R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 122

Comets and Other Stuff

I finally got to see the comet PanSTARRS tonight, together with my wife and Kathy Newman, who took several excellent pictures of it. We watched it from our church; it was dark there and we had a clear view of the horizon. The 28 hour old moon was a very thin crescent like a smile. Directly to the left, about 5 degrees away, was the comet. Once you knew it was there, it was easy enough to see, but it looked spectacular in binoculars. If the sky were darker, it would have been very easy to see, but because the sun had only set about an hour or so before, there was still a lot of light on the horizon–plus we had to look through thicker atmosphere there on the horizon, too. Still, since we are in the High Desert of California, the air was very clear and dry so we had it about as good as anyone could want.

Here is one of the photographs that Kathy Newman took:

©KCNewman Photography

I also got the latest issue of Popular Science Magazine today. What interested me about it most was an article by Konstantin Kakaes entitled Warp Factor: A NASA Scientist Claims to be on the Verge of Faster-than-Light Travel: Is He for Real? And the conclusion is, yes–yes he is. Dr. Harold “Sonny” White founded the Eagleworks facility to work on various cutting edge projects, one of which is his concept of how to make a Warp Drive real. He believes that it is a plausible idea and he is building a tabletop experiment that is designed to create a miniature warp bubble. Kakaes had a tour of the Eagleworks facility at the Johnson Space Center. One of the many interesting things that Kakaes saw while he was there is something that White called a quantum vacuum plasma thruster (QVPT). White couldn’t talk about it much (it’s secret) but it’s one of two initiatives that White is pursuing in addition to the Warp Drive. The quantum vacuum plasma thruster is further along than the Warp Drive. Kakaes writes that a 2011 NASA report that White wrote says that the QVPT uses quantum fluctuations in empty space as a fuel source, so that a spaceship propelled by a QVPT would not require any propellant.

That would certainly save a lot of weight if you didn’t have to haul fuel with you; and you’d never run out, either.

If you had any doubts that you’re living in the future…

Speaking in Public

I saw a bumper sticker once which said something along the lines, “Do not annoy dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.” I tend to look at audiences as being dragons and myself as something crunchy. I think like this even if the audience is only one person that I’ve known for years. I am simply not particularly comfortable initiating contact with anyone. I am mostly convinced that if someone is not currently engaged in a conversation with me, then they probably have no interest in starting one. Being an author I naturally have to spend a lot of time alone and in isolation, and so it strikes no one as peculiar that the only time I ever talk with anyone outside my immediate family is occasionally on Sundays at church. So far this month my cellphone tells me I’ve spent exactly zero minutes talking to anyone on the phone; I’ve sent and received only 12 text messages–all in response to my children needing something. And this is normal for me.

Most people, in my experience, are not saddled with such an odd perspective on human interaction as me. It’s a wonder I function in public at all, actually.

Getting to where I could passably survive public speaking has been an enormous mountain for me to climb. I’m really lousy at interacting with people, very shy, with appallingly bad self-esteem bordering on clinical depression (I’m actually on antidepressants now–for the last year–prescribed by my physician; I still don’t think people want to talk to me, but at least I no longer say mean things to myself constantly. The pills have helped a lot. Really).

Thus, I am absolutely not a naturally effective speaker. But over the years, I’ve been forced by circumstances to compensate for this lack. While I was still in college, someone in the church I was then attending asked me to fill in “for only two weeks” as the children’s Sunday School teacher. I agreed to it only because the person couldn’t find anyone else to fill in and I was the last hope. Then, after the two weeks had passed, my “filling in” continued without break for the next three years. The person I was subbing for never returned to her teaching position.

Then, after those three years, when I was by then in my graduate program at UCLA, someone asked me to “fill in” for the adult Sunday School teacher. I should have known better. Many years passed with me teaching that class. Then I wound up teaching college classes, too, since what else could I do with a degree in ancient Semitic languages such as Hebrew, Ugaritic and Akkadian?

