R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 112

Little Girl Lost

“Can I go to a friend’s house?”

The text arrived at 9 AM on the first day of class after the holidays. I’d already told my youngest daughter that she couldn’t go to anyone’s house during the week until she improved her grades.

After reminding her of that, the texts became more insistent and angry, but I stood my ground. She concluded by telling me that “you’re not my father.” Her anger was over the top, but then she’s fifteen. I didn’t take it too seriously. Later in the day, I texted her to let her know what I was thinking of making for supper. Her responses were normal.

But when I went to pick her up from school at 2:24, she didn’t come to the car. She did not respond to texts or to my phone calls.

I eventually went school security, but they were unable to locate her. A deputy sheriff at the school even drove by the friend’s house to see if she was there and she was not. Later, my wife went by the friend’s house and the girl reported that she hadn’t seen my daughter since that morning.

We tried contacting her by cellphone over the next several hours to no effect. Our cellphone company allows us to track her phone’s location—but that works only if her phone was turned on. Unfortunately, she had turned her phone off.

That evening, friends sat with us as we waited and tried to find out what was going on. We posted to Facebook and attempted to find out from her other friends if they might know where she had gone. We called the sheriff. They told us they’d send a deputy around to take a missing person’s report from us. He did not arrive for six hours: around 11:15 PM.

While the deputy was still there, the mother of one of our daughter’s friends called us to let us know that our daughter had finally responded to a text from her. Our daughter told the mom that she was at a friend’s house. But she refused to identify the friend. When I checked the phone’s location, it finally located it within about a mile of a cell tower in Lancaster. The friend whose house she had asked to visit was within that range. We wondered if the friend was hiding our daughter.

So, we went to sleep that night worried, but confident she was at that friend’s house.

The next morning, we went to the high school, wondering if our daughter would show up. She didn’t. But the friend whom we thought she was with did show up; so we realized then that she was not with the friend that she had previously asked to visit.

After we returned home, we set up a page on Facebook to further publicize that our daughter was missing and we were looking for her. We contacted various agencies and the news media. Within three hours, over four hundred people had joined the Facebook page. People volunteered to make fliers and look for her. We scheduled a meeting at our church at 5 PM for people to begin searching door to door within that mile circle where he phone was located.

My wife left for the church about 4:30. I stayed home in case she called or showed up there. Our pastor was just driving up to the house at 4:45 when I got a phone call: it was my daughter!

She’d been dropped off at a gas station and a friend of hers had found her there. She wanted me to come get her.

I called my wife to let her know. More than a hundred people had already gathered at the church to begin the search. There was much rejoicing at the news that we had found her.

Together with my pastor, I went and got my daughter. She had been without her medication for her bipolar disorder and ADHD for more than twenty-four hours by that point. I had her pills with me when I got her and she took them as soon as I picked her up. She was wearing different clothing and her hair had been dyed a different color from the day before.

So where had she been and what had happened?

The father of a friend of hers had been texting her at school that morning. He had encouraged her to leave. And so it was to that friend’s house that she had gone. While she was there, her friend had given her different clothing and had dyed her hair.

The next day, we took my daughter to meet with her therapist and her psychiatrist. Both lectured her rather sternly. And her psychiatrist increased her medication dosage to a higher level. The therapist started meeting with her twice a week instead of once a week. And her psychiatrist also met with her more frequently as well.

We put my daughter on independent study for her schooling.

It has been two years now since my daughter ran away. Her behavior has steadily improved and we’ve had no further serious incidents. Her new regimen of medication is thus far working relatively well. She is not cured. We live day to day.

Mondays

This Monday earned its reputation as being the day that killed the weekend. My wife woke me up and announced, “we have a problem.” Then she took me to the front yard and pointed: there were two large bubbles of lifted sod from which water was flowing. My wife had earlier noticed, after she’d been up for awhile, that suddenly the water pressure in the kitchen and bathroom had dropped significantly. She thought that was odd and initially wondered if the truck noises she heard outside indicated that the water company or the city were doing some sort of maintenance on the pipes.

Instead, it turned out to be much more localized. I poked at the mounds in my yard: they were squishy and very soggy. After announcing that I thought this was odd, my wife suggested I do something about it. So I shut off the water to the house and then went inside to put on my clothes and to get to work trying to figure out exactly what had gone wrong. Meanwhile, my wife left for the day to go to a teacher training on the other side of town. She’d be gone until three.

I got my shovel and started digging where the largest of the two water filled mounds had been located. The ground was very soft and easy to dig. After I’d dug some distance, I started reaching in and trying to see if I could find some sort of path from which the water might have been flowing. The hole I was digging was filled to the level of the grass with water.

So, I dug some, felt around some, and then dug some more. Based on the spot where the mound was located, my guess was that it was the main water line into the house that had sprung a leak.

I turned the water on briefly a couple of times to see where it was flowing from, and after the second time, I was finally able to locate the source of the break: my hole by then was about three feet deep and filled with water. Upon feeling around down in the muddy murk I was finally able to feel the PVC pipe of our main water line and I could also feel the break in the pipe.

My next chore, then was to empty the hole of water. This took a surprisingly long time. About half way down I finally stopped, rinsed myself off with water from my swimming pool that I scooped out into a bowl, and then went and had my breakfast and took my various medications, mostly allergy and asthma related.

