Mountains of Creation
September 4, 2008
When we think much about creation we are treading dangerous ground. We live within a tiny slice of space and time, and mankind’s expanding ability to probe the far reaches of the cosmos is where the danger lies. Are there any human minds at all that can draw valid conclusions from such images probing space and time?
Credit Lori Allen, Xavier Koenig (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), JPL-Caltech, NASA. Astronomy Picture of the Day, August 29, 2008.
Giant star forming region W5 is over 200 light-years across and about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. W5’s sculpted clouds of cold gas and dust seem to form fantastic shapes in this impressive mosaic of infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope. In fact, the area on the right includes the structures previously dubbed the Mountains of Creation.
I question whether my mind can anywhere near adequately process such a look back in time. The idea of light-years just doesn’t compute. It’s probably best that I ration the precious hours allotted to me and not spend too many of them wondering about such mysteries.
Dave, in awe of the Mind behind such mysteries.
A walk at the lake
July 30, 2008
The roads winding to and from and around the Lake of the Ozarks are just the thing for chronic walkers. One thing I have noticed this summer is how extra-lush the shrubbery and foliage is after a very wet spring and early summer. I took my camera on a recent afternoon walk, and here are a few images.
A walk’s gotta have a starting point, and here I am gazing down on my launch pad from the second level balcony outside our condo apartment. 
This day it was a typical mid-summer day with the temperature in the low nineties and high humidity. I try to temper the discomfort with thoughts of the winter walks to come. I much prefer the heat.
I barely got started up the hill from Monarch Cove when I paused to admire some blooms that don’t seem to mind the Ozark summer heat. 
The next diversion was the used golf ball stand at Greenleaf Trace next door. If I don’t quit gawking and start walking, I’ll never get this walk done! On down the road I tried to catch the dark-greenness of the Oak forest lining my route.
Here is a young family’s house along the route. I hope their little imps appreciate the neat and colorful backyard play area.
Three Men in a Boat
May 31, 2008
With apologies to Jerome K. Jerome for cribbing his title (by the way, if you haven’t read this funny little book, you should) , three septuagenarian Ayers brothers met at Monarch Cove, Lake of the Ozarks, for four days of relaxation, conversation, and fishing, in order of importance.
Gathered here on the deck of Dave and Marilyn’s condo, the reminiscences flowed, some of them accurate, all of them fun to recount without being immediately subject to marital correction. I suspect that our close neighbors on the deck opposite may have learned more than they really wanted to know about us.
In the event that his two older brothers started getting boring or overbearing, Tom brought along his painting kit. Whether from boredom or not, he painted the view to the East from our deck. I hope 1) that he decides to color the water green instead of the present muddy brown and 2) finishes it and gives it to us for framing.
The plan for assaulting our piscatorial adversaries included fishing the sunken beds around the dock for Crappie, drifting for Crappie from a rented pontoon boat, casting for bass from Dave’s bass boat. I very reluctantly report that except for a handful of Crappie caught due to Tom’s relentless and untiring effort (he’s younger than we are after all), the plan failed. But we did catch a few, some of which posed for their portrait.
Since Tom has only two hands, brother Don offered to display the runt of the catch.
Tom the younger simply never gave up, leaving his older siblings gasping for breath. Our Uncle Bus used to tell us that if we wanted to sink a basket, we probably should try to get the ball at least as high as the rim. Likewise, it’s hard to catch fish if our lure is not in the water. I might note here that, in spite of a friend’s insistence that you have to use minnows to catch Crappie, we were using little 1/16-Oz tube jigs below small bobbers. So there! I must admit, however, that our catch might have been better using minnows - live ones rather than the fragrant dead ones left in the boat after said friend’s last trip out.
Fishing tactic number two was to fish in the creature comfort of a 21-ft rented pontoon boat. Comfort it gave us; fish it did not, but not for a lack of trying. I remember days in my fishing past catching gobs of Crappie by letting the wind drift our bobbers over their hidey-holes. I’m morally certain that they got drifted over time and again, but this time they were not hungry. I blame it on sex. They were just off their spawn and were undoubtedly resting up.