When my wife and I moved to a new community, I somehow got dragged into teaching another adult Sunday School class–they found out I had both an advanced degree in biblically related matters and that I had actually been a college professor teaching Bible and Theology and Hebrew. Not so long after that, I started getting called upon to fill in for the pastor when he was out of town or ill. Then I got volunteered to preach now and again in other churches and even to give seminars. Thankfully the preaching gigs have really only ever been “filling in.” Nothing has ever lasted longer than two weeks.

But I get called upon to preach somewhat regularly.

And thus it is, for the second year in a row, I find myself facing the prospect of preaching the Palm Sunday service. Since I’ve now been doing public speaking for awhile (more than thirty years), I am able to do it without shaking and I almost enjoy it–sort of like you can get to where you almost enjoy visiting your doctor or dentist. God has a sense of humor; he took the last person in the world that anyone would ever expect to do public speaking, and someone who under no circumstances ever wanted to find himself having to speak in public–and turned him into a public speaker.

If you keep doing a good job, it only encourages people to keep coming back to you for more. Bill Cosby suggested that if a husband wanted to avoid having to do the laundry or the dishes, all he needed to do was mess up the task badly enough that the wife would decide to do it herself instead, to insure that the job got done right. My wife never bought into that notion, perhaps because she’d seen Bill Cosby’s routine and so she was prepared. Turning her clothes pink on more than one occasion only encouraged her to go shopping for new clothes: counter productive, it was.

If I purposely blew a speaking engagement and started babbling like an idiot, I might not ever have to speak again. However, public humiliation, despite it’s potential payoff, is simply not worth it in the final analysis. I’ve found it is better to just do the job right and suffer the likelihood of forever getting asked to speak again, rather than having people point and laugh at me for the rest of my life. I don’t need my nightmares to become real.

Asteroids

The small 150 foot diameter asteroid with the designation 2012 DA14 became newsworthy when it was determined that it would slip by the Earth just beneath our geosynchronous communication satellites on February 15, 2013. But then, coincidentally on the same day, a much smaller asteroid only about 55 feet in diameter coming at the Earth from the opposite direction stole its thunder. It plunged into our atmosphere at 40,000 miles per hour, burned brighter than the sun, and then disintegrated above Chelyabinsk, a Russian city of 1.1 million people near the boundary between Europe and Asia. It detonated at an altitude of about 40,000 feet with the force of 30 Hiroshima atomic bombs, blowing out thousands of windows and collapsing an old zinc factory. At least 1200 people were injured, mostly by flying glass. Had the asteroid hit the ground intact, the destruction would have been much worse.

This was the largest meteor strike since the Tunguska blast in 1908 took out about 770 square miles of forest in a wilderness area of Siberia. The Tunguska blast in 1908 was caused by an asteroid about six times larger than the one that hit Chelyabinsk, though exploding at around the same altitude.

The Chelyabinsk strike has caught the attention of a world that until now had been mostly oblivious to the danger it faced from the detritus of the solar system. If you go outside tonight after dark and stare at the dark sky away from city lights, on average you will witness about three meteors streaking across the sky every hour. Those are much smaller versions of what hit Russia on February 15. Most of the meteors you see will be the size of sand grains; occasionally, you’ll see grape and softball sized rocks which burn bright and are designated fireballs. Objects the size of what hit Russia this month hit our planet on average about once every 100 years; the Tunguska size objects hit on average about once every 1000. Asteroids like DA14, Tunguska, and Chelyabinsk are so small that very few of them have been or even can be tracked with the limited number of telescopes devoted to studying asteroids.

Someone once commented that the reason the dinosaurs died out is because they didn’t have a space program. Although dinosaur-killer-sized asteroids (about 10 kilometers in diameter) are rare—and we are tracking about 90 percent of them—a Tunguska sized strike would make for a very bad day if it happened over a city: think Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

For most of human history we were not even aware of the danger from the skies, just as for most of human history we had no way of predicting the approach of hurricanes or tornados, and just as we had no way of doing anything about earthquakes. But now in California our buildings and overpasses are designed to survive earthquakes up to 8 on the Richter scale. Our satellites track hurricanes and tropical storms, warning those in their paths of the approaching danger, giving them sufficient time to prepare and evacuate.

