Our Eyes Are On You

Posted on April 14, 2012 by

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who was part of what was called the Confessing Church during the Nazi years in Germany. While most churches in Germany went along with Nazification and made whatever changes Hitler dictated, a small percentage chose to resist the anti-Semitism and glorification of the state and its rulers.

Bonhoeffer, although an avowed pacifist, eventually came to advocate Hitler’s assassination and knew about the plots against the dictator. In the face of Nazi atrocities, Bonhoeffer concluded that “the ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live.” He did not justify his action against Hitler. Instead, he accepted that he was taking guilt upon himself. He wrote “when a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it…Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.” Arrested in 1943, he was convicted April 8, 1945 and hanged the next day, barely a month before Germany’s unconditional surrender.

One of his favorite passages in the Bible was the second half of 2 Chronicles 20:12: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” That sentence occurs at the end of a prayer that the king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, offered to God in the face of a vast army coming against Judah from Edom and Moab. He admits to God that “…we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us”—the first sentence of 2 Chronicles 20:12.

It is a common occurrence in life to face vast armies: our problems. It is also common to have no clue what to do about them. Sometimes, as in Jehoshaphat’s case, God gives a solution that we like. The armies that attacked Judah fought among themselves and never attacked, leaving behind enormous spoils for Judah to plunder. In contrast, Bonhoeffer faced his own death—the ultimate crisis that every last one of us must face—and there was no escaping from it. Some of the vast armies facing us are like that.

In both cases, however, we can still look to God and know that he will be with us as we experience whatever outcome he has chosen for us, knowing that he will see us through, and knowing that even if we don’t like what happens, God is still with us and still dependable.

Jesus told his disciples, not long before he was arrested, convicted, and executed, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27) Sometimes people give us encouragement in the middle of our bad times and we think “easy for you to say.” But given Jesus’ context, knowing what he was about to face, his words carry added force. They were not easy, they were not cliché, and they were not flippant. He believed them even though he faced the ultimate crisis.

Earlier in his life, Jesus told an audience, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?” (Matthew 6:25)

It is hard to believe words like that if we’re facing the loss of our jobs, income, or house, because we wonder how we can live at all without those things. It seems impossible, facing a vast army, to feel that peace that Jesus talked about.

But look back at Jehoshaphat again. In 2 Chronicles 20 he is informed about the crisis in verse two. His reaction, according to the very next verse, is “alarm.” Hardly seems like he felt any peace. But wait, what did he do in his alarm? He “resolved to inquire of the Lord, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah.” He immediately thought to turn to God. And he didn’t face the problem by himself. Verse four goes on to say that “The people of Judah came together to seek help from the Lord; indeed, they came from every town in Judah to seek him.”

When friends of ours learned that they were going to be laid off from their jobs, they immediately let everyone else in the church know about it. We had a special prayer meeting to focus on the issue. Did this make them suddenly employed again? No. But there is some comfort that comes in dark times from simply being with other people. And sometimes, other people may come up with solutions that we, in the middle of the crisis, can’t see.

The vast army facing us may fade away. Or it may not. In either case, it is easier to endure it with our eyes on God, than not.

Posted in Bible, Religion, Theology | 1 Comment

Misanthropy

Posted on April 13, 2012 by

Misanthropy is a hatred, dislike or distrust of humanity. It is a disease that infects many. One can see it rear its ugly head in news accounts on a regular basis. Frankly, I don’t like the pessimism inherent in it.

What I like about the science fiction television series Star Trek in its many incarnations, besides the fact that I simply enjoy science fiction stories, is the overall sense of optimism that it embraces. It takes a positive view of the human race. It is the same reason that I so enjoy the British import, Doctor Who, which is likewise very positive. The Doctor, as the time traveling Time Lord is called, likes the human race very much, thinks we’re wonderful, and devotes most of his energy and attention to protecting it and helping it along. My youngest daughter and I make a point of watching an episode or two of Doctor Who whenever we can.

