What is in a mantra, and why do we have them?

You know, earlier I was helping a friend with some programming questions he had, and as I always eventually do. I shared some programming mantras that I live by while programming. Then I thought to myself, just what is in a mantra? Why is it that we ever were hear that word, it is almost treated with some spiritual respect? So I decided to look up the meaning of the word. What I found did not really surprise me.

People know many things, and half of them are wrong.

So I have been reading a new book by Orson Scott Card. The book is called "Hidden Empire" it is a sequel to his Empire book. Empire was an amazing book about the possibility of another civil war in America. The book brought up a lot of good points that shows how we could very easier head in that direction.

In reading Hidden Empire, Card gives very insightful messages before each chapter. These messages come from the thoughts of the current President in the book. One of these passages really stuck out to me.

"People know many things, and half of them are wrong. If only we knew which half, we'd have reason to be proud of our intelligence.
   What is knowledge? A belief that is shared by all the respectable people in a community, whether there is any real evidence for it or not.
   What is faith? A belief we hold so strongly that we act as if it is true, even though we know there are many who do not believe it.
   What is opinion? A belief that we expet other people to argue with.
   What is scientific fact? An oxymoron. Science does not deal in facts. It deals in hypotheses, which are never fully and finally correct."

Card's writing normally floors me with how crisp and intelligent it is, but this just take the cake. Since this blog is all about things that make us think, I thought this would be the perfect venue for it.

What is par time?

Just finished a new programming assignment. I got a lot of help from my Dad. I always appreciate his help so much. In addition to helping me with better ways to code sections of code. He helps me by telling me what the C++ standard is. This helps because I want to follow the standard in all that I do. If I follow the standard then my code will not only be cleaner but it will also make a whole lot more sense later on.

 

I used new ideas that I hadn't considered before. Since homework is supposed to teach you new things. I believe this one did just that. Even though my current par time is 2.5 hours. I believe that because this one was a tougher one. I have well then made par. The assignment isn't due till friday at midnight and it was finished around wednesday's noon.

The Gift of a Curse

            Mother lay on her bed, in the agony of childbirth. My birth in fact. Father stood nearby; he was a burly man with a brown broad beard that covered the lower portion of his face. His mouth and chin was lost in the sea of hair. He was very concerned for my mother, like a good husband should be, and he would do anything in his power to help her, even if it meant giving up his own life. You couldn’t ask for a more devoted husband or father, at least I could not. They loved each other, more so than the stars could have power to shine deep into the vacuum of space.

As the papers come...

Sorry that I haven't been keeping up to my schedule of papers as I said I would. As the papers do come. I would love comments as to what you guys think of them and what you think is the most interesting part to you. Thank you so much.