Then it was back to work. I finally managed to scoop the water out and clear the pipe so I could see the break. At that point, I could see the cause of the break, too—though that wasn’t a big surprise. I have an enormous elm tree in my front yard; it’s trunk is about two and a half feet in diameter and its roots slither through my yard. I’d had experience with them before on those times I’d had to repair sprinkler lines.

So, I got out my reciprocating saw and tried sawing through the first of many roots; it was very slow going, largely because the blade was old and not really made for cutting through roots. So it was time for my first trip to Home Depot.

I found a nine inch blade designed for pruning and brought it home. It made much quicker work of that root, and several others after that. Most of these roots were about two inches in diameter. But when I got down to where the pipe was, as I moved more dirt away, I discovered that the root that had caused the break was about six inches in diameter and had partially wrapped itself around the pipe.

By then, my youngest daughter had wanted to be transported to a friend’s house, while my middle daughter had already planned to go to the water park that day with a couple of friends, so I had to let her drive me to my wife’s place of training so I could snag the van she had taken.

Back home and alone, I decided another trip to Home Depot was necessary and I secured a twelve inch blade, also designed for pruning. It still took the better part of twenty minutes sawing through two ends of the root while avoiding the pipe.

Success was mine however and I was able to move that chunk of root out of the way and clear the pipe.

By then it was time for lunch.

After lunch, it was back to work: more digging, more root cutting until at last it was time to try to fix the break in the pipe. Another trip to Home Depot to get one inch couplers and that smelly blue plastic PVC cement.

My first thought was to simply trim the break out a bit and try popping a coupler to connect the two ends. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. I tried several different methods, cutting back on the pipe. The problem was that the two ends were no longer on the same level; the root had pushed them so that they were nearly an inch off, one lower than the other.

By then, it was time to go pick up my wife from her training. Unfortunately, she had gotten done a bit early and tried to call me. Now, since I was working in mud and dirt, I had left my cellphone in the house; I wasn’t going to risk destroying it. Unfortunately, this meant my wife couldn’t get a hold of me and she decided that I must have forgotten and so she started walking. Thankfully when I got to where the training was and I discovered she wasn’t there, they let me call her cellphone from one of their phones and I found out what had happened. She had not gotten far and so I was able to pick her up.

And back home again, I continued the saga until at last I managed to get the pipe sealed. Or so I thought. When I pressurized it after letting the glue dry, it held only for about two minutes before releasing rather spectacularly. So, I went back to work; the second time I made certain that I had a better connection. When that was done, I had supper, made a trip to open our church facilities so that the Cub Scouts could use it. By then, over an hour had gone by and I was certain that the glue was dry.

When I pressurized the line, it held without problem. I happily went inside to turn the water in the kitchen sink.

Nothing came out.

I tried other faucets. No joy.

I tried turning the water to the house on and off repeatedly. Still nothing. But then the sprinklers came on and worked fine. I shut them off.

By then, my neighbor across the street wandered over and I told him our problem. He wondered if the pressure valve might have gotten clogged with some dirt. So, he showed me the bolt to loosen to open that up wider so it could clear itself of dirt and voila! Water flowed into my house.

By then it was about 8:00 and the sun was set and it was getting dark. I decided to cover the hole in my yard with boards and finish filling it on Tuesday. And then I went and took a shower and brushed my teeth for the first time that day.

And I still had an essay to do for an online news magazine that was due by 9 AM Eastern time on Tuesday, not to mention my weekly column for for the newspaper I write for. Somehow I got both things done by about 10:00 PM.

Tired. You bet. No wonder the comic strip cat Garfield hates Mondays.

This Monday earned its reputation as being the day that k...

This Monday earned its reputation as being the day that killed the weekend. My wife woke me up and announced, “we have a problem.” Then she took me to the front yard and pointed: there were two large bubbles of lifted sod from which water was flowing. My wife had earlier noticed, after she’d been up for awhile, that suddenly the water pressure in the kitchen and bathroom had dropped significantly. She thought that was odd and initially wondered if the truck noises she heard outside indicated that the water company or the city were doing some sort of maintenance on the pipes.

Instead, it turned out to be much more localized. I poked at the mounds in my yard: they were squishy and very soggy. After announcing that I thought this was odd, my wife suggested I do something about it. So I shut off the water to the house and then went inside to put on my clothes and to get to work trying to figure out exactly what had gone wrong. Meanwhile, my wife left for the day to go to a teacher training on the other side of town. She’d be gone until three.

I got my shovel and started digging where the largest of the two water filled mounds had been located. The ground was very soft and easy to dig. After I’d dug some distance, I started reaching in and trying to see if I could find some sort of path from which the water might have been flowing. The hole I was digging was filled to the level of the grass with water.

So, I dug some, felt around some, and then dug some more. Based on the spot where the mound was located, my guess was that it was the main water line into the house that had sprung a leak.

I turned the water on briefly a couple of times to see where it was flowing from, and after the second time, I was finally able to locate the source of the break: my hole by then was about three feet deep and filled with water. Upon feeling around down in the muddy murk I was finally able to feel the PVC pipe of our main water line and I could also feel the break in the pipe.

