Thursday, July 5, 2012

7/3-7/5 2012

Normally, my blog post will cover my learnings for one day. BUT NOT THIS TIME.

Reading "The Da Vinci Code." Some say a lot of stuff in this book isn't true. I don't really know. Interesting things that have stuck out, and also things I learned spurred on by this book.

  • The pentacle of Venus (over 8 years). Greeks honoring goddess Venus through Olympics every 8 years. Originally, logo was going to be a pentacle? Changed to five circles? Olympics held every four years to mark half-cycle of Venus.
  • Days of the week named after pagan gods. I think I always sort of suspected this. Kind of weird. Also, several months of the year are named after Roman Gods, and the other months have something to do with Roman culture. It's not really that big of a deal, it's just kind of funny that some of these names are so extremely common in our mostly Christian culture that we don't give a second thought.
  • The Divine Proportion, 1.618, apparently found everywhere in the universe, including music, biology, our own bodies...this one may be a stretch for me to believe too, but it would make for good research.
Reading "The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler"-- These include insights.

  • Hitler almost died a lot. These many near-death encounters, sadly, in my opinion, were a major reason that he took so much power to himself, strengthening his feeling that he was "fated" to rule the world essentially. A bodyguard took six bullets for him in a march in the 1920s, and then there's the whole bomb plot with Stauffenberg or whatever his name was.
  • Hitler, on the front lines in WW1, had a dog named Foxy, and from the picture in the book, Foxy appeared to be a Parson Russell Terrier that looked strangely like my dog Juno. Apparently, he loved this dog and taught it tricks. When, in the course of a particular battle, the dog disappeared, Hitler was absolutely crushed, moreso than when his own comrades would perish. I do not mean to say this to give any sort of humanity to the man, but for some reason, it's really fascinating to see the psychopath with actual human emotions.
  • He stopped eating meat, for some reason, after his niece Geli committed suicide.