What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness?
Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
lightning, John Hancock building. John Handcock building, lightning
"The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."
"There is no novelty to me in the reflection that, from my earliest years, I have accepted many false opinions as true, and that what I have concluded from such badly assured premises could not but be highly doubtful and uncertain. From the time that I first recognized this fact, I have realized that if I wished to have any firm and constant knowledge in the sciences, I would have to undertake, once and for all, to set aside all the opinions which I had previously accepted among my beliefs and start again from the very beginning."
Mary Pat and I took a roadtrip through the northeastern part of the state this weekend, stopping in at Little River Canyon and Mount Cheaha. It was cold, so cold. The views were great, though.
"Christians ought to remember that normal, thinking people do not automatically see the sense in their claims. Indeed believers ought to be a minority. Even Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians. "but we preach Christ crucified: ...foolishness to Gentiles". This stuff is supposed to sound crazy to you guys. After all, we Catholics believe that if we eat the flesh and blood of a Jewish zombie who died 2000 years ago, our invisible friend in the sky will save us from death. Faith does not come "naturally"; that is why we call it a "gift". We should hardly be surprised when a number of people say, "no thank you, that sounds ridiculous." It seems to me that Christians should be a lot more humble about our truth claims and a whole heckuva lot more charitable to people who don't take them up."
In the summer of 2006, West Virginia Supreme Court Elliott E. Maynard vacationed in the French Riviera with Don Blankenship, CEO of coal conglomerate Massey Energy. No big deal, really, except for the fact that Massey Energy happened to be appealing a $50 million jury verdict against it in front of the West Virginia Supreme Court. How did the case turn out? Lo and behold, Maynard voted with the majority in a 3-to-2 decision in favor of the coal companies. This sort of thing makes my skin crawl.
A "desire path" is a term in landscape architecture used to describe a path that isn't designed but rather is worn casually away by people finding the shortest distance between two points.
Elijah Wood confirms that Peter Jackson will be filming The Hobbit soon. Rumors suggest that it will be split into two films--the first will involve the events in the book while the second will be a continuation of The Hobbit that leads into Lord of the Rings, a "narrative bridge" if you will.
I've pretty much decided that mockingbirds are my favorite bird. I could sit and listen to a couple of them weave tapestries of stolen song all afternoon. Plus they have really big cajones.
A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,
the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.
What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.
A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.
The Crook family trip to Jamaica a few weeks ago was a blast and a success. I now know that I can drive anywhere on this planet. Check out the photos here.
In the future, everything you want will be downloadable. Except food, I suppose. But your personalized topographic wooden art bowls certainly will be, and in fact are right now at Fluidforms. Here's how it works. You type your location into the Google Maps window on the site, and it provides a three-dimensional topographic view of the city where you live as a wooden block. This is Montgomery, where I live:
You choose the exact portion you want represented in wood and order it, they carve it on some weird machine, and within a few weeks you have something that looks like this:
Very cool. Living in Colorado would heighten the effect, I imagine.
The Edge Foundation is a public idea crucible with the purpose of promoting "inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society." Each year they ask a very serious question and ask leading minds to answer it. The question for 2008 is this:
When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.
WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?
Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
Folks, our friend Nate is working at
Cooper Green Mercy Hospital in Birmingham and needs your help. You see, the hospital doesn't have an MRI machine. This may seem odd, but it is true. Yes, they have a shiny new building over there and some fancy flower pots but unfortunately the plants give really bad musculo-skeletal readouts. And I hear the new hospital windows are all but useless medically. So pitch in and help Cooper Green win an MRI! Yes, you too can help the ailing medical establishment in Birmingham by simply casting your vote. Be sure and watch the video, too--good stuff.
In a decision proving that atheists are the new gays, a New Jersey judge recently had the audacity to deny an atheist couple the right to adopt a child. His rationale? Despite the "high moral and ethical standards" of the would-be parents, the the 17-month-old child "should have the freedom to worship as she sees fit, and not be influenced by prospective parents who do not believe in a Supreme Being."
"Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light"
If you were listening to Garrison Keilor's Writer's Almanac you may have heard him mistakenly attribute today, January 3rd, as the day in 1517 on which Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, sparking the Protestant Reformation. Luther actually nailed the theses to the door on October 31, 1517, but a few years later on this day in 1521, Pope Leo X excommunicated him. This of course was the church's typical response for centuries to any attempt at undermining its authority. And even though Luther was essentially correct in pointing out that the practice of selling places in heaven (i.e. "indulgences") for money was not supported by the Scriptures, he was exiled nonetheless. Refreshingly, the truth in his writings eventually became obvious and Christian leaders later cracked down on abuses in the church. It is therefore fitting that we honor Luther for his gutsy stand against the ideological monarchy, and for being right. His devotion to truth, at least at that moment, should remain an inspiration to us all.