Recently I was thinking of the optimism inherent in such shows and how radically it contrasts with what I find among some critics of humanity. There are several websites online devoted to science fiction and to space exploration. Most of these sites will allow readers to add their comments, like letters to the editor, after the articles. I don’t really have the time or interest to write such comments myself, but I will on occasion read them and every so often I find myself appalled at what some otherwise rational human beings write.

Inevitably there are those who believe space exploration is a waste of time and money, even as they depend upon communication satellites for their television and GPS navigation in their cell phones. But what I find really inexplicable are those who think it’s utterly wrong for the human race to even think of colonizing other planets. Such individuals believe that we have no business visiting other planets when we have so thoroughly messed up this one and they fear that we’ll ruin the universe just like we’ve “ruined” the Earth. Often times they go on to criticize all the modern farming methods that have allowed human beings to multiply beyond what they believe is the proper “carrying capacity” of the Earth. I read one commentator who argued that there are at least four billion too many people on the planet and that the green revolution is to blame for the over population.

Why are some people such misanthropes that they decry the existence of human beings? Would such individuals be happier if those four billion had starved to death instead?

And is their underlying assumption even true? Is it the case that humanity has “messed up” the world?

Do human beings do evil things? Certainly. Have we always made rational use of the planet? Of course not. My children sometimes annoy me. They are messy and I’m constantly having to clean up after them. Occasionally one or the other of them will clog up a toilet. I thought buying diapers for them was expensive. That’s nothing compared to the expense of teenagers, what with my oldest driving, using up gasoline, and increasing my insurance premiums simply by virtue of having a license and getting behind the wheel. They regularly need our attention, they have schoolwork and occasional crises. They don’t always do exactly what we want them to do and they occasionally make mistakes. Their judgment is often flawed. They bicker and argue with one another and don’t always get along.

Before we had children, my wife and I had a neat and orderly house. It was quiet. We didn’t have to purchase anywhere near as much food as we currently buy.

And yet, I find being a parent and having children is still a rewarding aspect of my life. I appreciate watching the development in my children, their growing independence. I cherish their many accomplishments and interests. Would my life be better if they didn’t exist? Am I vile for wanting them to go out of my house some day and make their own way in the world?

So, as we think about the human race, we can chose to focus on their problems. Or we can appreciate their accomplishments. There are far more positives than negatives in the human experience. Most of our lives, most of the time, are not unpleasant. For instance, more than ninety-nine percent of the human race is not in prison. More than ninety-nine percent of the world’s population is not committing crimes, bombing each other, seriously ill, starving, or even dying. The reason there are so many people alive on planet Earth just now—well over six billion, is simply because they’re not dying like they used to. Even though the birth rate is dropping like a stone.

Pollution over the last forty years has dramatically decreased. This, despite increased population, a growing economy, rapidly rising energy use, and an ever increasing number of automobiles on the roads. I have lived in California since 1975. I remember how smoggy it was when I first arrived, compared to how it is now. In fact, while first stage smog alerts were common in the 1970s, there have been none at all during the first twelve years of the twenty-first century.

Human beings have their faults. But the misanthropy that dominates the minds of so many critics of humanity is severely misplaced. It’s one thing to want to improve things and to worry about the problems that we face. It’s another thing to dismiss progress, ignore victories, and to see the glass as never anything but mostly empty. It’s actually okay to be happy sometimes. The world—and people—are not always as awful as some would like to believe.

Posted in Culture, Science Fiction | Leave a comment

Mistakes Were Made

Posted on April 12, 2012 by

When I hear someone say something along the lines of, “mistakes were made.” I immediately translate it from the bureaucratic passive voice to what it actually means: “I messed up.” Sometimes children will ask, “how will I know when I’m grown up?” I would suggest that part of the answer to that question is, “When you make a mistake, you are able to say, ‘I made a mistake.’” Learning to accept responsibility for our actions is surprisingly difficult and surprisingly rare.

