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History

Going Global

On Sunday, a few friends and I decided that the Christian Science Center was worth investigating after 2+ years of walking curiously in its shadow. Inside, we found this (above).

This enormous glowing globe – house is called the Mapparium. Its a three story painted glass globe that you walk inside. It’s inside the Mary Baker Eddy Library on Mass. Avenue, and it’s preeeetttty awesome. There is a fee to enter the Mapparium, which is bogus, but hey, its a measly four dollars for a unique, thought-provoking experience — more than you’d get out of a Big Mac (also four dollars) from the McDonald’s next door.

You enter on a bridge suspended in the earth’s core (super cool). Then a brief light show begins (super cool) during which you examine the foreign cartography of this three-dimensional map made in 1935 (super cool). Like, what is French Indo-China? Oh, and this happens to be super cool: the acoustics of the perfect sphere are quite unique. From the center, your voice is very loud. I happened to be standing in the center. I’ve never felt so powerful, or so entertained. Not to mention somewhat rude. From the edge of the bridge, your voice can be heard very clearly by the person on the other side of the bridge, but not by others in the center, so two can have a secret conversation in plain globe-light. Everything about this place is… well, I think you know how I feel about it.

I vote we get one of these at Snell instead of an Alumni Reading Room. No offense, Mom (class of ’82).

Lord of the Flies

I recently read an interesting post on William Golding and Lord of the Flies that I wanted to share.  (As a warning, the post gives away part of the book’s ending.)  A new biography by John Carey details Golding’s rather unpleasant personal history, including his attempted rape of a 15 year-old girl when he was 18.  I never had to read the Lord of the Flies for school, and last year I added it to my TBR list (as an alternate selection).  I tried reading it, but like Kim, couldn’t really get into it.  I read the first quarter of the book and don’t see its appeal, but I know enough people who recommend it that maybe I’ll need to give it another chance in the future. I think that there’s no harm in discussing an author’s biography (though fourth grade seems awfully young to delve into either the themes of the book or Golding), but I often found that diving into an author’s history (whether heroic or unsavory), paled in comparison to discussing the dramas of the story itself. What do you think? About William Golding, Lord of the Flies, or learning more about the cruel parts of an author’s (or artist’s, or historical figure’s) past?