We now have the technology to find and track all the rocks speeding about the solar system, and we have the ability to nudge them away if we found one on a collision course. We simply must decide: do we want to protect ourselves—or are we satisfied to accept the rare and intermittent danger and just hope for the best?

Interestingly, two companies have been formed in the last few months: Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries. Both companies are planning to track and find asteroids that pass near Earth, search for valuable minerals, move those that are valuable, and mine them. While they are not doing all this for the purpose of saving the world from being hit—that would be an obvious side effect.

Planetary Resources was started by and is being financed by billionaires, such as the founders of Google—a multibillion dollar corporation. They recognize the potential for enormous profit possible from asteroid mining. An asteroid the size of the one that smashed into Chelyabinsk on February 15 contains metals—such as platinum, gold and some other rare earth minerals—worth billions of dollars. An asteroid the size of the one that hit Tunguska in 1908 is valued in the multiple trillions of dollars. It could contain more platinum, for instance, than has been mined in all of human history here on Earth. In fact, platinum exists on Earth only because of all the asteroids that have smashed into our planet in the past over the eons.

So, even though our government (and the governments of other nations) are likely to simply dither and accomplish little in the way of protecting us from the cosmic threat—the potential for profit from these cosmic rocks will spur industry to do the job for us instead. And in the course of them making enormous piles of cash, the government will then happily tax them with very little dithering.

* * *

Two of my friends have just started blogs. One is a photographer and one is a newly minted lawyer who just recently passed her California Bar Exam (on the first try!)

KCNewman Photography – finding beauty in the small things

Williams LLP Law Blog

I’ve also added their links to my Blogroll.

Daylight Savings Time

I dislike Daylight Savings Time. A lot. When my middle daughter dislikes something she’ll comment that she wishes it would “die in a hole.” Given that Daylight Savings Time is a rather abstract concept, as well as unliving, my daughter’s curse would be ineffective. Though it does turn everyone into the living dead for a few days afterward, so that we kind of feel like we’re dying in a hole. I would really prefer that we not have to change the clocks twice a year and to lose an hour’s sleep in the Spring. I simply don’t see the value of mucking with everyone’s sleep schedules and inducing nationwide “jet lag” twice a year. I can’t see how that can be good for productivity.

According to Wikipedia’s article on the subject, Benjamin Franklin introduced the concept in 1784 in a letter to the editors of the Journal of Paris. However, the article says that his letter was satirical. I hope so. I rather like Ben Franklin and would prefer to think that he never came up with such a bad idea. Of course, he also stood out in the rain waiting for his kite to be struck by lightening, so he wasn’t exactly a stranger to bad ideas.

Some people claim to like Daylight Savings Time. These are probably the same people who are morning people. There’s something wrong with morning people. I suspect morning people are not actually human. Maybe they’re the ones who came up with Daylight Savings Time. Perhaps they are the vanguard of some alien invasion and intend to attack us when we’re most sleep deprived.

Only most parts of Arizona and Hawaii can save us.

Comets!

Starting tonight, Comet PanSTARRS is visible for those of us who live north of the equator. Here is a helpful chart:

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Source Sky and Telescope.

Something to look forward to is Comet ISON, which will become visible in December:

Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Short Story Fragment

Here’s a fragment of a short story I’m working on:

* * *

Dirt Naps Can Be Lonely

by

R.P. Nettelhorst

“Keep that down,” Hadrian said, pointing a crooked finger at the fire in the fire place. “You’re letting it get too bright.”

Dutifully I pushed some of the logs apart, attempting to weaken the flame. Whether there was significant change or not, I’m not sure, but it seemed to ease Hadrian’s mind.

Does a ghost even have a mind? With no brain, no discernible neurons to be firing or electrical signals to be traced, how could he think? I found it hard to believe he even existed, let alone had consciousness. Like old Scrooge, I thought it more likely he was a bit of undigested potato than a leftover from one of the formerly living.

But Hadrian didn’t take to my doubts, and I was curious, nevertheless. Very curious about how he came to be in his current state. That was the reason he had agreed to huddle near a fire with me, late that cold winter night near the end of January, the wind whistling eerily around the eaves of the house, the drifts piling up along the north wall.