We returned the pontoon boat and fired up the trusty, 14-year-old Ranger bass boat, which complained a bit trying to get “out of the hole” with three-abreast fishermen weighing it down, but up on plane it got and we went skimming across the lake to a pleasant little North Shore cove near historic Wilmore Lodge. Conditions were perfect and expectations were high. Little wind, temperature in the seventies. I guess that the bass were even more comfortable, because we got no bites in spite of expert technique and limitless patience.
Don’t we look professional and confident?
I’ll close this little photo essay with an image that personifies our fishing and conversational demeanor: calm and casual. Which is how it should be when three brothers gather to enjoy each other’s company, engage in tale-swapping, and try to eat each other under the table. Life is short, and opportunities like our pre-Memorial Day reunion are too rare. We figure that in a year or so we may try it again, if the Lord continues to bless and the creek doesn’t rise.
Dave, grateful for my bros; they’re the greatest!
Phoenix on Mars!
May 27, 2008
I sometimes wonder if we are losing our sense of wonder. Is it really possible to design, engineer and launch a mechanical contrivance on a ten month journey through space to make a soft landing on Mars? Must be - it happened Sunday evening, earth time. Here’s a pic of a Phoenix footpad beamed back to earth.
More amazingly, if that is possible, the Phoenix navigator took the Lander’s image just as it was deploying for landing.
Credit: Phoenix, HiRISE, NASA, JPL-Caltech, Univ. Arizona.
To learn more what went on, here is a video animation of the landing.
Dave, pinching himself.
God loves movies
September 13, 2007
“Like hell He does!” was my instant reaction.
I was minding my own business, curled up with the latest Modern Reformation, when I was jarred by the title “God Loves Movies.” The article, which turned out to be very lively reading, purports to show that modernist Christianity has neglected to understand how very important visual imagery, drama, and storytelling are to God. How the author got his interview wasn’t revealed.
The author is one Brian Godawa, “…screenwriter for the award-winning feature film ‘To End All Wars,’ and author of ‘Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment.’ ” He cites The Lord of the Rings and The Passion of the Christ as examples of how a visual medium creates a “spiritual gut experience” for the viewer. Indeed.
And then there are dreams and visions: God’s form of television and movies. Joseph’s dreams of fat and skinny zombie cows, Ezekial’s Close Encounters with spinning wheels, Nebuchadnezzar’s Terminator statue, as well as other visions given to dozens of Old and New Testament saints are all stunning high-definition, Dolby Sensurround feasts for the senses as well as spirit. God loves movies. He produced a lot of them.
You can imagine the examples Godawa finds in The Book of Revelation, which he calls “a theatrical orgy of visual imagery, produced, written, and directed by Jesus Christ.”
I don’t know what to think of this article that contradicts so many of my shibboleths. Do not the mental images produced by lucid writing have so much more impact on the senses? Why spend several hours in a theater seat having your senses pounded when a few minutes with a book in hand creates a better image - with more understanding? Why suffer hearing loss from blaring theater sound when an hour at a concert is so much more uplifting?
I guess I have always resented the way movies and TV try to play mind games with me. When it comes to what I subject my mind to, I’m definitely pro-choice. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Dave, which he always was a stubborn cuss.
A Tragic Day
August 8, 2007
From one of my favorite blog destinations comes this poignant story. Although I don’t have the same sense of family about the family car that Toby does, I can understand. Why do you think so many of us men get all sappy and teary about their cars and trucks?
A Classical Presbyterian: A Tragic Day: The real cost of family life
Not that the ladies don’t have to give up some of their own cherished habits and lifestyle choices to live with us men, I’ll grant you. My wife has had to give up plenty to put up with the likes of me in her life, like floral sheets and fluffy pillows neatly arranged on couches!
But, it still hurts! Oh, how it hurts…
But I will stay strong. For the family, I will hide my suffering and put on the stiff upper lip, the stoic mask of perseverance. That which does not kill me can only make me stronger, right?
Dave, not a complete stranger to 4-wheel worship.
Silicon skyscrapers
May 5, 2007
To one who grew up in the age of vacuum tubes, microelectronics still seems like science fiction. But then, I’m the guy whose education finally ground to a halt in the super-abstract world of quantum physics. I guess everyone has a mental boundary beyond which one can’t travel. So articles like this fill me with a lot of wonder but little comprehension.
