Tuesday, January 29, 2008
" Were not books, schools, and the printing press time and time again denounced as of the devil's agencies and opposed by Christian zealots to the extent of their power? Were not the masses purposely kept in ignorance and filled with superstitious fallacies by those who claimed to be their religious and Christian teachers and guides?"
- An Open Letter to Jesus ChristD.M. Bennett 1818-1882
- An Open Letter to Jesus ChristD.M. Bennett 1818-1882
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Michaelangelo Buonarroti is reputed to have said on his deathbed (according to Vasari) to his confessor Cardinal Salviati, that he
"regretted dying just as he was learning the alphabet of his profession."
"regretted dying just as he was learning the alphabet of his profession."
Saturday, January 19, 2008
"The greatest name will perish from human history, the finest monument crumble into dust,
and the time will come when our places know us no more.
Yet we shall survive in the memories of our friends as long as the remembrance will serve any good purpose, and then our work and thought and influence will mingle with the great ocean of human achievement, and the sum total of that will be something more, something different from what it would have been without us."
The Reverend Augusta Chapin From a talk to the Pioneer Society of Ingham County a Universalist minister, was the second woman ordained by a denomination, an event that took place in 1863.
and the time will come when our places know us no more.
Yet we shall survive in the memories of our friends as long as the remembrance will serve any good purpose, and then our work and thought and influence will mingle with the great ocean of human achievement, and the sum total of that will be something more, something different from what it would have been without us."
The Reverend Augusta Chapin From a talk to the Pioneer Society of Ingham County a Universalist minister, was the second woman ordained by a denomination, an event that took place in 1863.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Neutrino Detection
Neutrinos are elusive. A low energy neutrino has some chance of passing through 1000 light-years of lead without interacting!
Cosmic Gall
-John Updike-
Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass, Like dustmaids through a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass. They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall, Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall And painless guillotines,
they fall Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed-you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
The New Yorker Magazine, Inc. , 1960
YOU are now being invaded by about 1014 neutrinos each second!
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. -Rene Descartes