Being an author means having to say “mistakes were made” rather frequently, however. As an author, I will make spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and factual errors. I’ll have one story in my head and mix it with another story when I put it on paper. I’ll imagine I put it down accurately, when in point of fact I’ve completely botched it. I’ll think I remember a detail, a figure, a title or a name, and come to discover—always too late, after the piece has already gone to press—that I got it wrong. Most of the time, all I can do is shrug. Mercifully, most of the time no one actually notices. But then on occasion I’ll get an email or a phone call—usually from someone I know—asking me how I came up with something, or what I was thinking, or “did you mean to say that?”

Most mistakes by most people tend to be slips of the tongue. Verbal mistakes, generally speaking, have a much shorter shelf-life than mistakes in printed works, especially books, which will likely endure for as long as there are libraries. The only comfort in a mistake in a book is the knowledge that there are hundreds of thousands of books published each year, and so the odds of anyone noticing your egregious error on page sixty-one are slim and none. After all, I hadn’t noticed the mistake in my book, The Bible’s Most Fascinating People, until one of my students called me on the telephone one afternoon.

“I was reading the story of Rahab on page sixty-one and you say that she hid the spies in her well. But in the book of Joshua in the Bible, doesn’t it say that she hid them under sticks on her roof? Is there a translation issue I didn’t know about?”

“Um, no.”

“You’re just always so careful about details and…”

“Well, I seem to have made a mistake. Maybe I forgot that wells aren’t located on roofs?”

“You made a mistake?”

“Why so surprised? You’ve seen me drop and break my coffee mug how many times?”

“At least three.”

“There you go. You even bet that I’d break my current mug in only a week on that signup sheet that my wife posted by the coffee maker: ‘How long will Robin keep his new mug? Make a guess!’”

(She had apparently become annoyed after I had broken the previous two mugs she had given me as gifts. I think around thirty people made guesses on its survival. The youth group in my church seemed to really get into it. My history with mugs is notorious).

“Yeah. Didn’t Rick think it would survive only an hour? I thought I was being generous when I wrote that it would survive a whole week.”

“And here it’s been nearly a year and a half and it’s not broken yet. Oops…”

“What was that noise?”

“Nothing. Thanks for pointing out the error in my book.”

“No problem. Any time.”

See, this is why authors don’t like to reread their books after they’ve been published. And yet, surprisingly, having students and others point out the mistakes in my book is oddly satisfying. My first thought was, “wow, someone actually read the book and paid attention.” Maybe I should claim I made mistakes on purpose and offer small prizes to anyone who finds them?

Authors know that there are going to be problems that we missed. Despite my best efforts, despite rereading it dozens of times before it went to press, despite my wife and friends reading through it, despite all the editors who also read through it—the simple reality of the process is that I, as an author, remain fully and completely human, subject to all the problems that affect other humans. But unlike other humans, whose foul ups are most commonly known only to spouses and offspring (A wife especially. She is able to list off every error one has ever committed for the last twenty-eight years since she first met you and oddly she decided to marry you anyhow even with those three years of knowing you before tying the knot), an author’s foul-ups are visible to all for all eternity.

Of course, no matter what you do in your life, “I made a mistake” is a phrase that has the potential of getting used nearly every day. Though I must admit that for me it’s not as bad as it is for say, professional athletes, who get to have a referee blow a whistle and throw a flag every time he or she makes a mistake so that everyone in the stands and on TV sees the problem—and whose other errors will be rerun on the sports channels from now to the end of time, while sportscasters pontificate, “so what was he thinking when he threw the ball over there?.” Or for actors, whose mistakes are called bloopers and wind up as bonus features on the DVD.

Actually, I think it is worst of all for politicians and others working for the government. Their errors will be dissected and everyone will assume that they are not just stupid, but actually malevolent and evil. The same probably goes for corporations, CEOs, and of course lawyers.

Meanwhile, any mistakes you make on your job, say in the office or at the local fast food joint, will be kept track of by your boss. Too many of them, you’ll find yourself escorted outside by building security with your personal belongings stuffed in a box you’re clutching in your hands.

It is, of course, the negative reactions of those around us and the embarrassment of it all that makes us all want to deny our mistakes. It’s so much easier to say “mistakes were made,” or even better, to yell, “it was all HIS fault” while we point in glee—and relief.