Microelectronics | Growing up | Economist.com
That is the thinking behind making transistors out of nanowires. The wires in question—strands of silicon—are but a few tens of nanometres thick. Though they make up for that in height (they are 2,000 nanometres tall). Their slight diameters mean that zillions of them could be crowded on to a single chip.
Nanowires forsooth! I challenge you to try to visualize nano-anything. A nano-inch is .000000001″ (or somethng like that - my math hasn’t survived the decades very well, either.) Maybe this is a religious thing. Lacking (and not missing) an electron microscope, I must take the existence of a nanowire on faith.
And there is another thing that makes these transistors radically different from others. Microelectronic components are produced by etching. A silicon chip is coated with layers of the chemicals needed to make the components in question. Those components are then carved out of these layers by chemical solvents that remove unwanted areas and leave the components as islands on the surface of the chip. Dr Riess’s nanowires, by contrast, are grown from scratch by exposing the chip to a silicon-rich gas. The desired pattern of nanowires has previously been picked out on the chip’s surface with spots of a catalyst that cause silicon from the gas to be deposited. The wires thus sprout only where the catalyst fertilises them.
I confess no comprehension at all of the foregoing. It’s a strange and marvelous world we live in.
Dave, still adding to his list of things he doesn’t understand.
Education a waste?
March 17, 2007
After reading the first page of Bryan Caplan’s book, I just might want to read the rest. I don’t know that I agree with him, but he may be on to something.
EconLog, Page One of My Next Book, Bryan Caplan: Library of Economics and Liberty
Personally, then, I have no reason to lash out at the education system. Quite the contrary. But three decades of experience, combined with two decades of reading and reflection, have convinced me that our educational system is a big waste of time and money. Practically every politician vows to spend more on education, and as an insider, I can’t helping asking “Why? Do you want us to waste even more?”
Here is a professor of Economics, a “professional student,” who is happy with his lot, but …you’ll just have to read the rest of the first page of his new book.
Dave, thinking that maybe only greed kept him from such a life.
A long summer ends
October 28, 2006
My year has but two seasons, summer and bummer. Last night, my summer reached its climax as the improbable St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series in five games from the Detroit Tigers. Today bummer has arrived, and I am slipping into semi-hibernation until the Boys of Summer begin spring training next March.
I am writing from a comfy bedroom in our third-floor condo apartment at the Lake of the Ozarks, looking out over a chilly lake sunrise; not chilly for me in my wimpy comfort, but undoubtedly bracing for those hardy souls in their bass boats zipping around the lake at 50 mph and 42 degrees. After they get the bass wide awake and mad, and after the sun warms the air a bit, and if I can overcome my sloth, I may hit the water for an hour or two of fishing. And, who knows?, I may catch a fish or two.
But it ain’t like it’s summertime anymore, not season-wise nor lifetime-wise, a not altogether unpleasant fact that occurs to me fairly often these days. The Lord has already blessed me with more summertimes than I deserve, but I still look forward to the beginning of another summer.
And another long season of major league baseball.
Dave, thinking deep thoughts this morning.
The Problem with Prophets
September 8, 2006
Sometimes it takes a whack with a two-by-four alongside the head before I wake up. Several people have told me I have to read this article in Christianity Today, so maybe I really should. In the meantime, here is how Michael Kruse responded to a commenter to his post about the C-T article:
Kruse Kronicle: The Problem with Prophets
What some on the Left do now is chastise Christians for bringing their religious values in to the public square. (And I share some their frustration at some of the values that are brought into the public square in the name Christianity but not the legitimacy of bringing their religious values into the public square.) Christians are supposed to be a counter-cultural witness and not become entangled in matters of the state. But then on other issues they cozy up to politicians, start PACs, partner with political groups, seek organize and sway votes, as they seek to advance a political agenda. They are no longer prophets but political partisans.
It strikes me that what is going on is not prophetic witness but “proof texting” positions with one theological perspective in one place and another perspective in another place. What that says to me is that there is a predefined political agenda in search of theological justifications, not a political stance that has emerged from a consistent theological framework.
Again, not having yet read the C-T article, I agree with Kruse that one of the biggest challenges we have as evangelicals is learning to bring our beliefs into the public square in a consistent and God-honoring way. If we do it right, the result will be transparent and winsomely attractive to our pagan friends.
We’re clearly not there, yet.
Dave, moving Christianity Today to the top of his reading stack.
