THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Biblical year latest experiment for Jacobs ’90
Profs reminisce on Sputnik’s anniversary
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continued from page 5 Jacobs’ mission didn’t end with the laws of the Bible. He assembled a “spiritual advisory board” of priests and ministers to guide him on his spiritual journey. Jacobs recalled the words of one of his advisers in particular. “He said that there are two ways you can view the world — as a series of rights and entitlements, or a series of responsibilities. In biblical times, they viewed it as the second,” Jacobs said, and compared this perspective to the John F. Kennedy quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” Jacobs also set out to explore different religious traditions, visiting communities of Hasidic Jews, Amish and Jehovah’s Witnesses. To learn about other perspectives, Jacobs visited the Creation Museum — which takes a literal approach to Genesis — in Kentucky. “They have animatronic dinosaurs and animatronic cavemen because they believe they existed at the same time,” he said. The museum also housed a recreation of Noah’s Ark. The model was detailed to the extent that it included vents “to get rid of fumes from manure while out at sea.” “From their perspective, we’re all descended from these two people, Adam and Eve, over 6,000 years (ago),” Jacobs said. He said as he tried to grasp this point of view, he experienced a strong feeling of kinship with other humans. “It was an insight into why they would be attracted to that point of view,” he said. Some of Jacobs’ explorations into the Bible were more lighthearted.
Realizing how frequently singing and dancing were mentioned in the Bible, Jacobs “did some biblical dancing” and played a 10-stringed harp. “As a secular person I tended to focus on ... guilt and sin. But there is much joy in religion as well,” he said. Jacobs mentioned the Sabbath as a more serious biblical tradition that he found enjoyable. “I’m a workaholic, always checking my e-mail,” he said. Calling the Sabbath a “wonderful tradition,” he said he enjoyed having a day to relax with family and friends so much that he plans to continue to observe the holiday. Jacobs described his year of biblical living as “paradoxically liberating.” “This was an experience where you had freedom from choice,” he said. “It’s interesting because I went to Brown because I loved ... the freedom of choice. I loved to explore, and people at Brown are so adventurous and full of curiosity.” Explorations in Providence constituted some of Jacobs’ most memorable experiences at Brown, he said, such as walking on coal and attending a Wiccan festival. Jacobs applied his knowledge at the Brown TV station, where he was involved in a number of shows, including “Beyond Brown,” a show about places, events and activities in Providence. Jacobs graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. “There were a lot of Fortune 500 companies hiring philosophers,” Jacobs joked. “I found a little bit of trouble finding a job ... I could somewhat put a sentence together, so I began freelance writing.”
After writing for a small newspaper in California, Jacobs eventually moved back to New York City, where he worked for the New York Observer. He moved on to write for Entertainment Weekly and then for Esquire magazine, where he is currently editor at large. Jacobs started using experimental lifestyles as the basis for stories long before he wrote “The Year of Biblical Living.” For an article in Esquire, Jacobs outsourced his life to a team in Bangladesh that took his phone calls, responded to his e-mails and even argued with his wife for him. For an earlier book, “The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World,” he read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A-Ak to Zywiec. “It keeps my life fascinating,” Jacobs said. At the end of a bizarre year, Jacobs reflected on how living biblically affected his lifestyle. “I was (thankful) for everything, like the fact that my socks don’t have holes in them. I tried to focus on the 100 little things every day that go right instead of on the flip side that go wrong.” “As he stopped gossiping, as he gave to the needy and followed the compassionate parts of the Bible ... I saw his personality change, his thought-life change,” Roose said. “I think A.J. would say that if you start to change your behavior, it tends to change your personality.” Jacobs said that at the end of the year, he “wasn’t Gandhi or even Angelina Jolie.” All the same, he discovered he could integrate some aspects of the Bible into his lifestyle. Some of the ancient book’s laws, Jacobs said, were “wise” — even “wonderful.”
