From what I remember from my Linguistics class, essentially from birth the brain begins to recognize patterns of the language in one’s environment, and gradually shuts off alternative options. Babies as young as six months may not be able to speak, but they comprehend a lot more than most people give them credit for. It is true that there might be some basis for learning the Korean language in an infant’s brain, however the brain remains extremely elastic and open to learning any language natively (prime years are up to age 6ish? after that it gets harder, and after puberty it is significantly harder for a child to learn a language.) Basically, whether a six month old comprehends some Korean patterns is irrelevant… kids are extremely efficient language learners–their abilities far exceed adult brains… so the child would flawlessly learn to speak English, provided he is adequately exposed to said language.
Based on what I’ve learned about language acquisition, its really fascinating stuff…
Perhaps the most famous example of this is the religious tracts put out by Chick Publications, which state the Catholic Church was invented by Satan as a way to trick Christians into worshipping him or something like that.
Hey now… it took me three years before I settled on a particular sect of Buddhism. There is such huge variation between different Buddhists sects – some are extremely dogmatic, some are extremely irreverent… I think I would have more respect for someone taking more time to decide what was a right fit than just jumping into something because it sounds cool.
Western Buddhism especially, you have to keep in mind, it’s more difficult to find a community in the average town… I live in a very diverse city and I still only have two sangha (community, temple) options. There is less social pressure to adhere to a specific doctrine because many people practice Buddhism privately. It’s not the same thing as a church (in my experience, anyways.) Furthermore, it takes a long time, if you have never been exposed to even basic Buddhist thought, for a Westerner to absorb the ideas both intellectually and experientially. It is completely counterintuitive to the individualistic, Socratic mindset that is so common in the West.
Hell, it took me a year to even understand what Buddhism really WAS, another year to decide I was a Buddhist, and even more time after that to settle on a sect (FWIW, I’m a Zen Buddhist, but with mad props to Tibetan Buddhism… and those two sects could probably not be much farther apart!)
So I’m just saying… especially in the West, I don’t think it’s too odd for a Buddhist to not know what sect they belong to… it’s not the same thing as a Christian church. It’s also important to understand the number of holy texts in Buddhism: over 10,000. It’s a lot to sort through, it’s a lot to understand, especially if (like me) you never had the exposure until you began to investigate for yourself.
I live in a small town in eastern Colorado that is 30% Roman Catholic, 30% Mormon and 30% Southern Baptist. The answer to the OP’s question changes daily for me.
No, I’m not talking about “Oh, I don’t know yet, I’m still evaluating the merits of this doctrine or that doctrine”, or " Oh, I sort of agree with this aspect of the Mahayana tradition but that aspect of the Varyjana", I’m talking about “uh…there’s more than one? What about the one with the fat, bald guy?” :rolleyes:
Ah. Those people annoy me too. I know a lot of people who feel negatively toward all Western Buddhists, based on the archetype that it’s not sincere, just something we do to look cool or feel different. When I began to research different religions, I really tried to examine that impulse within myself. But I can clearly say my practice makes a marked difference in my life and helps me cope with many difficulties and helps me learn to be compassionate and calm. I still feel insecure talking about it though, because yeah, I’m just a white girl from the U.S., what would I know? And those people who irritate you misrepresent for those of us who try to be as sincere and honorable as possible.
So I’ll add a thing I remembered. I love my grandmother to pieces – like to the ends of earth-- but man, she can be so irrationally prejudiced sometimes.
I live in a very diverse college town where people come from all over the world. It’s not unusual to hear other languages when you’re walking down the street–pretty cool if you ask me. My Grandparents frequently visit me and we go out to lunch and generally have nice times.
So we’re driving down the road and a car full of Asian kids (my age) pulls out of a parking lot in front of my grandfather, pretty much cutting him off. My Grandmother shrieks “Watch out!” When he teased her for overreacting, she replied, “Well it’s not my fault those kids can’t drive! Maybe they should learn to speak English!”
“Um… Grandma? How would speaking a foreign language preclude knowing how to make a right turn? Furthermore, the windows were all the way rolled up and there was no way for you to know what language they were speaking. Furthermore, it’s actually possible to speak both English and a foreign language at the same time, so even if they were speaking a different language…”
My grandpa just laughed and laughed. He gets a kick out of me arguing against her irrational prejudices.
She is also known to complain about not understanding people who speak in foreign languages. “Why don’t they know English? The other day I was in this restaurant and the girl who took my order turned to her coworker and said something in Spanish! I couldn’t understand what she was saying!”