My next chore, then was to empty the hole of water. This took a surprisingly long time. About half way down I finally stopped, rinsed myself off with water from my swimming pool that I scooped out into a bowl, and then went and had my breakfast and took my various medications, mostly allergy and asthma related.

Then it was back to work. I finally managed to scoop the water out and clear the pipe so I could see the break. At that point, I could see the cause of the break, too—though that wasn’t a big surprise. I have an enormous elm tree in my front yard; it’s trunk is about two and a half feet in diameter and its roots slither through my yard. I’d had experience with them before on those times I’d had to repair sprinkler lines.

So, I got out my reciprocating saw and tried sawing through the first of many roots; it was very slow going, largely because the blade was old and not really made for cutting through roots. So it was time for my first trip to Home Depot.

I found a nine inch blade designed for pruning and brought it home. It made much quicker work of that root, and several others after that. Most of these roots were about two inches in diameter. But when I got down to where the pipe was, as I moved more dirt away, I discovered that the root that had caused the break was about six inches in diameter and had partially wrapped itself around the pipe.

By then, my youngest daughter had wanted to be transported to a friend’s house, while my middle daughter had already planned to go to the water park that day with a couple of friends, so I had to let her drive me to my wife’s place of training so I could snag the van she had taken.

Back home and alone, I decided another trip to Home Depot was necessary and I secured a twelve inch blade, also designed for pruning. It still took the better part of twenty minutes sawing through two ends of the root while avoiding the pipe.

Success was mine however and I was able to move that chunk of root out of the way and clear the pipe.

By then it was time for lunch.

After lunch, it was back to work: more digging, more root cutting until at last it was time to try to fix the break in the pipe. Another trip to Home Depot to get one inch couplers and that smelly blue plastic PVC cement.

My first thought was to simply trim the break out a bit and try popping a coupler to connect the two ends. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. I tried several different methods, cutting back on the pipe. The problem was that the two ends were no longer on the same level; the root had pushed them so that they were nearly an inch off, one lower than the other.

By then, it was time to go pick up my wife from her training. Unfortunately, she had gotten done a bit early and tried to call me. Now, since I was working in mud and dirt, I had left my cellphone in the house; I wasn’t going to risk destroying it. Unfortunately, this meant my wife couldn’t get a hold of me and she decided that I must have forgotten and so she started walking. Thankfully when I got to where the training was and I discovered she wasn’t there, they let me call her cellphone from one of their phones and I found out what had happened. She had not gotten far and so I was able to pick her up.

And back home again, I continued the saga until at last I managed to get the pipe sealed. Or so I thought. When I pressurized it after letting the glue dry, it held only for about two minutes before releasing rather spectacularly. So, I went back to work; the second time I made certain that I had a better connection. When that was done, I had supper, made a trip to open our church facilities so that the Cub Scouts could use it. By then, over an hour had gone by and I was certain that the glue was dry.

When I pressurized the line, it held without problem. I happily went inside to turn the water in the kitchen sink.

Nothing came out.

I tried other faucets. No joy.

I tried turning the water to the house on and off repeatedly. Still nothing. But then the sprinklers came on and worked fine. I shut them off.

By then, my neighbor across the street wandered over and I told him our problem. He wondered if the pressure valve might have gotten clogged with some dirt. So, he showed me the bolt to loosen to open that up wider so it could clear itself of dirt and voila! Water flowed into my house.

By then it was about 8:00 and the sun was set and it was getting dark. I decided to cover the hole in my yard with boards and finish filling it on Tuesday. And then I went and took a shower and brushed my teeth for the first time that day.

And I still had an essay to do for an online news magazine that was due by 9 AM Eastern time on Tuesday, not to mention my weekly column for for the newspaper I write for. Somehow I got both things done by about 10:00 PM.

Tired. You bet. No wonder the comic strip cat Garfield hates Mondays.

Flame of Love

Not so long ago I finished reading Clark H. Pinnock’s book, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. It was published by IVP in 1996. Overall, I enjoyed the book and found a lot of interesting concepts and I would recommend it to anyone. His focus on God’s Holy Spirit is commendable and an important corrective to a general neglect of the topic.

But there were a couple things that bothered me in the book and I’ve chosen to focus on them for the purposes of this post.

Near the beginning of his book Pinnock spends several paragraphs discussing the question of the Holy Spirit’s gender:

The Hebrew term…is (usually but not always) grammatically feminine; yet this may not be regarded as very significant, for personhood is relatively undeveloped in relation to Spirit in the Old Testament

(p. 15-17)

I was very pleased that he recognized this reality and even discussed the implications of it and acknowledges that it would likely be best to refer to the Holy Spirit with feminine pronouns and even that “something” in him “wants to use the feminine pronoun.” (p. 17)

But then he states in his footnote to the matter:

Plus there is a political calculation for an evangelical writer: is it worth using the feminine pronoun when the likely result is to lose a host of conservative readers while gaining approval from a handful of feminists, most of whom have their sights set on much larger and less orthodox changes? The answer is no, it is not prudent. (footnote 17, Introduction)

So he decided to ignore the truth because it might make some people uncomfortable.

Really?

