Diana. plus more

So first, I’m chilling in the kitchen with my brother while I eat wings and he listens to music. I ate so many wings…mmm Wing Stop. Then my brother leaves around 2:30pm to pick Jaden up from school. So when he leaves I go into my room and work on the homework module I have to do for my Literacy and Service Learning class that I have on Saturday. As I’m laying in my room I hear the front door open and I know my brother and Jaden have arrived so I go and say heyyy and just do a little small talk with them as they eat McDonalds. Next my dad arrives and enters the door saying “elotes”…he’s always trying to be funny using Spanish words to say things that sound like English words. So instead of saying “hello” he says “hello…tes.” :) So then I head back to my room to continue my work.

As I continue to work on the module I begin to hear my brother ask my dad about a Spanish word and its meaning because he’s helping out Jaden with her Spanish homework. I can hear them having difficulty on trying to define a word that has multiple meanings and trying to see how it fits into a blank space. So I decide to stop my module and go grab the Spanish/English dictionary and let them have the direct translation. I figured why have them struggling when I could just give them the direct translation of the word and its different definitions. As I hand them the dictionary we giggle at the fact that they were over there having difficulty when they could’ve just gotten the dictionary in the first place. Then we begin to discuss how words can often mean more than one thing so the translation can be a bit difficult.

From this our conversation goes onto the topic of translation itself and how there can be ambiguous words and sometimes translations that are left up to a person’s interpretation of the meaning. Which then leads us into the topic of other pieces of literature that can be left up to translation and a person’s interpretation—whether  it be a religious translation, a textbook translation, a google translation, etc. We talk about how events can be interpreted from different perspectives and how we often get the American version of it. Then this leads us into talking about facts, truths, and realities.

Which then leads us to talking about metaphysical things. Then I make fun of the time my brother said something like, “There is no truth, nothing is real.” Which then leads us into discussing about how we can actually never know whether something is true or reality. This leads us to talking about “cause and effect” and then to “correlation” and then to the fallacy that can occur when you attribute something to being a cause when it could actually be the effect and how sometimes you can’t be certain of which is which. We continue to talk about “cause and effect” but also the idea of probability. I mention something that I heard once in a critical thinking class about the likelihood that things could just be repeated accidents, repeated accidental probabilities that get considered as “cause and effect” and then these repeated events get taken as fact even though it could be possible that it was just a repeated accident.

This leads us into  talking about science and the things we learn in our classes. The importance of knowing certain things even if at points during our education we think we will never need to know them. We talk about the importance of physics in regards to chemistry, bio, etc. We talk about chemistry projects we did and how at the time we really didn’t see how we would ever be using them again and what they even meant..whether it was doing titrations or learning the orbitals, spin, affinity, etc of elements and their atoms. But then we go into how knowing these things end up being really important if you want to go into a career that deals with that information and how all those things you learn end up layering and building on each other in order for you to be able to learn more. 

Lastly, we just discuss the importance of knowledge in general. The importance of being politically aware, historically aware, etc etc…because it all affects your life and understanding. In the end, our last comment is on the ignorance that abounds in the world….

Anyway, I just think it’s interesting how these end up being the conversations we have in our living room on a Friday afternoon when we could be out doing other things.

(as a sidenote: No worries, I will be going out like normal people do for the weekend. I’m gong with my mom today to see The Vow, yay :D…hehe, she’s the only one willing to go see a chick flick of this sort with me)