The fire popped like a rifle shot; it seemed to energize the spirit of Hadrian.

“I really don’t know how I came to be dead,” said Hadrian sadly. I’d offered him a cup of coffee, but he pointed out that he couldn’t hold one any too well any longer. “I’ve scoured my memory of that night, trying to think what was different, but nothing reveals itself. As far as I can recollect, it was a perfectly ordinary, perfectly normal night at the college. I recall the lecture I gave — a brilliant exposition, really, on the nature of stellar collapse. I traced the life cycles of the various stars, from dwarfs to blue giants. It was just an introductory lecture you know, and I was only painting pictures in words, giving enough to whet appetites so that the next week we could get into the details. The math is really quite extraordinary…” Hadrian paused again, realizing suddenly that he was rambling.

“What was I talking about?”

“You were going to tell me how you came to be here.”

“Oh yes.” He looked gloomy, then sighed. “I could sure use a stiff drink right about now. That’s the worst thing about not being alive any more — you still have needs, but you can’t satisfy any of them.”

He drummed his fingers on the end table; they made no sound, of course. Which raised the question: how was it that I could hear him talk? After all, if the fingers of a ghost drumming on a table were silent, shouldn’t the flapping of his vocal cords against air molecules be just as silent? There was a lot about the nature of ghosts that didn’t make sense.

“As I was saying, I was teaching my class, and then I finished, and most of the students left; a couple hung around and chatted for awhile. Then I went out to the parking lot, turned on my car, and drove home. I live about five miles from the college. It’s not a bad drive, especially not at night.

“When I got home, there were cars in my driveway and in front of my house. I had to park two houses down, it was that bad.

“I grabbed my briefcase…” he lifted it from the floor beside him. I hadn’t asked him about that, and wondered, now, both what might be inside and how he could be carrying it. Hadrian went on with his story:

“‘I’m home,’ I announced and strode into my living room. It was packed with friends and family. The lights were down, and they all were very somber. They looked up at me with startled expressions, and I saw not a few jaws drop. My wife gasped and nearly fell out of her seat.

“‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Is this a surprise party or something?’

“‘You might say that,’ said Joe. He was a colleague of mine at the college. We’d known each other since we were freshmen. He looked worried — no, not worried — annoyed, or maybe angry.” Hadrian shook his head. “I’m so bad at guessing emotion or describing it.” He sighed, then continued with his story:

“Joe stood up from his chair and approached me, studying my face like it was one of those insects he was always going on about. I took a step back, and then demanded, ‘What’s going on?’

“‘What are you doing here?’ snapped Joe right back at me.

“‘I live here.’

“‘Not any more you don’t.’

“‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I was missing the joke, I was sure.

“‘You’re dead,’ he said, point blank, finally.

“I stared at him, then shook my head. ‘What did I do? Did I offend…’

“‘My husband died on Tuesday!’ wailed my wife. ‘Who or what are you?’

“I stared blankly around the room. These were all my friends, my family, my wife. Yet they acted like they didn’t want me to be there; as if I offended all their sensibilities of right and wrong.

“‘I was afraid of something like this,’ commented Joe. ‘You were always very stubborn, and you never could see the obvious.’

“‘I don’t know what you’re talking about…’

“‘Only you wouldn’t notice your own death. I used to joke that you’d be late for your own funeral. Now it looks like you’ve missed it entirely!’

“I just stared, dumbfounded. What can you say when you get news like that? I had never imagined learning about my own death this way.

“‘There’s only one thing we can do,’ suggested Joe. ‘We’ve got to conduct an exorcism.’

“‘What?’ I babbled.

“‘It’s the only way to get rid of you.’

“‘I thought you were my friends…’ I looked around the room, and then focused on my wife. ‘And you…’

“‘You’re dead,’ she screamed, shaking a finger in my face. ‘I don’t want you around anymore. Remember our vows?’

“‘I’m a guy…’ I began.

“‘Til death do us part.’ She glared at me. ‘So go away.’