I wish I could say, “that copy editor is to blame” or “it’s a typo” or “a well” really does mean “a roof” if you squint and tilt your head just so. But I know better. I simply made a mistake.

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Gluttony

Posted on April 9, 2012 by

The meanings of words can undergo surprising alterations over time. On occasion, the shifts are so drastic that we may end up entirely misunderstanding the actual intent of the word, with serious consequences. There can be cultural shifts that happen so gradually that they shift our perceptions so radically, that there is a clear break from what went before to what is going on now.

For instance, the word “gay” originally meant “merry” or “happy.” But it soon developed some alternative meanings in English, prior to being established to mean “homosexual,” at least as a slang term, as early as the late 1800s. Before that, it was used of those who were promiscuous or sexually indiscreet in any way: during the eighteenth and nineteenth century the word was not uncommonly used of prostitutes and the phrase “the gay lifestyle” referred to prostitutes and their customers. A “gay house” was a brothel. In the seventeenth century, the term “gay” could mean immoral or hedonistic. It was also used as a synonym for “shining” or “bright” or “fine.” Think Liberace.

According to tradition, there are seven deadly sins. One of those sins is “gluttony.” But gluttony as it was originally understood and used in that old list and in the Bible is today one of the rarest of problems in the United States.

Given the epidemic status of obesity, the widespread fitness craze, and all the weight-loss programs available, it might seem insane to say that we don’t have a gluttony problem. According to recent statistics, obesity is the number two cause of preventable death in the United States. Sixty million Americans, twenty years of age and older are obese. Nine million children and teens aged six to nineteen are overweight. Obesity increases the risk of breast cancer, coronary heart disease, type II diabetes, sleep apnea, gallbladder disease, colon cancer, osteoarthritis, high blood pressure, and stroke. The price of caring for the health related problems of obesity is in the billions of dollars, problems that are all preventable. But seventy-eight per cent of the American public is not meeting the basic activity level recommendations, with twenty-five percent of us being completely sedentary. Modern day obesity in the United States is a problem that is most severe not with the wealthy, but with the poor! In the United States, the biggest health problem facing the poor is not starvation, not a scrabbling after crumbs. Instead, the biggest thing the poor have to worry about from a health standpoint is getting too fat.

It’s not surprising that so many Americans are overweight. And of course it’s not just an American problem. It is a problem afflicting the entire industrialized world and it is a problem that is growing year by year. So surely, therefore, gluttony must be one of the most serious and “deadly” of the sins facing Americans today, if not the entire world!

But that’s because we’ve redefined what gluttony is. For most of us, we believe that gluttony simply means “overeating” or maybe “intemperance,” at least when it comes to food. Most everyone agrees that our tendency to be overweight indicates a serious lack of self-control. We supersize our meals and find it hard to say no to another piece of cake. Gluttony, we believe, is a crime we commit against ourselves, one that robs us of our health and sets us up for a number of dangerous illnesses. But this modern sense of gluttony, the sense that we’ll find in most dictionaries today, has nothing to do with the “gluttony” that is one of the seven deadly sins.

Gluttony as it is used in that ancient list and as it is used in the Bible meant “taking more than your fair share of food.” Gluttony meant, in effect, taking food out of the mouths of others so you could stuff your face instead. Gluttony was a kind of selfishness. Gluttony is what we see in Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus was a beggar who ate the crumbs that dropped from the rich man’s table. Whatever the rich man happened to drop as he stuffed his face, that’s what poor Lazarus got to eat.

In a world where food was hard to come by and many people barely had enough, gluttony meant a lack of concern for others. It was like being in a buffet line and taking all the rolls for yourself, leaving none for anyone else. It was a violation of the central commandment, the central point of all the rules and regulations that one might find in the Bible: to love others as oneself. It is hard to see how the modern sense of gluttony—intemperance—has much to do with anyone else.

