Sunday, September 14, 2008

A Small Diversion

Not a whole lot of knitting progress has happened here in the past week or so. Some, but not a lot. I finally made it to the LAST REPEAT on the Artic Diamonds Stole (why, yes, I am rather excited about that), got a little further along on the Swallowtail Shawl, turned the heel on the second Staggered Lace Sock. Not much.

So what have I been doing instead of knitting? Spinning, perhaps? Nope.

It all began when this catalog arrived the mail. These folks sell DVD's and CD's of university-level courses which they claim are taught by "the best of the best" professors. I was intrigued. And I found a course on a cool topic that was taught by a professor from my undergraduate college, of which I have always had a high opinion. Of course, I had to order it.


Einstein's Relativity. Wow! My last physics course was in high school, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. But I had no trouble understanding this stuff. I get the whole thing. We even dabbled in quantum physics and quarks. Howsomever, it was not possible to knit during the lectures. Took all my mental faculties to comprehend the material. No brainspace left for yarnovers and such.


Now, having focused on science, it was then only fair to give some time to . . .

Uh-huh. Religion. This course caught my fancy, because I couldn't believe one could have an entire course of 24 lectures on one single book of the Bible. An important book, granted – creation of the world and all that – but still, one book. Genesis is turning out to be fascinating. There are issues of translation it seems, since Hebrew is quite different from English. And there is historical/cultural context. And supporting evidence from archeological digs. Amazing. Still no knitting, though, since I am usually reading related texts as the lectures proceed.


And once I've finished Genesis (I'm about halfway through) next comes – writing skills. Perhaps this will improve the blog. We can hope. And perhaps I will be able to knit during this one. Something simple. Maybe the traveling sock would like to learn about sentence structure.

6 comments:

Delighted Hands said...

Wow. So happy for you. I agree that being a student all your life is a good idea-looking forward to gleaning what you are reaping! Hold the knitting in your lap while you study at least :)

Marjorie said...

I always wondered what those were like.

You should also check iTunes U (from the iTunes store), which has free lectures from all sorts of colleges and universities. I've been intrigued by those, but I haven't yet caught up with the knitting podcasts.

Susan Luni said...

Hmmm. I didn't know about those. I've been looking for podcasts of history lectures, but haven't found any yet. Maybe these are the way to go.

Sharon said...

Our library has invested heavily in those and we were all surprised at how popular they are with our public. They circ a lot and I've wondered about them. I guess I should try one and see how it goes in the car, since I've got two available listening hours each day. Mostly I listen to podcasts and will take Marjorie's suggestion to see what's available there. Good idea - thanks!

SNOWBIRD said...

Thanks for this post. I will have to show hubby. He is always on the look for interesting things to do with his freetime. Little sister might enjoy these as well. Thanks again for the post.

Catherine said...

I've had my eye on these -