Never mind that it’s a fundamental reality of who God is. He doesn’t think some people will like it and he thinks it might upset them. So he’ll just pretend that reality is different. Yes, the sky is blue, but since so many people think it is green, well, let’s just keep calling it green so we don’t rock the boat.

I find it appalling, frankly, that he was unwilling to go where the data actually led. Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable because it challenges tradition and widely held opinion. Why resist the truth? Why kick against the goads? One needs to be strong enough to simply accept the truth, proclaim it, and assume that in the end, the truth will out. It always does. Suffering for the truth is not a bad thing; uncomfortable and painful, sure, but not a bad thing. So it’s disruptive. Truth often is. So what?

Another thing I found bothersome in the book is something that I see widely: that being spiritual, being guided by God, being filled with the Spirit is somehow at odds with science, academics and rationality. I must strongly disagree with that presumption. Using our minds, being careful, being scholarly is no less spiritual than being joyful. Expressing emotions does not negate our minds, despite what fictional Vulcan’s might think. Being moved and controlled by God does not mean that our rationality is disconnected. Scholarship does not stand apart from or against God.

Quotations such as this are just flat wrongheaded:

“We surrender to God when we pray in tongues and give control even of our speech over to him. Prayer in tongues is perhaps to prayer what abstract art is to painting.

“Our love of rationality resists it. As educated persons, we do not want to say anything excessive or ill-considered. We want to be in control and keep things safe and familiar. We do not even like mysteries very much; we want theology to be as rational as possible. Academics in particular are trained to guard their speech, so as not to blurt out something they are not sure they want to say. It can be hard for them to yield to tongues. The gift places us in unfamiliar territory and requires us to be childlike in prayer. But this may be why tongues is important. It is a means God uses to challenge strategies of control. It is a humble but also a humbling gift to which we should be open.” (p. 173)

The anti-intellectualism of the passage is astounding. And it is bad theology—just wrong. In the question of what tongues is and how it functions, I think that the assumption that it is irrational is a serious error. That “losing control” as it were—which seems the implication—should be considered a good thing is, frankly dangerously mistaken.

I think James’ words regarding the matter should be taken into consideration—something that I never see done, despite the fact that he uses the same Greek word that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 12:30, for instance. For whatever reason, what James has to say about the tongue is never linked with the gift of tongues. I think that’s odd, really.

Consider. In James 1:16 James points out that “Every good and perfect gift is from above…” Then in 1:26, he comments, “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.” Then he says in the very next verse, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Which seems to me very similar to what Paul had to say in 1 Corinthians 13, about tongues (among other things): that without love they are worthless. Certainly James’ words in 1:27 seem understandable as love in practical application.

I’m not sure that tongues or any gift of the Spirit is at odds with our control, thoughtfulness or rationality. I don’t see logic and our minds as being enemies standing in the way of God working. Despite the attitude of fictional Vulcans, logic does not stand in opposition to emotions. If so, then the whole book of Proverbs and Job 28 are really problematic. Besides the obvious: God created us with minds; why give us such a gift if he didn’t expect us to use it? Instead, I think that Pinnock—and many Christians like him—are simply out to lunch on this whole matter.

Current Space

After a year orbiting the asteroid Vesta, the space probe Dawn is now on its way to the dwarf planet Ceres, slated to arrive there in 2015. In August, the car-sized Curiosity rover landed safely on Mars, joining the still functioning Opportunity rover and three satellites already in Martian orbit. Mercury is being circled by the Messenger spacecraft, which counter intuitively discovered water ice and organic compounds at its poles. Cassini continues orbiting Saturn.

The New Horizons probe is less than three years from Pluto. Launched in 2006, it passed the orbit of Uranus in 2011; that it is still years from Pluto, traveling at 34,000 mph (the circumference of the Earth is about 24,000 miles), gives you just a bit of a sense of how big our solar system is.

Of course, that pales in comparison to the distances to the stars. The next nearest star is Alpha Centauri, a bit more than 4 light years out; at the rate New Horizon is traveling, it would take it more than 30,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.

Any technology that we currently have will not get us to any of the 800 worlds we know about circling the stars within a thousand light years of us. Even getting to the furthest reaches of this solar system is a multi-year process; the Juno probe on its way to Jupiter left in August 2011; it won’t get to Jupiter until 2016: a five year cruise.

But, maybe, just maybe, interstellar travel will not always be completely impossible. Harold White, a scientist at NASA, believes that warp drive has moved from being improbable to probable. He and his team are currently building an experimental device to generate a small warp bubble.

Meanwhile, much closer to home, the International Space Station has continued circling the globe. Most of the time it houses six astronauts, usually about evenly divided between Americans and Russians. Even though the Space Shuttle no longer flies, Americans regularly get into orbit by buying seats on the Russian’s Soyuz.

Our dependency on the Russians to get our astronauts into space will end by 2017. By that year, not only will SpaceX’s Dragon be able to haul cargo to and from the International Space Station (as it currently does), it will also carry American astronauts. But SpaceX will not be alone in ferrying people. By then, Boeing’s CST-100 should also be flying, along with Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser and even NASA’s Lockheed built Orion. The US will have gone from having only one way of getting astronauts to orbit, to having four different spaceships.

