Comments for Sheffner's Reading Blog

Comment on The Natural – pre-game by Marc Sheffner

Marc Sheffner — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 03:12:24 +0000

Nice name! Is Pyracantha a type of fish? (Coelocanth) Or maybe a flower (hyacinth)? Ah, within 5 seconds (the time it takes to type “Pyracantha” into Google search) I have the answer. Amazing!

Comment on The Natural – pre-game by Pyracantha

Pyracantha — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:21:30 +0000

Comparative study or finding similarities is interesting between the story of The Natural and of The Fisher King. Look forward to the next session.

Comment on The Natural: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols (from SparkNotes) by Sheffner's Reading Blog » Blog Archive » The Natural – pre-game

Sheffner's Reading Blog » Blog Archive » The Natural – pre-game — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:47:36 +0000

[...] The Natural: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols (from SparkNotes) [...]

Comment on Weston’s disease by Spooked consumers snapping up cheap Geiger counters | The Japan Times Online

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:26:04 +0000

[...] elites and thus must know what they are doing),and finally, a largely unsuspected and unconscious scientism, may, or may not, be slowly percolating… Consumers are snapping up the devices, which range [...]

Comment on May session: May 25th by cheerful hue

cheerful hue — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 02:28:47 +0000

We talked if we believe this: “It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.” (p177)

Suppose, when you smile, the smile is contagious and spreads from people to people to the ends of the earth. So would be goodness, or revolutionary ideas to make the world be better off. And besides, when someone’s pain or suffering become shared by the world, it’s time to work together to find the solution to ease the pain. Unbelievable? Impossible? This passion is one of the things that I like about him.

Saint-Exupery used imagination in poetic language while C.S.Lewis used myth as a tool to tell the truth.

Comment on May session: May 25th by firefly

firefly — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 02:24:28 +0000

Though May 25th session may be a receding memory….

“What can men do to make known to themselves this sense of deliverance?” (p174) Saint-Exupery finally found inner peace when his life was nearing to death lying buried in sand. Sheffner-sensei’s question was “How can we find the inner peace, not in the special condition (like facing death), not by chance but consciously?”

I think the answer is pp215-224. “It is only when we become conscious of our part in life, however, modest, that we shall be happy. Only then will we be able to live in peace and die in peace, for only this lends meaning to life and to death.” (p222)

Comment on Session 23: March 10th, 2010 – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, chps 3-6 by Sheffner's Reading Blog » Blog Archive » Through the Sapphire Sky: Alike in composition, unlike in meaning

Thu, 19 May 2011 23:59:10 +0000

[...] long time ago now (it seems), in our Reading group we discussed dragons as possibly universal archetypes and their different meanings in Western and Eastern cultures/literatures. Well English Lady Blogger [...]

Comment on March 16 session report by quintessence

quintessence — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:02:35 +0000

” I could no more shake her faith than I could have shaken the faith of a candle-woman in a church. I pitied her humble destiny which had made her blind and deaf. But that night in the Sahara, naked between the stars and the sand, I did her justice.”
According to Japanese in this part by Horiguchi Daigaku, 「教会の修道女の信念が動かしえないと同じように、ぼくにもこの老嬢の信念は動かしえなかった。そしてぼくは彼女を盲啞にしているその貧しい運命を憐れんだものだった、、、。それなのに　このサハラの一夜、星と砂とのあいだに、裸で放り出されて、ぼくは彼女の方が正しいのだとしみじみ思い知ったものだ。」

When I read Japanese in this part, I felt a kind of contradiction at first. But thanks to Marc’s intelligible explanation about the key of section 3, I could understand well what Horiguchi translated.

At the end of this chapter at page.74,Saint -Exupery concluded as the following,

“The marvel of a house is not that it shelters or warms a man, nor that its walls belong to him. It is that it leaves its trace on the language. Let it remain a sign. Let it form,deep in the heart, that obscure range from which, as waters from a spring,are born our dreams.
Sahara, my Sahara ! You have been bewitched by an old woman at a spinning-wheel !”

I think Japanese by Horiguchi,whose translation into Japanese is very nice and beautiful. I would like to quote his translation.

「家のありがたさは、それがぼくらを宿し、ぼくらを暖めてくれるためでもなければ、またその壁がぼくらの所有だからでもなく、いつか知らないあいだに、ぼくらの心の中に、おびただしいやさしい気持ちを蓄積しておいてくれるがためだ。人の心の底に、泉の水のように夢を生み出してくれる、あの人知れぬ塊を作ってくれるがためなのだ。
　サハラ砂漠よ、ぼくのサハラ砂漠よ、ごらん、お前は糸車を回すたった一人の老嬢のおかげで、すっかり夢見心地にされてしまったではないか！」

Comment on Not all foreigners are leaving Tokyo by tenderness

tenderness — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:24:46 +0000

It is hard to express my feelings exactly. I have been amazed and deeply moved in awe of the behavior or manners of the survivors. They share food, take care of each other, worry about others and show the best tenderness in the extreme sadness and suffering. No looting at all. How they can behave like these? Are these the respectful characteristics of the Japanese? I got to be proud of being Japanese after a long time. I had been ashamed of being Japanese since many Japanese companies started to throw away Japanese virtue and started to treat part-time workers or temporary workers as disposable.

Now I am reading +several articles or documents on nuclear power plants’ threat. Many specialists or scholars are expressing their opinions. It is confusing. I’ll express my opinion if I finish all of them. The exodus out of Tokyo seems to have been caused by foreign media which had fanned the fear of people. Anyway it is sure that we are in the same boat, Japan and the earth. Nowhere to escape.

Comment on Not all foreigners are leaving Tokyo by Sympathy

Sympathy — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:17:19 +0000

From the chart in this blog I understood the following things.(1)”The radiation dose person can absorb from various sources.”(2)”The unit for absorbed dose is sievert(sv) and measure the effect a dose of radiation will have on the cells of the body.”(3)”We safely absorb small amounts of natural radiation daily.” (4)”One sievert(all at once) will make you sick,and too many will kill you.”
I checked the “unit”. one micron SV( 1μ SV ) is 1/1000,000 SV. 1 mSV is 1/1000 SV.
According to the chart which how much radiation you get from different activities,
*Sleeping next to someone (0.05 μ SV)
*living within 50miles of a nuclear power plant for a year (0.09 μ SV)
*eating banana(0.1μ SV)
*one arm X-ray(1μ SV)
*Using a CRT(ブラウン管）monitor for a year (1μ SV)
*dental or hand X-ray(5μ SV)
*Extra dose from one day in an average town near the Fukushima plant (~3.5 μ SV as of March 17th.,various quite a bit)
*airplane flight from New York to LA(40μ SV)
Maximum yearly dose permitted for US radiation worker(50 msv)

It said in “note”, “the same number of sieverts absorbed in a shorter time will generally cause more damage, but cumulative long -term dose plays a big role in things like cancer risk.”

Normal yearly background dose. About85% is from natural sources. Nearly all of the rest is from medical scans (~3.65 msv)

Last year I took medical check and scans many times.(CT scans-3times, Chest X-ray =3times).But it is small within the safety.