Drowsification

I've decided not to do a post tonight.

Whoops! Too late, I've already started. *ahem*

There isn't much to relate as far as the day goes, I prepared a few things this morning and then headed off to my Calculus class, which was enjoyable. I think that some of the students are a little hard-headed and they don't seem to understand certain concepts and the teacher (foreigner) seems to get a little embarrassed by that, I know a lot of students will gripe that they can't understand any foreign person or speak as though they are dumb but I don't think Mr. Grinshpan is difficult to understand at all, in fact, I rather enjoy his explanations and his accent is very soft and interesting to listen to. That, and I have a great amount of respect for anyone who can speak a second language fluently, something I cannot do at all. I had an e-mail from a guy a while back who was asking a question and ended it with "pardon my poor English." But I told him that I respected those who could communicate as well as he could in another language! I also told him that he wrote better than most American youths these days but that's a different subject......

Then I went and spent the two hour interim doing a few Physics problems and reading some more in the book that I'm going through: Songs of Zion, a very good book that has strengthened some of the convictions I'd had on the subject and some solidifications of arguments I'd come up with as well as some new ones! One of my favourite sections today went thusly:

p. 121
"The regulative principle and the sufficiency of Scripture are thus intimately bound up with one another. One cannot consistently deny one and maintain the other. The importance of this fact for the question of worship song cannot be overstressed. The canon of Scripture contains a rather extensive collection of songs intended for use in the worship of God. It is our contention that this collection, the Book of Psalms, is a sufficient manual of praise in song, its sufficiency arising directly from its presence in the canon of Holy Scripture. There is no more warrant for supplementing the Book of Psalms with uninspired hymns than there is for supplementing the rest of Scripture with uninspired prose. The sufficiency of the psalter absolutely precludes its supplementation not to mention its replacement. It would appear, therefore, that commitment to the use of uninspired songs in worship and profession of belief in the suffiency of Scripture are fundamentally incompatible. One cannot consistently adhere to both at the same time."

Another section in the preface that I appreciated was:

"The strongest argument for exclusive psalmody is the one that inevitably wells up from within when a sincere Christian begins to sing the psalms with grace in his heart. Once these divine hymns have entered into the heart of a man and he has been fed by the heavenly manna which lies embedded there, he will never be satisfied with earthly counterfeits. And until a man has experienced the psalms in this way, all the sophisticated polemics in the world will not avail to draw him away from his hymns. Acceptance or rejection of the position of exclusive psalmody is, I am fully persuaded, as much a matter of the heart as a matter of the mind."

And that is much how I feel, I have loved many hymns that I grew up with but I feel like the man in the parable about the field, who when he had found the treasure, he sold all that he had so he might purchase that field. And I have been brought to the point where I would willingly give up all the men-written hymns that I have loved for something I cherish far more. I feel as though I have discovered a great treasure that I am unwilling now to give up. Something that has become far more valuable to me, something I was completely unaware of before or had even been brought to think upon.

The Computer Science class went well, the instructor is very funny, I can't very well relate all of his jokes and stories because they are largely of the "programming" variety and I wouldn't be able to properly relate them anyway. Then at 2:00 I went to a free seminar on Effective Reading, they were passing out flyers a day or two ago. It was actually pretty good, I was skeptical at first as we went through some exercises and though I definitely thought they were trying to sell their class (it's a four week class that you pay for), I did see a marked improvement even in the hour and a half I spent there today. I would imagine I average about 300 wpm normally (they said John Kennedy usually read at above 1200 wpm) yet even though we did a little reading test and though it may have been slightly skewed so that it would appear you had done better on the second part, I think that an improvement (in this afternoon) of 200 additional wpm would be a conservative estimate. They guarantee at least doubling your effective reading rate (which is your comprehension percentage times your wpm) or you get your money back, and they have a 98.5 percent satisfaction rating, which is pretty high.

I don't know though, if it really works as well as it is supposed to (which is a retraining of how you read) then it would be great and last a lifetime (after all, as an Engineer I'll most likely be reading lots of boring technical documents and information on new technology) and it's mainly targeted toward textbook reading.

It would be worth it, but I'm just not wanting to shell out $270 right now. They sell a DVD for $60 with all of the classes on it, you just have to be self-disciplined and you wouldn't get the one-on-one time but I think I could handle it. I'm very seriously thinking of doing it (and then I'd be able to share the DVD too of course). They did make some good points. Basically, a lot of people still read subvocally, that is, they mentally pronounce every word or say it under their breath. I admit that I will do it at times if I'm trying to retain it better, but that does slow you down.

I thought it was interesting that they said statistically, the average reader in New York or somewhere up north reads about 100wpm faster than a reader in the south, because southerners talk slower! They were stressing on how to use vertical vision and not just horizontal and taking in groups of words rather than one at a time (and also improving retention and comprehension). Then there was the whol additional thing of note-taking of more of a tree-like diagram. It all sounds good and well, I go back and forth. If anyone else has heard anything about this I'd appreciate the feedback, it apparently got great reviews from students who had improved by very large amounts. I just don't want to be caught in a gimmick that makes one confident without actually doing any good. But I don't think that's the case here..... anyway.

That's my ramblings. Oh, the N's invited me over for dinner again tonight, which I very much appreciated, then we had Bible study. While I'm thinking about it, I must say that every time I open that book I'm borrowing, I get this faint odor that I can't pin down exactly what it is, but it is distinctive to the N house. I can catch the scent every time I'm there but I don't quite know what it is. Anyway, so the book definitely reminds me of that :)