Additionally, SpaceX is expected to launch its first Falcon Heavy, a heavy lift vehicle derived from their successful Falcon 9. The Falcon 9 can lift thirteen metric tons into low Earth orbit; the Falcon Heavy, whose first launch from Vandenberg Air Force base is scheduled for late 2013 or early 2014, will be able to haul fifty-three metric tons up, making it the most powerful rocket on the planet—and the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V took people to the moon.

There have been four other interesting developments recently that demonstrate that we are most assuredly living in the future that was promised to us.

In June, 2012 Mars One, a Dutch company, announced its plans to start colonizing Mars in 2023, using SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy boosters and the Dragon capsule.

Planetary Resources has announced their intention to mine asteroids for precious minerals and water (which can be used to provide oxygen, drinking water, and rocket fuel). It has the financial backing of the CEOs of Google, as well as the requisite engineers and scientists with long experience with NASA and companies who build rockets, such as Lockheed and Boeing.

Paul Allen has started a new project called Stratolaunch Systems. Paul Allen, together with Bill Gates, founded Microsoft. In 2004 he bankrolled Scaled Composites, allowing it to win the Ansari X-Prize with SpaceShipOne. Stratolaunch, with Scaled Composites in Mojave, is currently constructing the world’s largest aircraft. It is designed to carry a large manned rocket that will be air launched to orbit.

The Golden Spike Company has announced their intention to begin human-crewed flights to the moon starting in 2020. They expect to send people there on a regular, ongoing basis and for much less than what NASA did back in the late 1960’s and early 1970s.

All four of these projects have skilled scientists and engineers with long experience with NASA and the aerospace industry. The question mark facing these new, proposed ventures is not technological. What each company proposes to do can in fact be done. But, and this is a big but: do they have the money to do it? Are their business plans workable? Can they be profitable enterprises? Only time will tell.

Going to Mars

On June 4, 2010 Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, better known as SpaceX, launched their Falcon 9 rocket for the first time. The flight successfully placed its upper stage into orbit. The corporation had only been in existence for seven years. In that brief time, they designed two new rockets from scratch, along with their rocket engines. And SpaceX spent only 300 million dollars and became profitable. In 2006, NASA awarded SpaceX a 1.2 billion dollar contract to launch twelve cargo missions to the International Space Station. They will get paid bit by bit for each successful mission.

About six months after the Falcon 9’s maiden voyage, on December 8, 2010, SpaceX launched their Dragon capsule into orbit. It circled the Earth twice and safely parachuted to a water landing. It was the first time a private corporation had launched an object into orbit and recovered it safely.

Since then, SpaceX has sent three Dragons to the International Space Station. Out of five launches of the Falcon 9, there have been 5 successes.

The launch vehicle for the Dragon cargo spaceship is the Falcon 9, a two stage rocket that uses 9 Merlin engines in the first stage and one Merlin engine in the second stage. Each engine develops 125,000 pounds of thrust at sea level. Thus, a Falcon 9 can put 23,000 pounds into low earth orbit, or 10,000 pounds into geo-synchronous orbit. A Falcon 9 stands 178 feet tall at launch and has a diameter of 12 feet.

SpaceX is currently manufacturing one new Falcon 9 and one new Dragon spaceship every three months. The number of people working for SpaceX stands at about 1100 and the company is hiring. In addition to contracts with NASA, SpaceX has secured contracts for multiple satellite launches for the next ten years from a variety of nations and corporations.

Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX has long term goals for his company beyond simply supplying the space station with cargo. He also has plans to make all parts of his Falcon 9 rocket reusable and intends to develop heavy lift versions of the Falcon 9. The first of these, the Falcon 9 Heavy, is scheduled for its first launch in late 2013 or early 2014. It will take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, where SpaceX has nearly finished building a launch complex for it. The Falcon 9 Heavy will be able to deliver a Dragon spaceship to the surface of Mars. It is able to carry twice the weight that the Space Shuttle could.

SpaceX has a goal of making their rockets fully reusable. By making all parts of the Falcon 9 reusable, Musk hopes to drive down launch costs even more than he already has. He pointed out that commercial air travel would not be economically feasible if a jet airliner could only be used once and then had to be thrown away. If space ships can become fully reusable, the cost of spaceflight will drop precipitously, so that the primary costs of going into space will then be the cost of fuel, maintenance, and the salaries of the workers involved—similar to the cost structure for commercial aviation.

Even today, with the Falcon 9 still not being reusable, SpaceX is able to put things in orbit for much less than any other company. In fact, SpaceX currently undercuts even the Chinese launch systems by such a margin that the Chinese government is unable to compete. Once reusability come online in the next few years, SpaceX will be the cheapest way to fly. The first test of a reusable Falcon 9 first stage should occur later this year, when on regular cargo run to the space station, SpaceX will attempt a powered landing of the first stage over water.

The Dragon spaceship is not designed to simply loft cargo. It is designed to carry seven astronauts. Elon Musk’s long term goals, stated since he founded the company in 2002, is to make possible the colonization of Mars and the expansion of humanity throughout the solar system. Because of those goals, SpaceX is not a publically traded corporation. Musk doesn’t want to have to justify his choices to stockholders.

Although SpaceX is profitable, Musk has stated that if he were just trying to make money, he wouldn’t be building rockets. Someone once said that the best way to make a million dollars is rocketry is to start out with a billion.

