Mark Reynolds > Recent Status Updates

Very illuminating look at the German university system in the 1920s. Of course there’s the typical discrimination against Jews, but also the advanced gymnasium requirements and the free form lecture attendance.

Lots of great things to think about:

“I recommend that you don’t start the spiritual path because it’s painful and it’s difficult; it’s really hard. So my recommendation to all of you is not to do it. You can leave now.” Then he said, “but I have a second recommendation, and that is: if you start, you better finish. If you begin, then really do it.“

I'm re-starting this again after a break, and since it's an easy read, I should stick with it. A quote:

Someone once asked Aldous Huxley as he was dying if he could say what he had learned in all of his experience with many spiritual teachers and gurus and much of his own spiritual life, and he said, “It’s embarrassing to tell you this, but it seems to come down mostly to just learning to be kinder.“

Excellent so far. Mukherjee continues his technique from Death in the East by telling the story from two different points of view - alternating each chapter. Here it goes between Sam’s and Suren’s perspective. But more important he increases the weight of the Indian perspective. I like the evolution over the 5 novels - going from the colonial British view to the Indian independence view.

Definitely a YA novel. I'm interested in the storyline, so hopefully I can cope with the simplistic writing.

I'm intrigued because the "protagonist" disappears in the Desolation Wilderness, a place that I have been backpacking. So far I'm still in the Bay Area and haven't made it to the Sierras yet. Stay tuned.

Finally, after two years of the pandemic, I'm continuing this book.

It’s very sad what the Chinese had done in Tibet before 1983. It’s even sadder what the Chinese continue to do in Tibet. And the world ignores it for the most part.

Finally, in 1925, 8 years after the luminous dials started getting painted, and 4 years after the first deaths, some people (not all) figured out the toxicity of radioactive radium.

The hardest to implement is “The real love is to love them that hate you, to love your neighbor even though you distrust him.” But that is what is the most important.

A mix of good “Love is indeed the highest form of nonviolence,” and strange “Marriage is for progeny and not for sensual enjoyment.”

Very gruesome. It’s amazing that it took so long to see the harmful effects of radiation given that the curies and others had suffered radiation burns in the 1900-1905 period.

The narrator has some strange inflections, and the writing is somewhat childish, but I’m not quitting yet.

So far so excellent!

Illuminating discussion on the “universality” of gravitation and why it’s indistinguishable from the “shape” of spacetime.

“Anything truly novel is invented only during one’s youth. Later one becomes more experienced, more famous - and more blockheaded.” ... it is an occupational hazard of mathematicians and theoretical physicists to have their great breakthroughs before turning 40. “The intellect gets crippled, but glittering renown is still draped around the calcified shell.”