A Journal of Experiential Holiness and Snack Bar.
Are we there yet?
…IS THAT HIS COMPOUND WAS built in the shape of what some would call “Greater Palestine,” with his house corresponding to the location of Jerusalem. (This comes to me from to the French website JSSNews, by way of YNet, by way of The Tablet, which latter is recommended daily fare.)
Raining, raining hard.
Watchful figures on the bridge
note the rising creek.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN you mount a high-definition camera on a spaceship and send it to Saturn:
(More information at http://www.outsideinthemovie.com/. For maximum fun, expand the view by clicking on the arrow-square in the bottom right corner.)
ONE REASON WHY CALIFORNIA HAS so many smart people is that, periodically, the lesser-reasoned go down to the seashore to watch the tsunami come in.
IF YOU’RE CURIOUS ABOUT LIFE on the other side of the foghorns, waste no time in clicking on marinetraffic.com — a global, scalable, real-time map of the world’s shipping traffic, from cargo and passenger vessels to navaids and tankers to tugs and pilots. Each is labeled with specifications, course and speed (if applicable) and destination. (Think of it as a very stately air-traffic control diagram. Which makes me wonder if there’s one for air traffic … clicketyclickety … yep: flightradar24.com. Cool. Limited, but cool.) With this in one window and the Califonia Highway Patrol’s dispatch logs in another, I feel like a secret peeker at the world’s gears.
(Thanks to Friend-of-the-Show Steve Marler for sliding this my way.)
YOU REALLY HAVE TO KNOW what you’re doing in order to sleep on the floor, comfortably.
IF THERE ARE UNIVERSES NEXT door to ours, I would swap the one with sentient reptiles for one that’s just different enough — one containing, say, all-new Star Trek episodes with just a wee bit o’ difference. How much would you pay for an original, still-in-the-wrapper Spock nose?
FOR MY NEXT TRICK, I shall unite the Universe.
Ready?
It is Now as I write this; it is Now as you read it.
(Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll be here all week.)
THERE ARE SPORTS WHICH CALL forth the most primal emotions in order to exorcise them for the good of the community — sports which make lesser men wonder and cringe, and old women pick up a frying pan — sports which proclaim a national character unchanged by time and politing circumstance — sports which sort of make me wish I was the sort of man who plays them. Forged among the Orkney Islands where men wrest their very living from the hoary North Sea …. Ba’.
(If you’re reading this on Christmas or New Year’s Day, watch it live at http://www.thelongpartnership.co.uk/profile/orkney_webcam.php or http://www.visitorkney.com/webcams.asp.)
NOTHING HAPPENS IN THE WORLD without someone from Sonoma County being involved in some way. (Those who know, know.)
PERHAPS “ARM’S REACH TO AN asteroid” would be more accurate, but: For the first time ever, humanity has reached out with metal fingers and grabbed a hunk of asteroid to hold before its face.
To put it less poetically, Japanese scientists announced today that the space probe Hayabusa, battered and crippled but still greatly game, did indeed scoop up a bit of asteroid Itokawa and return it to Earth. As John Matson writes on Scientific American‘s blog today:
Material scooped out … with a special spatula and examined with scanning electron microscopy revealed “about 1,500 grains…and most of them were judged to be of extraterrestrial origin, and definitely from Asteroid Itokawa,” according to a JAXA press release. Most of the rocky particles are less than 10 microns in length. (A micron is one millionth of a meter.)
For the rest of the story, click http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=hayabusa-probe-succeeded-in-returni-2010-11-16. Meanwhile, could we please have a standing ovation?
ALTHOUGH WE’RE NOT GENERALLY A “quotes ‘n’ links” blog, today The Metaphorager feels compelled to pass along two related items:
1) From Robert Anton Wilson‘s Prometheus Rising, p. 201:
“[…] Simply accept that the universe is so structured that it can see itself, and that this self-reflexive arc is built into our frontal lobes, so that consciousness contains an infinite regress, and all we can do is make models of ourselves making models …
“Well, at that point, the only thing to do is relax and enjoy the ride.”
2) Charles & Ray Eames’ 1968 film Powers of 10. (I used to assign this completely scientific piece as homework for my religious-school students to flex their awe-muscles. It’s a brief magnification journey within and without the hand of a man sleeping next to Lake Michigan. See it. See it now.)
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