Musk intends to land the first people on Mars by 2030. He has predicted that by 2050 a family of four will be able to emigrate to Mars as colonists for about what they would spend on buying an average suburban house. He figures that’s about the equivalent of what those migrating in wagon trains from the east to California invested back in the 1800s.

Not everyone will want to become Martian colonists, of course—any more than everyone in the east wanted to come to California in 1849. But Musk believes that enough will go to make the venture a success.

For Elon Musk, every launch of a Falcon 9 is one more step on a long road to the exploitation of the solar system and its colonization by humanity—not by the government, but by private enterprise.

Cuneiform

A few years ago my wife and I took a vacation to visit some friends living in the Seattle area. On our way up we stopped at various tourist attractions. In San Jose, we visited the Winchester Mystery House, built by Sarah Winchester, the widow of William Wirt Winchester, the man who made his fortune selling the firearms that still bear his name. The story goes that a Boston medium told Sarah Winchester that she had to leave her home in New Haven and travel west, where she must “build a home for yourself and for the spirits who have fallen from this terrible weapon, too. You must never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live forever. But if you stop, then you will die.” So she made it a point to build a house that would never be finished. Workmen were kept busy making modifications and additions to her home until the day she died in 1922. At which point, all work on the house ceased. The house is an enormous, ramshackle affair. There are stairways and doors that lead nowhere and rooms that serve no purpose. Today it is a tourist attraction and so my wife and I spent an afternoon gawking at its oddities.

Another place we visited was nearby, also in San Jose: the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and Planetarium. I knew very little about the Rosicrucians, outside of what I could discern from their odd advertisements in the back pages of the science fiction and popular science magazines I read. As a result of their beliefs, they have a fascination for all things Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern. And so their museum contains one of the largest and best collections of ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern artifacts in the world. It was filled with mummies and artwork, sarcophaguses, funeral urns, and papyrus manuscripts.

What I was particularly looking forward to seeing, however, was their collection of cuneiform tablets. I’d known about them long before we arrived at the museum, since the language of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians was one I had studied extensively when I was doing my graduate work in ancient Semitic languages at UCLA. While there, I’d seen photographs and read copies of some of those tablets housed by the Rosicrucians.

The tablets in the Rosicrucian museum were mostly small enough to fit the hand of a child. They were usually gray or tan, and roughly pillow shaped—and covered with the cuneiform writing system that the Babylonians and Assyrians had borrowed from the Sumerians. At UCLA my classmates and I joked that the cuneiform writing system had been developed just to frustrate twentieth century graduate students. More likely, it survived the advent of the alphabet so that Mesopotamian scribes alone would be able to read it—and thus enjoy permanent job security.

So I happily peered into the glass cases in the museum to see if I could read some of the tablets. I found that I could, but I also found myself startled. Several of the tablets were upside down!

That’s right. In a museum dedicated to Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern artifacts, the curators had not been careful to see to it that the tablets were displayed right side up.

Admittedly, this probably had never before been a source of embarrassment for the museum. After all, how many visitors would ever realize that they were upside down—or care?

I did let one of the guides know about the problem, but she didn’t seem particularly interested or concerned. I don’t know if anything was ever done about the upside down tablets. I have not had the opportunity to go back since.

Things being upside down is not a problem unique to that museum. The astronomy magazine Sky and Telescope not so long ago had an article on astronomy in the ancient world. Some cuneiform writing was used as part of the artwork decorating the article. And—you guessed it—the cuneiform was upside down.

I wrote a letter. I suspect my letter was the only one they ever got on the mistake and I doubt that they much cared. They didn’t publish my letter and they never issued a correction.

While I was at UCLA, my Ugaritic professor brought in a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and pointed out the Ugaritic article in it. He had us look at it carefully and asked us if we noticed anything amiss.

There was a picture of an Ugaritic tablet.

It was upside down.

My professor told us that he had written to them about it, but three more editions of the encyclopedia appeared before Encyclopaedia Britannica got around to turning the picture right side up.

It’s not just obscure languages in museums and encyclopedias that get turned upside down. During the opening credits of the 1999 movie, End of Days—which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger—several sections of text in various languages scroll across the screen. The last section of text was in Hebrew. And it was clearly upside down.

Tesla Motors

My wife and I are early adopters of new technology and we are both enamored of the electric car company, Tesla. The Tesla Motors, Inc. was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, J.B. Straubel, Ian Wright, and Elon Musk—who is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX, the company that builds and launches the Falcon 9 and Dragon space ship. Tesla is named after Nikola Tesla, the inventor, mechanical engineer, and physicist best known for his contributions to the design of modern alternating current (AC) supply systems. When you switch on a lamp or your television, it’s thanks to Tesla’s work.

Tesla Motors’ cars are fully American designed and produced. It is the first American automobile company to go public since Ford offered stock in 1956. Tesla is now profitable and produces about 500 Tesla Model S cars each week in their factory in Palo Alto, California. They are on track to produce about 21,000 cars in 2013.

At this point I need to offer a full disclosure: I own a small amount of stock in Tesla Motors. The reason I own the stock is because I like the company and I believe that it will be successful. So far, I’m very happy with how the stock has performed over the last few months. In fact, my only regret is that I don’t own more of it since it tripled in price since the beginning of the year.