“Joe got everyone to assemble around a card table in the living room. My wife brought a couple of candles in from the kitchen and set them down. Someone else had a lighter and got them lit.

“Then Joe made everyone hold hands. Joe was not a priest; in fact, I had always gotten the impression that he didn’t really believe in God at all. But he closed his eyes and began chanting like it was the most natural thing in the world, and everyone joined in. They wouldn’t look at me anymore, and they were chanting, ‘Hadrian go away, Hadrian go away.’ And someone had gotten garlic from the refrigerator and was twirling it over his head like a fool. It broke my heart and it was as annoying as hell, and so after fifteen minutes of weird antics I just wandered out of the room. I didn’t even look back.

“I suppose Joe thinks he’s some sort of hero, now. Last I heard, he was making a good second income off of driving out spooks. Like you can really do that.”

Hadrian looked at me, and I felt somewhat queasy at the notion that there would be no way of ridding myself of this unexpected guest.

“So where’d you go?” I finally asked.

“I went to Joe’s house and tried trashing it. Didn’t work. I don’t know how the poltergeists do it. They say I’m just not concentrating.” Hadrian shrugged.

“So what then?”

“Huh? I just wandered around. Being dead’s a lot less interesting than you might think. For awhile, I comforted myself by planning how I’d get even with them when they all died, but after a year or so I realized, hey — if they’re dead, what more can I do to make them feel bad? And besides, there’s that truism about time healing all wounds.” Hadrian sighed with the weight of the world. “You get over the shock of dying and losing everything, and you’ve got to get on with your life…or death, in this case.” Hadrian chewed his lower lip. “I’ve never been back, there, you know. Some of them may have died by now. God, it’s been over fifty years! But I’m not one to hold a grudge, though I don’t really care to see any of them, either. It’s not like anyone ever tried to look me up. Being dead turns out to be kind of lonely, too. Ghosts are solitary creatures…”

“Your friends, your wife…”

“They got on with their lives. Even ten years after you’re dead, who really gives a rip about you? Dead people are forgotten.” He stared gloomily at his hands. “There’s a lot of bitterness in the afterlife, let me tell you. I think that’s what motivates the poltergeists.”

“They’re just pissed off dead people?”

“Yeah — but they get over it.” He paused. “You know, the teenage years can be rough on anyone.”

I stared, puzzled. But he didn’t clarify. I noticed that the sky was beginning to brighten outside.

“You’re going to have to go soon, aren’t you?”

Hadrian looked out at where I was staring.

“No, not really.”

“But the sun will be up…”

“Do I look like a vampire?”

“But I thought…”

“Everyone thinks that light will kill ghosts or something. Read my lips: I’m dead. D-E-A-D. Understand? You can’t do anything to hurt me.” Then he stretched and yawned. “But it’s quieter at night, and you can scare people easier then.” He grinned at me. “So most of us sleep during the day.”

“You have to sleep?”

“You thought ‘rest in peace’ was just a euphemism?” He chuckled, then stood up. “Thanks for the conversation,” he said. “I’ll see you later; I think I’ll go take a nap.”

And with that, he was gone; and I was alone. At least for a while.

* * *

Who is Hadrian talking to? Where are they? Why is Hadrian talking to this person? I wonder what will happen next?

A Special Kind of Stupid

You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe that Hugo Chavez, the now former president of Venezuela, was a good guy. And yet, people who claim to be liberal, who claim to be believers in freedom and tolerance, seem to be very happy to praise the most descipicable tyrants. Of course, it has been this way for a very long while. Hollywood is filled with people such as Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Oliver Stone and others who think that Chavez was a wonderful man who only sought the best for the poor and downtrodden. Somehow, if you say the right sappy words, you can get away with tossing your opponents in prison, prohibit those you dislike from running against you, muzzle the press, install your cronies, and stuff your Swiss bank accounts.

Chavez sided with the Communist dictator Fidel Castro, loved the mullahs of Iran, and couldn’t say a bad word about any of the world’s dictators. Consistently, there are those in Hollywood and elsewhere who turn a blind eye to human rights abuses as long as those committing them say nice words about the poor and say bad things about the US.

