As man has been accustomed to look on himself as a body and a life, the physical animal with a certain moral or immoral temperament, and the things of the mind have been regarded as a fine flower and attainment of the physical life rather than themselves anything essential or the sign of something essential, so and much more has the community regarded that small part of its subjective self of which it becomes aware. It clings indeed always to its idiosyncrasies, habits, prejudices, but in a blind objective fashion, insisting on their most external aspect and not at all going behind them to that for which they stand, that which they try blindly to express.
This has been the rule not only with the nation, but with all communities. A Church is an organised religious community and religion, if anything in the world, ought to be subjective; for its very reason for existence -- where it is not merely an ethical creed with a supernatural authority -- is to find and realise the soul. Yet religious history has been almost entirely, except in the time of the founders and their immediate successors, an insistence on things objective, rites, ceremonies, authority, church governments, dogmas, forms of belief. Witness the whole external religious history of Europe, that strange sacrilegious tragi-comedy of discords, sanguinary disputations, "religious" wars, persecutions, State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It is only recently that men have begun seriously to consider what Christianity, Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their very reality and essence.
Originally posted by: Jeff7
"Understanding Wood." It's amusing to see some of my engineering formulas used in there, as well as some new ones, such as a formula for calculating the force it would take to rip a screw out of a piece of wood.
The book before that was one on General Relativity, written by Einstein. His writing is quite different from most of what I'd ever read before. The best word I think I can use to describe it is "dense." He packs so much information into such a small amount of space. His vocabulary is extensive, but not excessive. Each word seems to carefully and perfectly chosen, yet it flows so naturally.
I wonder what he'd make of seeing GR in action today, such as in GPS satellites; also what he'd have to say about dark energy and his "mistaken" cosmological constant.
Originally posted by: duragezic
About to finish Black Hawk Down.
Just went outside and see my shipment came in. I've been meaning to get Inside Delta Force for a while now but some others caught my eye, and with the Amazon 4-for-3 deal plus I wanted free shipping, I got 5 books for under $33 shipped!
Inside Delta Force
Warrior Soul - The Memoir of a Navy Seal
The Commandos
First In - An Insider's Account of how the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
No True Glory - A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah
They were all highly rated and recommended often for their respective topics. I will start with Inside Delta Force. I think that and some of the others I bought are the ones that are so hard to put down that you finish them in a couple of days. The Commandos is an older book so it's going to have some outdated information but I think it is a good primer to the various special forces groups.