The Tesla Model S is a full-sized four door sedan. It has an EPA estimated range of 265 miles on a charge. Based on the cost of electricity in the average American home, the fuel cost of driving 30,000 miles in a Tesla is about 950 dollars. The equivalent cost for a gasoline powered car to travel the same distance is about 3800 dollars (assuming $3.80 per gallon and 30 miles per gallon). The Tesla Model S motor generates between 362 and 415 horsepower (depending on options) and can accelerate from zero to 60 MPH in between 4.2 to 5.9 seconds (also depending on options). The engine is about the size of a large watermelon and sits on the axel between the rear tires. There is no transmission and no radiator. One never needs to get a smog check or an oil change. The brakes are good for at least 100,000 miles. Tesla guarantees its resale value and the batteries are fully warrantied for 8 years (unless, as the company said, you take a blowtorch to them). It can carry 5 adults and 2 children and has two trunks, one in the front and one in the back.

The Tesla Model S is Motor Trend’s 2013 Car of the Year and Automobile Magazine’s 2013 Car of the Year. After testing the Tesla Model S, Consumer Reports gave it 99 points out of 100, tying for the highest number of points they have ever given to a car. They also wrote that it was the best car they had ever tested.

Tesla is currently installing what they call “Supercharger” Stations across the country. These are “filling stations” to recharge the batteries on a Tesla in about 20 minutes. How much does it cost to recharge the batteries at a Tesla Supercharger Station? Nothing at all. Charging the battery is completely free. Most of the Supercharger Stations run on solar energy and they generate more power than they need for recharging cars. So Tesla can send the excess power to the electric grid and actually gets paid by the electric company.

By the end of 2013 Tesla will have installed enough Superchargers around the United States that it will be possible to travel from Los Angeles to New York and pay exactly nothing in fuel costs. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO explained “pack some food, stay with friends or family along the way, and leave your wallet at home.” By 2015 ninety-eight percent of the U.S. and Canada will be covered with Supercharger Stations.

In 2010, Tesla was awarded a milestone-based loan, requiring matching private capital obtained via public offering, by the DOE as part of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program. This program was signed into law by President Bush in 2008 and then awarded under the Obama administration in the years that followed. This program is often confused with the financial bailouts provided to the then bankrupt GM and Chrysler, who were ineligible for the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program, because a requirement of the ATVM program was good financial health. GM and Chrysler were far from being financially healthy.

Tesla was not the only automobile company to make use of the loan offer. Ford used the same program to take out a loan of 5.9 billion dollars. Nissan took out a loan for 1.6 billion dollars. But unlike Ford or Nissan, Tesla has already paid their loan off in full—with interest—and they did it nine years early.

The only down side to Tesla from my perspective is that I cannot afford to buy one. The base price of the vehicle is about 65 thousand dollars, with more reasonably equipped models going for closer to 90 thousand. If you are in the market for a high end car—such as some of the models offered by Audi, Mercedes, or Porsche, then the Tesla Model S is not out of line. For the rest of us, we will have to wait awhile. Tesla’s goal is to offer a more reasonably priced model in the 30 thousand dollar range within the next four years.

Another interesting thing about Tesla is that the company does not emphasize its environmental friendliness. Instead, they sell it on the basis of how it lowers the cost of car ownership: less maintenance and much, much lower fuel costs. And they emphasize that it is not just the best available electric car. It is simply the best available car, period—something that Consumer Reports and Motor Trend Magazine also emphasized. The fact that Tesla has no tailpipe or the emissions that come from one is just a happy bonus.

Lost Things

My sense of direction is practically non-existent. For instance, there is a family from our church that I’ve known for more than twenty years. Can I find my way to their house? No. About three years ago I had come close to learning how to get to their home—but then they moved to a much nicer house on the other side of town. So I’m back to having no idea how to get to their place.

My sense of direction is so poor that my wife does most of the driving: otherwise I’d leave one day never be seen again: “Oh yes, he went to get some milk at the grocery store. He’s been gone for six months. He’ll probably make it home before the end of the year. It’s his way, you know.”

Once I do learn how to get somewhere—for instance to said grocery store—I will take the same route from then on. In fact, if I happen to be elsewhere in town and have a need to go to the grocery, then I will drive home first. Then from house I can find my way. I’ve learned only one way to get there. The phrase “you can’t get there from here” is the story of my lost life. Lost is a lifestyle. In fact, most of the time I don’t quite know where I am.

When I go to a store for the first time, I carefully contemplate which aisle I to park in, because from then on, I will park only in that aisle. How come? So I can find my car when I leave the store. Otherwise I’d have to wait for the store to close and for everyone to leave until mine was the only car left in the lot. And that doesn’t work if the store is open 24 hours.

But despite the fact that I am mostly unaware of my geographic location, when it comes to finding objects, unearthing lost things—I’m a miracle worker. Just today, my wife asked me “where’s the Raid—we’ve got a bunch of ants on the back patio.”

“You were the one who used it last,” I pointed out. “Remember, you found ants on the front porch yesterday and had me get it for you?”

“Um…”

“So where did you put it after that?”

“Didn’t I give it to you?”

“No.” A pause. “We’ve got ants. I need it.”