My response: “She wasn’t talking to you.”
I can’t even give Grandma the “old person” excuse. She’s 47.
Speaking from personal experience, I was born in Korea and came to the US when I was 6 months old. I speak both English and Korean fluently, although some people say my Korean is slightly accented. And I grew up in a Korean-speaking household.
Ah yes, full circle to the “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it should be good enough for anybody!”
[hijack]Sorry if this is too personal a question (and if so please ignore), but I thought you were 23 or so? How did she (and your mother) manage this? (:eek:?)[/hijack]
Perhaps the women are smarter ? “Yes, dear, you go and commune in the sweathouse with the spirits; I realize that by being a woman I’m, er, forced to sit out here in the cool breeze and watch the kids while you pray and sweat.”
OK, probably not but it’s an amusing image.
Well, there are, or were a great many Native American cultures; just because one has a bad attitude towards women doesn’t mean that others aren’t better, or worse for that matter. On the other hand, I’ve never bought the noble Native American image myself; they’re human, and humans aren’t all that noble a species.
I’m 38 and two of my high school classmates are grandmas… others have a toddler now. Makes for some interesting sociological observations.
There was a bit on Spanish TV last year about this family, I think it was 5 generations in the same house? 5 or 6. The eldest girl of the “kids” was pregnant; 13yo (14 by the time the baby was expected), the boyfriend 14 (15). Her ma had her at 14. Grandma had ma at 12 (that’s early even for the family’s standards). Great-grandma had grandma at 14… and then we get to the point where in rural Spain it wasn’t “abnormal” (not very usual, but not amazing) to have your first kid at 15. Great-great-greatgrandma had actually been married by the time she got pregnant.
As the less-than-30yo grandmother-to-be remarked “I’d hoped she’d be more intelligent, but what can I say, runs in the family!”
The difference here is “being” a grandmother versus “my” grandmother, with the point that Olives is 24 years old, I think. Being 38 and also being a grandmother is not unusual, the generational gap on average as large as 19 years old. The age gap between Olives and her grandmother is (47-24)=23, making the average generational gap 11.5 years.
While this is probably not a Guiness book of world records entry, I expect that **Olives ** will come back to explain. She has spoken of her less than ideal childhood, though. Perhaps, I am underestimating the backwoodedness of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Maybe her grandmother is from West Virginia.
OK, I see upon preview that that the Spanish family had spanned 5 generations in 54 years, making an average generational gap of 13.5. Even within this precocious family, they still don’t beat **Olives **11.5 years.
Similarly I met several people when I lived in Ireland who appeared to think Catholic = Christian exclusively. As in: “is s/he Protestant or Christian?” This might just have been a brainfart in each case, but I did hear it from several different people.
Reminds me of the post I saw on a “Chirstian” site expressing outrage that she went to the park and saw a Muslim family boating…yes BOATING right out there in public in front of God (not Allah) and everyone, on the lake.
Obviously they were there (men, woman and small children) looking for something to blow up. Muslims don’t boat either. Or have family outing in the park. If the try we should stop them.
But even that isn’t quite as bad as another poster in the thread who saw an Arab (or what he took to be an Arab, who knows?) at the airport and reported to security that he heard him talking about a bomb. Can you imagine what that guy went through? And here’s the “christian” guy bragging about it. I guess they do need the Ten Commmandments up on every single wall, or the forget things like “not bearing false witness”.
Mercury is a silvery metal that happens to be a liquid at room temperature. You can’t really “dye” a metal, because the dye is unlikely to be soluble in the metal in the first place.
A mercury thermometer thus has a silvery liquid inside.
As others noted, the red liquid used in thermometers today is usually dyed ethanol. The point of using ethanol is to avoid using hazardous mercury. The ethanol is dyed or it would be very difficult to see the clear liquid.
This is a beautiful example of why I try to refer to my kids as Step or Ex-step, instead of just my kids. I’m 42. My oldest (ex-step) daughter is 38. Her daughter (my ex-step granddaughter) is 21. She calls me Gram in public, and we giggle together at the outrage on strangers faces.
That’s a family trait, indeed. My ex-step daughters will mention their mother and me in conjunction by saying “my moms” (note the plural) and feel great glee at the confusion caused when their friends meet 2 obviously heterosexual women, one of which is a couple of decades younger than expected, and our husbands, neither of which is their father.
(:eek:?)[/hijack]
“Yes, dear, you go and commune in the sweathouse with the spirits; I realize that by being a woman I’m, er, forced to sit out here in the cool breeze and watch the kids while you pray and sweat.”