Friday, May 26, 2017

Being Respectful of Religions

To society,
    One of the most obvious proofs that political correctness does not care about respect is the lack of respect shown towards group of peoples, especially concerning religion. While religion has a bad reputation to many people, there is proper logic. The proper definition of religion involves a person rendering what is due to his god(s). If you believe there is a god who is the master of the universe, shouldn't that god be the most important thing to you? Should that god be what you respect the most? Therefore it is proper behavior for people to do what they think is the best way to serve their god. That is the basis for freedom of religion.
    We know this is the proper understanding of religion because it is common to refer to extreme devotion towards things such as money, alcohol, or sex as "someone's religion." How do we know? It's because when those things are threatened, they become very angry and sometimes violent. The fact that the prospect of money has caused many wars and injustices to humanity is amazing.
     Now I doubt one letter would convince you to stop society's hatred of religion. However, I would at least ask you to be respectful of the things religion values, one of those being certain names. For Muslims, the word "Allah" is sacred and should not be disrespected with casual and purposeless use. The same goes for "God" or "Jesus" for Christians and "YHWH" (which you're apparently not even supposed to pronounce) for Jews. If you are willing to forego some common words in order to not "offend" someone, then you can certainly refrain from being disrespectful of names for something large groups of people consider most important and inspiring. Let us be respectful of everyone.

N. D. Moharo

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Quick Conversion for Weather

Yesterday, I threw out my back. So in order to rest, this time I'll be sharing a simple thing rather than a full essay.

Growing up in the U.S. my sense of temperature was naturally in Fahrenheit, which doesn't help when travelling to other countries. There is the mathematical way to pretty accurately convert between the two, but I've found it isn't quick for simple math. However, I've figured out how to switch from Celsius to Fahrenheit quickly when discussing weather. Start from 32 and add 18 degrees Fahrenheit for each 10 degrees Celsius. This allow you to quickly estimate the temperature by just using addition rather than division and multiplication. Since good baseline temperatures for Celsius are 0 (32), 10 (50), 20 (68), 30 (86), and 35 (95), it makes it simple to quickly figure it out.

To quickly estimate the reverse, I'd say subtract 32 and then divide by 2 (though this gets less accurate pretty quickly so don't use it for even boiling water or you'll be off by 10 degrees Celsius, which is a big deal)

Since the weather is actually a common topic to talk about, when you chat with a non-American, I hope these tactics help you out.

N. D. Moharo