So I began the hunt for the can of Raid. It took me less than a minute to locate it. First, I checked the location where I normally put it. It wasn’t there. Then I thought about where my wife was likely to stash a can of bug spray without thinking. I looked under the kitchen sink. There it was.

This is a standard pattern in our home.

My youngest daughter will regularly complain, “I can’t find my iPod.”

I’ll ask about where she was when she last had it.

“I don’t know!” And then she’s mad at me.

So, I’ll begin excavating the black hole she calls her room. Normally I’ll find the lost item within a minute. Usually it’s hiding under a plate on her desk, or beneath a pile of shirts and shorts on her floor.

My oldest daughter will wonder where a book might be located. I’ll snag it in no time. My wife will wonder where the serving tray that we use once a year at Christmas time might be. I’ll have it on the kitchen counter within two minutes. My wife can’t find her keys, or can’t locate her shoes? A brief survey of the premises and I’ll have them in no time.

This ability to find things extends to other aspects of my existence. Someone will wonder where the Bible says something. They’ll give me a look. I’ll flip through the pages on my iPad. Within thirty seconds I can recite chapter and verse.

I’ve had friends call me on the phone and ask me “do you know the address of Art’s Bakery” or some such place. I’ll type a query into Google and have it for them in less than ten seconds. Or they’ll wonder about a phrase in Shakespeare or Milton, or be frustrated because they can’t find anything about a particular obscure topic in sociology that they need for their research paper that’s due tomorrow. Within moments I’ll have what they need.

For whatever reason I seem to be able to find things online that other people can’t. My wife recently wanted to find a book she only vaguely remembered from her childhood—something about a time traveling teacher. Based on her fuzzy recollection I located the book in less than five minutes and ordered her a copy. This, after she’d spent more than a year, off and on, unsuccessfully hunting for it.

But I find myself puzzled.

Why it is that I can snag the most obscure information in a snap, unearth lost keys and iPods, but I can’t I find my children’s school, the grocery store, or even my car in a parking lot?

Waiting

Anticipation. There once was a ketchup commercial that was built upon having to wait a long time for the product to drip out of the bottle. The idea was that slow and thick meant it was better than competing brands. Waiting was proclaimed a good thing.

When I was a boy, looking forward to Christmas was something I did with much expectation and joy. I would lie under the tree every day staring at the ever increasing pile of colorful packages, trying to guess what might be there, wishing and wishing that the days would speed past and the happy morning would finally arrive. Far too early on Christmas morning, I would pop out of bed and rush to the lighted tree, encouraging my parents to get up. I could never understand why they wanted to sleep so long.

Now, as an adult I understand the desire to sleep, and I don’t look forward to Christmas so much as I did in the morning of my life–or at least not with anywhere near the same intensity. I do enjoy seeing the happiness of my children, their eager anticipation, and I like doing what I can to bring them pleasure on Christmas morning. They are always overjoyed and grateful—and the look in their faces reminds me of how I once felt. As a grownup, Christmas has become more a time of stress, of trying to get presents and cards—and wondering about being able to afford it all. Christmas is now just a disruption to the normal, predictable flow of monthly expenses. Still, I enjoy the season.

As an adult, there are other, much more unpleasant things to wait for: the front of the line at the DMV. Getting into the doctor’s office and actually seeing the doctor. Dentists. Getting service in a restaurant. Or finding what I need at Wal-Mart.

One of the new Super Wal-marts replaced our ordinary Wal-Mart over the summer. My wife and I had looked forward to its appearance for several reasons. First, it is much closer to my house than the grocery store we normally use. Second, the prices are considerably lower than said grocery store.

Unfortunately, the reality of our Super Wal-Mart has often been a disappointment: we have to wait in long lines, since they do not even have close to the necessary number of checkers. Worse, we have to wait to find the items we want to buy. And I’m not talking about odd or big ticket sorts of things. I’m talking about ordinary things like chicken flavor Top Ramen noodles and Campbell’s cream of broccoli soup. A mop bucket. An ordinary bulb for a flashlight. A whole month went by before buckets appeared on the shelf where the label said they were supposed to be. I’m still waiting for Top Ramen noodles and cream of broccoli soup to be regularly in stock. The empty shelves where the labels state they are supposed to be mock me every time I visit the store. Same with the light bulb for my flashlight. I complained to their customer service. They told me to complain to their corporate office. I have done so. And I continue, after a month, to wait for any kind of response from Wal-Mart, let alone to actually find what I want.

But there are also happy things to wait for as an adult: like the annual vacation. Or, on rare occasions, the realization of a life-time dream, as in 2008 I awaited the publication of my first book by a major publisher: Reader’s Digest Books. That book, The Bible’s Most Fascinating People, went on to be translated into 13 other languages, including two Dutch editions and then being reissued by a different American publisher in 2012.

Since then, I’ve had three other nonfiction books released. But the waiting continues. The life of a writer consists mostly of waiting. Publishers are never quick. I cool my heels sometimes for a very long while. It is not unusual to wait months, even a full year before a publisher gets back to me on a submission. And it isn’t always good news. Just because I’ve been published repeatedly, there’s never a guarantee that I’ll get published again. And so what do I do while I wait? I just keep on writing.