About the Name

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-oph’ilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. -- Luke 1:1-4

Relax, I know I’m not writing the New Testament here, but I will try to follow a few things closely. — Dick Sandlin

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Hell Hath No Limits

I would like to call your attention to a couple of things that I learned through a thread posted by Sarah Hey on the Stand Firm blog.  Sarah’s thread introduced me to a site called Mars Hill Audio by Ken Meyers, a former editor on Morning Edition on National Public Radio.  Ken’s site offers great audio commentaries on Christian matters, especially on challenges to the Faith.  Ken pointed me to an article printed in Harper’s Magazine last year about how many cultural disorders are related to the hatred of limits.  This article, called Faustian economics: Hell hath no limits, was written by Wendell Berry, a frequent contributor to Harper’s.  Isn’t blogging wonderful?  I would never have found this article by myself.  Click on the Harper’s link to read the whole thing.  Here are a few highlights:

...the real names of global warming are Waste and Greed—and by now it is manifestly foolish. But foolishness on this scale looks disturbingly like a sort of national insanity. We seem to have come to a collective delusion of grandeur, insisting that all of us are “free” to be as conspicuously greedy and wasteful as the most corrupt of kings and queens. (Perhaps by devoting more and more of our already abused cropland to fuel production we will at last cure ourselves of obesity and become fashionably skeletal, hungry but—thank God!—still driving.)

...Thinking of our predicament has sent me back again to Christopher Marlowe’s Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. This is a play of the Renaissance; Faustus, a man of learning, longs to possess “all Nature’s treasury,” to “Ransack the ocean… and search all corners of the new-found world” To assuage his thirst for knowledge and power, he deeds his soul to Lucifer, receiving in compensation for twenty-four years the services of the sub-devil Mephistophilis, nominally Faustus’s slave but in fact his master. Having the subject of limitlessness in mind, I was astonished on this reading to come upon Mephistophilis’s description of hell. When Faustus asks, “How comes it then that thou art out of hell?” Mephistophilis replies, “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.” And a few pages later he explains:  (where “we” = the damned)

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place, but where we are is hell,
And where hell is must we ever be.

For those who reject heaven, hell is everywhere, and thus is limitless. For them, even the thought of heaven is hell.

...John Milton in Book VII of Paradise Lost returns again to a consideration of our urge to know. To Adam’s request to be told the story of creation, the “affable Archangel” Raphael agrees “to answer thy desire of knowledge within bounds,” explaining that

Knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.

Raphael is saying, with angelic circumlocution, that knowledge without wisdom, limitless knowledge, is not worth a fart; he is not a humorless archangel.

 

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Robot Fish Swims with Wave Motion

From SmartPlanet.com yesterday:

Dr. William Megill at the University of Bath in the UK has developed a robot fish called Gymnobot that swims by rippling a fin on its belly. They say it may lead to lighter, more efficient robotic submersibles. Would this make a super-quiet missile submarine go faster?

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Armadillo Qualifies in NASA Challenge

A Texas company, Armadillo Aerospace, has successfully met the Level 2 requirements for the NASA Centennial Challenges - Lunar Lander Challenge and qualified to win a $1 million dollar first place prize. The flights were conducted Sept. 12 at the Armadillo Aerospace test facility in Caddo Mills, Texas. This video shows the first portion of the test. You can click on the 2 minute point on the timeline to skip to the actual flight test.

To qualify for the Level 2 prize, Armadillo Aerospace’s rocket vehicle “Scorpius” took off from one concrete pad, ascended to 50 meters, moved 60 meters horizontally, then landed on a second pad that featured boulders and craters to simulate the lunar surface. After refueling at that pad, the vehicle then repeated the flight back and landed at the original pad. The vehicle completed the round trip, including fueling and refueling operations, in one hour and 47 minutes, well within the two and half hour time limit. Armadillo Aerospace also met the requirement to remain aloft under rocket power for three minutes during each of the flights.  Two other companies are entered in the contest and one of them has had an unsuccessful trial.

The Scorpius single-engine vehicle weighs about 1,900 pounds fully loaded with liquid oxygen and ethanol fuel and is flown with a combination of automatic controls and remote-manual commands. Andrew Petro, NASA’s Centennial Challenge program manager said, “It was a great demonstration of reusable rocket technology and the use of non-toxic propellants, which is of great value to NASA and important to the future of spaceflight.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Wagner’s Pilgrims’ Chorus from Tannhäuser

The full name of this piece is “Beglückt darf nun dich, o Heimat, ich schauen”, which means something like,“Fortunate am I, oh my homeland, now to behold thee again” in English.  My friend, A. S. Haley (The Anglican Curmudgeon), wrote

The pilgrims are returning from their pilgrimage to Rome, and they are expressing their gratitude at being safely back in their own country again. Tannhäuser, however (who is not among them, but comes later), is “beglückt” only in a completely different sense from what he imagines. His great love, Elisabeth, on failing to see him among the pilgrims returning from Rome, concludes that he has not obtained forgiveness there, and perishes on the spot, thereby (with her purity) earning him the redemption that he sought. (Well, it is Wagner, after all.)

You can find out more about the opera in Wikipedia.  Heinrich Tannhäuser is a young singer who breaks the spell of Venus with the words, “My salvation rests in Mary, the mother of God.” Don’t miss the “Alleluias” near the end. Tannhäuser was written 100 years before I was born.

The building in the video somehow reminds me of where things seem to be headed in the Episcopal Church. I can imagine a choir of angels looking down on what’s happened.  (A friend tells me the building is actually the old Detroit train depot, but doesn’t it look like a huge church?)

NOTE:  Use the button under the “You” in “YouTube” to get the full-screen view.  It is awesome.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Buzz Lightyear Returns from Space

Disney’s space ranger Buzz Lightyear returned from space on Sept. 11, aboard space shuttle Discovery’s STS-128 mission after 15 months aboard the International Space Station. His time on the orbiting laboratory will be celebrated in a ticker-tape parade together with his space station crewmates and former Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin on Oct. 2, at Walt Disney World in Florida.

While on the space station, Buzz supported NASA’s education outreach program—STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)—by creating a series of fun educational online outreach programs. Following his return, Disney is partnering with NASA to create a new online educational game and an online mission patch competition for school kids across America. NASA will fly the winning patch in space. In addition, NASA plans to announce on Oct. 2, 2009, the details of a new exciting educational competition that will give students the opportunity to design an experiment for the astronauts on the space station.

Image Credit: NASA.  Reprinted from the NASA Image of the Day