These people are a special kind of stupid.

What was Hugo Chavez actually like? Consider this description from Freedom House in 1999:

Hugo Chávez, the coupist paratrooper-turned-politician elected who was elected president in a December 1998 landslide, spent most of 1999 dismantling Venezuela’s political system of checks and balances, ostensibly to destroy a discredited two-party system that for four decades presided over several oil booms but has left four out of five Venezuelans impoverished. Early in the year, Congressional power was gutted, the judiciary was placed under executive branch tutelage, and Chávez’s army colleagues were given a far bigger say in the day-to-day running of the country. A constituent assembly dominated by Chávez followers drafted a new constitution that would make censorship of the press easier, allow a newly strengthened chief executive the right to dissolve congress, and make it possible for Chávez to retain power until 2013. Congress and the Supreme Court were dismissed after Venezuelans approved the new constitution in a national referendum December 15….

Venezuela’s political rights changed from 2 to 4, its civil liberties rating from 3 to 4, and its status from Free to Partly Free, due to the decision of President Hugo Chávez, ratified in a national referendum, to abolish congress and the judiciary, and by his creation of a parallel government of military cronies.

More recent information from Freedom House in 2010:

Freedom House today condemned ongoing efforts by the Venezuelan government to bring criminal charges against the owners of Globovision, the only remaining independent television station in the country. Freedom House called the continuing persecution of the station’s ownership a transparent effort to silence one of the few remaining voices that are willing to criticize the policies of President Hugo Chavez in advance of upcoming parliamentary elections.

Two major shareholders in the private television station have recently come under pressure from the Chavez administration. Co-owner Guillermo Zuloaga was forced to flee the country to avoid arrest on charges many believe to have been fabricated by the government. Additionally, the government took over the bank of another shareholder, Nelson Mezerhane, and threatened to seize Mezerhane’s Globovision shares as part of the bank takeover. Currently in Florida, Mezerhane cannot return to Venezuela without fear of arrest.

“President Chavez’s denial that these actions are politically motivated would be more credible if not for his systematic efforts over the last decade to close the space for independent voices, particularly the voices of those who oppose his policies,” said Paula Schriefer, director of advocacy at Freedom House. “Chavez’s continued intolerance for criticism only serves to further weaken what little is left of Venezuela’s democratic credentials.”

Frank La Rue, special rapporteur at the United Nations for freedom of expression, denounced the “harassment” of Zuloaga and said that the arrest warrant was “politically motivated, aimed solely at silencing Zuloaga.”

Reports of crack-downs on independent media have continually plagued Venezuela during the Chavez administration but have increased in intensity as the opposition prepares for parliamentary elections in September. Venezuela dropped two points this year in Freedom of the Press due to increased violence against journalists and the closing of more than 30 radio and television stations under the controversial Law of Social Responsibility in Radio and Television.

Venezuela is ranked Not Free in Freedom of the Press 2010 and Partly Free in Freedom in the World 2010, Freedom House’s survey of political rights and civil liberties.

Things have not gotten better.

Warm Happy Thoughts

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9)

Happiness is a warm puppy.

Happiness if finding someone you like at the front door.

Happiness is getting together with your friends.

Happiness is the hiccups…after they’ve gone away.

Happiness is a fuzzy sweater.

Happiness is finding the little piece with the pink edge and part of the sky and the top of the sailboat.

Happiness is walking in the grass in your bare feet.

I happened to think of the phrase tonight, “Happiness is a Warm Puppy”. It is the title of a little book by Charles Shultz, the cartoonist who did Peanuts. The book is illustrated with the various Peanuts’ characters, Linus, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, and the like, acting out these little phrases, each of which begins, “Happiness is…” It fits with the thought I had that each day has joy in it, if we only look for it: that in the midst of even the worst things, there are things to be thankful for, or things that can give us pleasure, and usually those things are simple things, like walking in the grass, or eating an ice cream cone, or getting a cup of Starbuck’s coffee, or watching a bird whistling on a branch.

Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me.

My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek.

Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior.

Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.