Perhaps it is a sin against oneself to overeat, given the health problems associated with it. But the “gluttony” of the seven deadly sins simply doesn’t speak to that sort of problem. It is concerned with how our lives impact the lives of those around us. What matters is not so much what it does to me, but what I do to other people.

Posted in Bible, Culture, History, Language, Religion, Theology | Leave a comment

Quote for the Day

Posted on April 7, 2012 by

It is easy to feel resentful at the universality of grace. We may think to ourselves: Have we not done our duty? Have we not been faithful all our lives? Why should undeserving outsiders get in easily? Would it not be fairer for those outside the church to be outside salvation too? There is a voice in us, isn’t there, that says no one ought to gain entry to the kingdom who doesn’t really belong and is not wearing the proper badges.

I am glad to see a shift to greater hope in Christian thinking and a growing reluctance to restrict grace. This is a result not of contemporary cultural pressures by of paying closer attention to the nature of God and–I think–to the pervasive presence of the Spirit. As a result, God’s universal salvific will registers higher now in the hierarchy of doctrine than formerly. Belief in God as a serious lover who does not readily give up on the lost occupies a more primary position on the list, giving us more freedom to hope and to believe all things (1 Cor 13:7).

–Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit, 1999

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Memories

Posted on April 5, 2012 by

Besides providing lyrics to the Byrd’s song, To Everything There is a Season, the author of Ecclesiastes opened his essay by writing, “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.”

In the time that author was writing, it was certainly the case that nothing ever changed much. The seasons came, the seasons went, and then they came back again. The mountains, the buildings, the crops, the food, the wine, the animals: they were all the same. Even the people changed little; they dressed the same, they did the same sort of things. Wars came, wars went, the kings came and went. The only changes one could see were in one’s children growing up and in oneself growing old. People died, people were born, but all remained the same. One’s passage through life was like the passage through life of everyone who had come before, and apparently as everyone who would come after. Nothing was ever different, or ever would be different. And you wouldn’t miss anything when you finally died. Dull repetition was the order of the world.

But the world has changed radically since the author of Ecclesiastes wrote. Though what he said was certainly true in his time, and while it remained accurate throughout most of human history, something happened to humanity beginning in the late Middle Ages, that gained momentum with the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. A radical shift in how people thought brought about radical changes in how they lived, especially with the advent of the industrial revolution.

Besides the obvious technological alterations and the enormous advancements in medicine and hygiene, other, more subtle alterations have appeared that perhaps we are not mindful of. For instance, the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s meant that people no longer would have to die of minor or even major injuries. Those things that inevitably killed because of infection no longer did. One of the most significant alterations in this was the improvement in the infant mortality rates, as well as a drop in the number of women dying from childbirth.

Throughout human history, famine, malnutrition, and starvation have been very common. Between 1845 and 1849, for instance, approximately five hundred thousand to a million people died in Ireland during the Great Potato Famine. France suffered from famine as late as the 1800s.

But today, according to recent news reports, things have changed so much that the biggest health crisis facing Americans, Europeans, and the rest of the world is now obesity.
One of the oddities of this modern problem is that it strikes the poor more frequently than the rich. The World Health Organization says more than 1 billion adults around the world are overweight and 300 million of them are obese, putting them at much higher risk of diseases such as diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke and some forms of cancer.

There are now more overweight people in the world than people who are undernourished, who number about 600 million.

Certainly, obesity is not a good thing and there are serious health consequences to being severely overweight. But frankly, obesity is a far better problem to have, I think, than starvation and famine. So besides space ships to Mars, Saturn, and Pluto, besides open heart surgery, MRIs and computers that fit in our pockets and give us TV on demand, while allowing us to communicate instantaneously with any other human being on the planet, while being told where we are standing within three feet of our location—and thus being told how far we are from the nearest Starbucks—besides all that, the human race is now in need of a good diet. Now that really is something new under the sun.

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Einstein

Posted on April 3, 2012 by

The only thing I have in common with Albert Einstein is his birthday. We were both born on Pi day, March 14. Pi day? Pi is 3.14 plus additional digits that go on forever. Thus, the mathematically inclined have adopted the day for its collection of numbers. March 14, 2015 will be an especially big day for mathematical celebration, since that will give the next two numbers in the sequence of Pi: 3.1415.