continued from page 1 with American scientists working on similar projects to reach space. “It was Korolyov’s personal race,” Khrushchev said. “He wanted to be the first.” But Khrushchev downplayed Sputnik’s significance for the Soviet people, saying it was an expected success for the Soviet Union, though a shock to the United States. “It was Americans who made all of the publicity of this,” he said. “Then it was the beginning of (the space) race. It was only on one side — the American side. My father didn’t want to spend too much money. He had a different priority, to make life better for the people.” Head spoke next, saying his childhood growing up in Washington, D.C., paralleled Khrushchev’s in many ways. “We were fearful of Communism from an ideological standpoint,” he said. “We were also worried from a nuclear holocaust standpoint.” Head played an audio clip of the beeping noise emitted by Sputnik heard around the world upon its launch. He said the world was shaken after Sputnik’s launch, pointing in particular to President Kennedy’s push, announced soon after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in 1961, to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. The launch had significance for Brown as well, Head said — the rapid growth of the United States’ space program and increased national defense funding more than doubled the size of the University’s science program and were a primary factor in transforming Brown from “a sleepy little Ivy League college” into the research university it is today. Head also noted that Sputnik changed the way humans look at Earth. He said that in the 50 years that have passed since Sputnik’s launch, nine countries have launched satellites — though he had to be corrected when he accidentally listed the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist in 1991, as one of those countries. Head concluded by displaying a sample of moon rock. “We did get to the moon as human beings,” he said. “We’re in space to stay.” Pollock, speaking next, did not have personal stories to tell of Sputnik — he said he wasn’t alive
in 1957. Instead, he drew on his knowledge as a scholar to put the event in historical context. “Sputnik has been called the shock of the century,” Pollock said. “(Nuclear physicist Edward) Teller said the United States has lost a battle more important and greater than Pearl Harbor. My question is why we were so shocked.” Pollock attempted to answer that question by pointing to a tendency by many in the United States to attribute Soviet scientific achievements to flukes, espionage or the product of ex-Nazi scientists, but never to the communists themselves. A further reason for the shock, Pollock said, was that the assumption that democracy was the ideal environment for science — an assumption held since the end of World War II — was being challenged. “(It was) the real beginning of the sense that nuclear bombs could be dropped on American soil,” Pollock said. The Soviets celebrated the 1961 flight of Gagarin rather than the 1957 launching of Sputnik. “Sputnik was part of a secret military project, which did not produce a hero like Gagarin,” Pollock said. “Korolyov was secret to the public. ... In 1961, the Soviets could now celebrate a hero. Sputnik was one step along the line in launching a man in space, much like in the U.S. rocket launches were along the line of landing a man on the moon.” Levitsky, the final speaker, recounted his childhood in Prague, explaining how he was an avid reader, particularly of Soviet works about moon landings, which captured his imagination. “I felt my worldly troubles were to be erased if I were to somehow go into space and try to see some new, more exciting things,” he said. He said the Sputnik launch was life-changing for him. “It has in fact given me hope,” he said, “that man can indeed reach into space.” Levitsky credited Sputnik with inspiring him in part to publish his latest work, “Worlds Apart,” an anthology of pieces that tap into “Russia’s dream to fly.” The panel concluded with a question-and-answer session with members of the audience. “It’s really cool to see that professors ... have their classes but that they can also come together on something that is of personal interest to them,” said Daphne Beers ’08 after the event.
Reynaga latest addition to dean’s office continued from page 1 Lassonde, who was dean of Yale’s Calhoun College before beginning his job at Brown July 1, said he knew Reynaga “professionally” though “not very well” from their time at Yale. He said he had heard through colleagues “how good her work was,” and that he encouraged Reynaga to apply for the position at Brown. The search committee interviewed eight candidates for the position and brought four of them to campus for further consideration, Lassonde said.
Reynaga’s work will largely address sophomore studies and programming at Brown, Lassonde said, an area that the dean of the College’s office plans to “direct attention to” in the immediate future. According to Yale’s Web site, Reynaga, who graduated with her B.A. from Yale in 1998, is also an assistant staff writer for corporate and foundation relations in the university’s development office. Reynaga could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening at her listed phone number in the Yale directory.
thanks for reading