Character for Champions

By Charles Sutherland

"A wonderful book for students of any age -- young and old -- to learn the basic facts of everyday life and to see how exciting learning can be, both physical and mental."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Sutherland
• Release date: Sep 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9780979053238

Charles Sutherland

Educated at University of Vienna (Austria), Loyola University of Chicago, London School of Economics and Political Science (England), University of Chicago.International businessman for 35 years; visited 67 countries; author of numerous articles and two books (Disciples of Destruction: The Religious Origins of War and Terrorism; Character for Champions); co-author of two books (Clash of the Gods; Red Tape: Adventure Capitalism in the New Russia); Black Belt in karate; father/two sons; lives in Washington, DC area.

Book preview

Character is the most important part of our lives as human beings. It is the beginning of everything that we are. When you look at all the people you know, isn't the most important thing about them how good a person they are? When you're talking about a friend to someone who doesn't know them, at some point you usually say, He's alright, or She's a really good person.

When you do that you're talking about a persons character. A person with good character has everybody's respect. People with faulty character cause mixed feelings in the people around them. People with bad character make everyone dislike them.

A lot of times our first emotional impulse in a disappointing situation is anger or selfishness; in an embarrassing situation it's often dishonesty; in a threatening situation it's often cowardice. Sometimes reactions like that are understandable, but they never accomplish much. Doing the right thing in these situations—being calm, honest, or brave—can be a lot of work, but it builds your character, and gets you the things, like respect, that come with having good character.

Character seems like it just exists—if you're a good person, you just are a good person. But in fact, good people are made, not born. To have good character requires training and effort. Just as an athlete must develop his or her body for sports, likewise people must develop their character for living life. Families can give some parts of good character to their children, but every boy and girl basically has to build character themselves. Every day, sometimes every minute, you decide if you are going to be a good person, or something else.

If any single way of living could be pointed out as making the good person, it would be living truthfully.

All life constantly moves to avoid pain and seek joy. The universal common purpose of life is happiness. But how does one achieve happiness? By being loved, the ultimate form of happiness. But how does one get to be loved? By being beautiful. Only beauty— spiritual, not physical—triggers true love. But how does one become beautiful? Through truth. Only truth beautifies the human spirit, the human heart, the human character.

Working from the beginning, we can say:

When you are truthful you are beautiful in heart; when you are beautiful in heart everyone loves you; when everyone loves you, you are happy.

Conversely:

When you lie you are ugly in heart; when you are ugly in heart, everyone dislikes you; when everyone dislikes you, you are unhappy.

Therefore, a truthful way of life is not only good, but also wise, and a false way of life is not only wrong, but also toolish.

We hope that this little book helps you become the kind ol person you want to be. Together we can improve ourselves and others. Then together we will win the most important race of all — the human race.

1—The Moon

The moon is a large rock in the sky near our planet, the earth. Some people think the moon comes out only at night, because it s so bright at night. But sometimes you can see the moon during the daytime, too.

Believe it or not, the moon does not have its own light. After all, it s just a big rock. The light of the moon is really light from the sun bouncing off the moon, sort of like light bounces off the reflectors on your bike.

We get to see only one side of the moon because long ago the moon stopped spinning (the earth still spins—at about a 1,000 miles an hour!). The moon revolves (circles) the earth, sort of like a ball at the end of an invisible string. The side of the moon connected to the string is always facing us. People who landed on the moon saw all sides of the earth, because the earth is still spinning.

Eclipses

There are two kinds of eclipses. A lunar eclipse is when the earth gets between the sun and the moon. With no light coming from the sun, the moon goes dark. A solar eclipse is when the moon gets between the sun and the earth, making the earth go dark, like when a cloud comes in front of the sun. Try to stay up if you hear that a lunar eclipse is coming—they only come every five or ten years.

Tides

You know the tides: when ocean water comes up the beach for a few hours and then goes back out. Believe it or not, the tides are caused by the moon. When the moon is overhead, the tides go out, attracted by the gravitational pull of the moon. When the moon is on the other side of the earth, the tides come back in. They've been released from the gravitational pull of the moon. Tides are a way of seeing the effect on earth of things in outer space.

Word for the Week

Lunar: To do with the moon, from the Latin luna, or moon. Latin was the language of the Romans, who lived in Italy two thousand years ago. Many English words come from Latin.

Quote for the Week

Dreams are goals waiting to be achieved.

—-Anonymous

2—The Stars and the Universe

What is the universe?

The universe is all things that exist, including the earth, the stars, the sun, and the other planets. There are a lot of ideas about how the universe began, and even more about how it works. According to the ideas that most scientists believe nowadays, things like distance and time and speed are all connected to each other. Supposedly, if you could get in a spaceship and go fast enough, time would almost stop, and your spaceship would get incredibly big and heavy.

What are the stars ?

A star is a huge bunch of gas that explodes into large fires all the time. Naturally, all those explosions create a lot of light. A few thousand stars are very close to the earth, so we can see them at night with our eyes. But most stars (in fact, almost all the stars) are not very close to the earth. The only way to see them is through a gigantic magnifying glass called a telescope.

There are hundreds of billions of stars in the universe—so many it is almost impossible to understand. To give you an idea of how many stars there are in the universe, think about the grains of sand in a beach—a beach a mile long. There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand in that whole beach.

hooking back into time

Did you know that when you are looking at the stars you are looking back into time? It's true. Because stars are so far away, it can take years, or even millions and billions of years, for the light from stars to get to us here on earth. When you look at a star you're seeing the star as it was when the light first left it. For the closest stars, that's just four or five years ago. For the farthest away stars, ones we can see only in telescopes, it's billions of years ago. In fact, some of the stars we see in the sky could already be burned out and gone right now—but we're still watching them as they were a long time ago!

Word for the Week

Infinite: Without end.

Quote for the Week

I could never understand how someone can look up at the stars and say there is no God.

—Abraham Lincoln

3—The Sun

The sun is the star that our planet travels around, just like the moon travels around the earth. Like most stars, the sun gives off light because it is really just a huge bunch of gas that is on fire and constantly exploding. As you might imagine, the sun is very, very hot. In fact, it is about 10,000 degrees right next to the sun. You probably already know how hot it is when the temperature on Earth gets close to just 100 degrees. So 10,000 degrees would give you a heck of a sunburn in about a second.

Fortunately, the planet Earth is just far enough away so that we don't get burned, and just close enough so that the rays of light are still warm by the time they reach us. The next closest planet to the sun, Venus, would be too hot for us to live on. Besides, the air on Venus is sulphur, a gas that would make us cough forever. The next farthest planet out from the sun is Mars, which is too cold for us and plus has almost no air at all, sulphur or otherwise.

Because the light from the sun is still warm (but not too warm) when it reaches us, it can keep us warm too, plus help the trees and flowers to live, and help the farmers grow our food so we can eat.

Words for the Week

Million: A thousand thousand.

Billion: A thousand million.