In any case, one of the things that Albert Einstein gave the world besides his birthday was the famous equation, E=MC2 which for most people is meaningless or something to put on a T-shirt to attempt to look more profound than if they were simply wearing the name of a beer company.

What does Einstein’s famous equation mean? It tells us that matter and energy are convertible. Energy may be converted into matter and matter can be converted into energy. More than that, it tells us that matter and energy are pretty much one and the same. Remember, the amounts on two sides of an equal sign are just that: equal.

So what are the implications of Einstein’s equation, along with his other theories? Well, the one most people are most consciously familiar with is the atomic bomb. His theories let everyone know that such a weapon could work. But of course, bombs are not the only nuclear technology. For instance, that bright yellow thing you see in the sky during the day, and the infinite number of small bright dots that you see at night, at least if you aren’t in a bright city, all function according to the laws that Einstein’s famous equation recognized.
Stars, our sun included, are examples of nuclear energy in action. In fact, what makes a hydrogen bomb go boom is what is going on with even greater power in the sun and stars every moment of every day. For those who worry that the electromagnetic and other radiation from things like their cell phones and microwaves might cause them harm, simply comfort yourself with the knowledge that the sun and stars are bathing you with far more energy each second than your cell phone could give you in a thousand years.

Given that the stars and sun function so well and safely, one wonders why people are so fearful of nuclear energy. Not too many years ago I got a tour of one of our nation’s nuclear submarines, the USS Jefferson City. It has a nuclear reactor on board that powers the sub and allows it to run for years without refueling. The submarine itself is about 360 feet long and 30 feet in diameter. The reactor that powers it is only 8 feet in diameter and generates enough electricity to provide for all the energy needs of a small city. Which makes me wonder why more small cities don’t build nuclear power plants. They’re cheap, safe and don’t pollute.

Other things that we take for granted thanks to Einstein’s theories and their implications are MRIs, nuclear medicine, radiation treatments, and all things electronic. Computers, cell phones, and similar gadgets all exist today thanks to Einstein’s theories, which others were able to build upon.

Turning now to the realm of science fiction, doubtless most have heard that it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. Given that some experts used to say that traveling faster than sound was impossible, a lot of people might be skeptical of the prognostications of experts on this subject. However, in this particular instance, skepticism is unwarranted.
That traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible is as certain as two and two equaling four. And our certainty is a consequence of such a simple mathematical equation. Back to Einstein’s famous E=MC2. What his equation, along with a few others, informs us, is that in order to accelerate a material object to the speed of light, it must be entirely converted into energy. And there’s the rub. Once it’s all energy, there’s nothing left to boost the power. You’ve spent your wad and you simply aren’t going to be able to go any faster.
This is not to say, however, that getting from point A to point B faster than a beam of light is necessarily impossible. How can that be? Buried in Einstein’s theories are some potential loopholes relating to the behavior of space-time itself.

New research may have brought us one step closer to being able to explore the universe in a starship capable of getting somewhere faster than light. The analysis of the concept of a warp drive by Chris Van Den Broeck of the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium means that building the starship Enterprise is a little closer.

Dr Van Den Broeck was reanalyzing ground-breaking calculations made in 1994 by Mexican mathematician Miguel Alcubierre. Alcubierre argued that it was possible to create a warp drive that would function by distorting the fabric of space-time. Starships would be able to ride along waves in space-time, like surfers on waves in the ocean.

The idea relies on the concept that space is not empty nothingness. Strange as it may seem, space has a shape and substance that can be distorted by matter. In fact the force of gravity is actually due to the curvature of the fabric of space-time. Think of stars as ball bearings making dimples in a sheet of rubber, and then imagine how other ball bearings rolling on the sheet would tend to fall into the dimples. Recognizing that gravity worked like that was one of the greatest triumphs of Albert Einstein’s career.

