacher colleague had Malaria over the week-end. Malaria! Over the week-end! Still worries me a little… #
• #travelinsight 45: Learning an all-new language makes you think about what you need language for. What would your first 200 words cover? #
• #travelinsight 44: Why oh why do women here prefer odd-looking wigs over their beautiful natural hair? #
• Danke, Europäischer Gerichtshof! Klagerecht für Umweltverbände in Deutschland http://j.mp/l6PDXx „Bürgergesellschaft“ wir kommen #
• #travelinsight 43: Two breakfasts, two lunches and dinner is a little much. Of course, Hobbits would disagree. And so, initially, did I … #
• Hah! The longest German word in official usage http://j.mp/m2Ww0N 63 letters! (that’s as exactly as much as this tweet before the brackets!) #
• Do political decisions originate with „the people“ or elites? I discover the field of comparative political economy http://j.mp/jpAxxU #
• s in Germany, is pronounced [z] if it forms the syllable onset (e.g. Sohn [zoːn]), otherwise [s] (e.g. Bus [bʊs]) http://j.mp/mtyHXf Aha! #
• Ich liebe meine Sprache: Guttenbergs Fälschungen „werkprägendes Arbeitsmuster“ http://j.mp/kLaPJD Fazit der Kommission: bewusste Täuschung #
• Next door to me in Uganda, a proposed law threatens gays with death penalty. Protest: http://j.mp/iRqs5w it seems to have worked once before #
• High-tech orthodoxy or: the woman who was never there http://j.mp/k0QDgk it would be very funny if it wasn’t real #Krugman #
• How to lie with numbers: The cost of closing the fiscal gap now or later http://j.mp/m7imL0 #Krugman #Constructivism #
• Surprising and very informed argument against the notion that feminism took away the housewife’s good status of the 50s http://j.mp/iTjSgc #
• Joseph Stiglitz about past and future of US distribution of wealth and its political implications http://j.mp/mr3OsU Scary. #
• An einer tiefen Beschreibung der Personaldebatten in der FDP kann man lernen, wie Parteien im Inneren funktionieren http://j.mp/mCm6QL #

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I fear this is the longest title in the history of my blog, which in a way suits its topic well. I just finished the biggest book I have ever read, actually a collection of books under the title „The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“, by Douglas Adams. It comprises the original Guide and the other four books in the trilogy.

I bought it in Palo Alto before my real traveling started, and it has lasted me well into the second quarter of this year, of course as frequent visitors of my blog know with another big and some small readings in between.

Once again, my generally high esteem of artists‘ late work was reinforced — while the original book is funny, the later books are far better. I laughed my hardest reading the second last one, „So Long and Thanks for All the Fish“, and the last one, „Mostly Harmless“, apart from still being very funny, I found most insightful. That despite how I just read on Wikipedia the author himself describing this book as „bleak“, and saying he had a very bad year when he wrote it. I suppose that tells us something about the relationship between art and happiness…

Anyway, here are just some examples of important topics of life made understandable with the help of absurdity, Science-Fiction at its best.

[…]

Happy Belated 300th Birthday, David Hume! And thanks to Crooked Timber for a pointer to both this anniversary date and his neglected influence on social sciences. I’ll re-quote two parts of a re-quote from there (happy internet copy-paste days). They do a very good job at explaining what happens in the Arab world and our own homes.

The first one deals with power of the masses, and why they so often don’t use it:

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