Teach me your way, O LORD; lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors.

Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing out violence.

I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

(Psalm 27)

See the Comet

This is the first of two bright comets that we’ll get to see this year. It should be easy to see after sunset starting Sunday or so. The prediction is that it will get as bright as the North Star, but comets are fickle things, so it might be better or worse. We’ll have to wait and see.

Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

The Bible: Thoughts on the History Channel Miniseries

My wife and I managed to watch only the first 20 minutes of the series The Bible, on the History Channel. We found the acting poor and overdone; the cultural and historical setting and background were lacking, and the behavior of the characters was unrealistic to the point of making them seem to be weirdos. It was, simply, a rather typical bad Hollywood attempt at portraying the Bible stories.

I’m trying to figure out why the overwhelming majority of attempts to film the stories of the Bible simply don’t work–to the point that I really can’t think of any that do. I can think of at least four things that make doing a film of the Bible hard:

1. The film makers are desperately trying please everyone and offend no one. It reminds me of the Aesop fable about the man, the boy and the donkey:

A Man and his son were once going with their Donkey to market. As they were walking along by its side a countryman passed them and said: “You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride upon?”

So the Man put the Boy on the Donkey and they went on their way. But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said: “See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides.”

So the Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn’t gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other: “Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along.”

Well, the Man didn’t know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up before him on the Donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passers-by began to jeer and point at them. The Man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at. The men said: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey of yours and your hulking son?”

The Man and Boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey’s feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them till they came to Market Bridge, when the Donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the Boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the Donkey fell over the bridge, and his fore-feet being tied together he was drowned.

“That will teach you,” said an old man who had followed them:

“Please all, and you will please none.”

Thus, because there are so many factions and points of view to try to please when crafting a movie, because there is so much money involved, because there are so many advertisers (in the case of something made for TV), and because there is so much fear that some group or church will object to something, all that can come out is soft pablum. It’s not particularly offensive, except for wasting my time, dragging, being boring, and being bereft of any real entertainment value. But few constituencies are likely to picket the studio or write nasty letters to the advertisers because of anything that shows up on screen.

2. People in general, Christian and not, tend to have a poor idea of what the Bible is really about, since most of them have barely read even parts of it. Worse, they approach the Bible naively, imagining that the people and events described would somehow not be out of place among the most stiff, staid and stuck-up Puritans in Massachusetts. If anything doesn’t fit the conception of what true holiness and righteousness are, then the stories must be forced to fit that straight-jacket. Reminds me of the story about the little girl in Sunday School. Her teacher said, “Children, what has gray fur, a big puffy tail, and hides nuts for the winter.” The child raised her hand and burst out: “It sounds like a squirrel, but I know the answer has to be Jesus!”

3. The complexities and cultural differences of the Ancient World are simply hard to film; how, for instance, would a film maker explain that taking a second wife to bear a son for the first wife was normal in the culture of the Ancient Near East in which Abraham lived? Let alone all the other peculiar customs and laws and regulations? How does a film maker create the sense of the out-of-placeness of the biblical world as compared to the modern world–not just horses and camels and tents– but the whole alienness of how those people lived, interacted, and conducted business. They have no concept of democracy, western ideals, precision, or punctuality. Just a small example: when we hear the word “earth” we picture a blue ball spinning in space. No one in the Bible would ever picture that; for them, “earth” is the land they live on, that they can see around them out to the horizon–it is what is not wet, like the sea.

4. Because they are Bible stories, there is a great reluctance to recognize that the characters in the story are complex; they are something other than the most pious, upright and noble beings ever. Instead, they really are just ordinary men and women doing they best they can; they make mistakes, they do bad things, they doubt, suffer disappointment–even though they are the good guys and the heroes of the story. Filmmakers, for the reasons listed above, are afraid to portray them as human beings; it is safer for them to make them into the plaster saints that so many expect.

I do not think it is impossible to do a dramatization of the biblical stories; they are great stories. But I do think it would be impossible to do it without offending a lot of people. And given that TV and movie making is about making money–and you don’t make money if you offend too much of your audience–I’m not sure it will ever change.