So you could use matter to distort the space around a starship to create a “ripple” in space-time, and if you could make space contract in front of the ship and expand behind it just so, you could get to where you wanted to go faster than light.

The universe is a peculiar place. The writers of Star Trek, who envisioned warp drives for the fictional USS Enterprise, never knew that they were predicting a real way to do what they needed for their scripts.

Posted in Science, Science Fiction | Leave a comment

Thankfulness

Posted on April 2, 2012 by

Giving thanks once a year has been institutionalized in the United States since the time of Abraham Lincoln, at least. And so on the third Thursday of every November, we sit around a table, eat too much, and say that we are thankful.

Sometimes, we may actually be specific in what we are thankful for. For myself, I have a tendency to begin by enumerating material objects. For instance, I might give thanks for having a house, or for my cars, or perhaps for items in my house, like digital high definition cable TV or a broadband internet connection. The last two are particularly delightful things.

Only later—perhaps because they start glaring at me—will I mention my three adorable daughters and my equally adorable wife of more than twenty-eight years. Maybe I’ll mention my parents and sister, and my friends, as well.

But there are other things that we take for granted that perhaps I should think about more often to give thanks for.

For instance, breathing is really a cool thing to be able to do. Since I developed asthma (of the seasonal variety) I’ve become a lot more conscious of this simple pleasure. So I should be thankful for my allergist, and for the drug companies and their researchers that invested enormous amounts of time and money to come up with treatments that keep me mostly symptom free.

Food. In the United States, we have such an abundance that our biggest health problem is obesity. This stands in sharp contrast to ninety-nine percent of the world through ninety-nine percent of its history, for whom starvation was the serious problem.

Freedom and democracy. Although it’s thankfully been on the rise the last decade or so, it is a rare and precious thing. Ninety-nine percent of the human race through ninety-nine percent of its history didn’t know what it was. Now we simply assume it as a birthright. Eternal vigilance is still a good idea and it’s something never to take for granted.

Life. The simple fact of being alive in a universe that is more than ninety-nine percent dead hydrogen gas is something to revel in.

And frankly, being thankful for all these things will probably be good for us. In fact, if we did this more often in our lives than once a year, since enumerating things we otherwise take for granted can help us keep our lives in perspective just a bit, to let us see that just because we had a flat tire, or even a major tragedy, does not mean there’s nothing to feel good about.

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Quote for the Day

Posted on March 30, 2012 by

The demand for equality has two sources; one of them is among the noblest, the other is the basest of human emotions. The noble source is the desire for fair play. But the other source is the hatred of superiority. At the present moment it would be very unrealistic to overlook the importance of the latter.

There is in all men a tendency (only corrigible by good training from without and persistent moral effort from within) to resist the existence of what is stronger, subtler or better than themselves. In uncorrected and brutal small men this hardens into an implacable and disinterested hatred for every kind of excellence. . . .

Equality (outside mathematics) is a purely social conception. It applies to man as a political and economic animal. It has no place in the world of the mind. Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many, more to the persistent and disciplined seekers than to the careless. Virtue is not democratic; she is achieved by those who pursue her more hotly than most men. Truth is not democratic; she demands special talents and special industry in those to whom she gives her favours.

Political democracy is doomed if it tries to extend its demand for equality into these higher spheres. Ethical, intellectual, or aesthetic democracy is death. A truly democratic education—one which will preserve democracy—must be, in its own field, ruthlessly aristocratic, shamelessly “high-brow.”

–C. S. Lewis “Democratic Education” (1944)

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Quote for the Day

Posted on March 15, 2012 by

The evidence shows you that two things have been true throughout mankind’s history: One, things always get better. Two, people always think they’re getting worse. We talk about the stress of modern life, but we’re not chasing down wildebeest to eat, we’re not being attacked by animals in the night. Unless you’re a Vegas magician, in which case you are. But I think things will definitely be better for [my kids]. And also things are getting more peaceful. I mean, as much as I carry on about “let’s stop killing people overseas,” person for person, we’re killing fewer people than we ever have.

–Penn Jillette, Reason Magazine

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