7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 83)
Last week I asked you guys what you were reading (and, as usual, my Amazon wish list grew by quite a bit). Here’s my current book stack. Some I’m reading right now, others are up next:
- The atheist-to-Christian memoir Flirting With Faith by Joan Ball
- Awakening to Prayer by Buddhist-to-Christian convert Fr. Augustine Ichiro Okumura
- My theology nerd selection, The Four Cardinal Virtues by Josef Pieper
- I’m going to give fiction a shot with The Weight of Shadows by Alison Strobel
I have decided that one day I am going to write an entire book just so that I can use this song for the book trailer. I don’t care what the plot, genre, setting or characters are, as long as they’re a good fit with the music.
I have a question for physics nerds (this is totally random, but it’s something I’ve been puzzling about all week and am dying for someone to explain to me): let’s say you dug a hole that went all the way through the center of the earth and came out the other side. I know, it’s logistically impossible, but let’s just say you could do it. My question is: if you threw something down the hole, at what point would it stop falling? Would it swing up toward the hole on the other side, then eventually just hang there in the middle? I need someone to explain this to me so that I can sleep at night.
While I’m at it, here’s another thing I’ve always wondered about: what’s up with dragons? I mean, how is it that so many cultures throughout history have described a reptilian creature that breathes fire? I’ve often wondered about that, i.e. did one tribe of people originate the concept and it spread to other places? Or was there once some animal that had some dragon-esque traits that existed in multiple parts of the world? (Yes, this is what I think about while I’m folding laundry.)
I was surprised that the main take to my post from Monday about the whole scorpion/toilet incident seemed to be that I had a really clean toilet. As I mentioned on Twitter, if you ever see pictures from my house that make any part of it look impressively clean, you should assume that Photoshop was probably involved. I actually didn’t doctor this picture (though it is a mystery as to why it looked so good — there must be some natural cleaning agent in the water around here) but believe me, I am not above it!
Speaking of which, Malia left an awesome comment to that post, a little rhyme to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies song. I just had to share:
Come and listen to a story about a girl named Jen
A strong Texas lass, stood more than five-feet ten,
But then one day she was walkin’ past the loo,
And saw something there, some strange lookin’ poo.Scorpion, that is
Black and gold
Stop and scream.Well the first thing you know ol Jen’s pullin’ her hair,
She yells, “Hey, Yaya! Did you put that thing in there??”
She says, “Down the sewer is the place it’s gonna be,
But first I’ll take a picture for posterity!”Blog, that is
Photoshop
Toilet clean.Well now it’s time to say goodbye to Jen’s arachnid friends.
They just like to freak her out so they keep droppin’ in.
But we’re all invited back again to Jen’s locality,
To have a heapin’ helpin’ of her blog hilarity!Scorpions, that is. Set a spell. Take your shoes off.
(But ya’ll think twice about that, y’hear?)
I’m impressed: programmer and convert Eric Sammons wrote a program that took all the blogs from the Catholic Blog Directory, found their Google Reader subscriber numbers and then ranked them. You can see the results here. I think it’s probably best that I don’t know how he did that (I’m guessing Perl script?). I would spend waaaaaay too much time creating my own little programs like that.
I look forward to reading your posts!
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Good point, Kelly. I did some research and saw that Herodotus was castigated by contemporaries for fanciful tales, and in addition to being called the "Father of History," is also called the "Father of Lies." I also know that I am more likely to take seriously data that support my thesis rather than the opposite. I still think in this particular case that there is a germ of truth in Herodotus' report. The Wikipedia article on him shows how modern research is backing up some of his apparently fanciful tales, and Number 21:6-9 tells of "fiery serpents" (Douay-Rheims, Vulgate: ignitos serpentes) attacking the Israelites near the Arabah Valley between Sinai and modern Israel. Isaiah 30:6 speaks of "the burden of the beasts of the south," including "the flying basilisk" (Douay Rheims). Herodotus says, "when the winged snakes fly to Egypt from Arabia in spring, the ibises meet them at the entrance to the pass and do not let them get through, but kill them. Buto (modern Tell El Fara'in), the location where Herodotus saw the bones of the winged snakes, is less than 20 miles from the Sinai peninsula. All circumstantial, to be sure, but quite fascinating all the same.
My mistake again–I rechecked the location of Buto, and it's about 40-50 miles from the Sinai peninsula.
The question is this: how far away are the ships from each other?
Chris — I think that you are conflating two different, albeit related, concepts.
In the first part of your example, you are speaking entirely about distance. But then in the second part of your example, you switch it up and speak of velocity. And then you make the error of applying these two different things to the same situation. That is, you are comparing apples to oranges.
If the distance of each is 18,000,000 kilometers away from the earth, then the distance from each other, from an absolute perspective, is (18+18 =) 36,000,000 kilometers. HOWEVER, it will appear to the people on each ship that the other is only 18,000,000. However, that appearance (from the relative perspective of each ship) is an optical illusion because of the lightspeed problem you cite.
As each ship travels at the speed of light, looking back toward earth, it will appear that the other ship is standing still, such that, at the end of a minute, both it and the earth will appear to be 18,000,000 kilometers away.
The second ship is actually twice that distance away, and it will take another minute for the light from that second ship, which is 18,000,000 kilometers from earth in the opposite direction (or 36,000,000 kilometers from the first ship) to reach the first ship, so as to finally be seen as being its actual distance of 36,000,000.
That the actual distance between them is, in fact, 36,000,000 kilometers is easy demonstrated if we were to have a neutral observation point, such as on Mars. From that neutral point, there is no violation of the "law" against exceeding the speed of light. Nor is there any violation of that law from earth. It only appears to be violated from the relative position of each ship looking at the other. But again, that relative observation is an illusion, not the real thing.
Interesting brain teaser though.
#4
I think you would find some of the articles at Answers in Genesis quite interesting. For example, this article http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v22/i3/dragons.asp refers back to St. John of Damascus (8th century) and his teachings/thoughts about dragons.
Also, do you know when the word "dinosaur" was first used? Apparently it was in 1841 when it was coined by scientist Dr. Richard Owen after he "discovered" bones of a large lizard like creature. Interestingly enough, many of the dinosaurs closely resemble descriptions of "dragons" from older legends. I think it is highly probable that we are talking about the same creatures here!
Another interesting part of this discussion is whether or not there may actually be some dinosaur/dragons still alive today. http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i4/dinosaurs.asp
Dragons-My personal theory is to blame volcanoes.
I mean, assume you are a somewhat primitive culture and you see coming from the mountain, in the far off distance, smoke, and flames, and occasionally really bright shining lava flows. Add that to the fact that there are dinosaur fossil records lying around. Every so often you find a giant petrified lizard footprint, or bone.
It seems easy then for people to conclude that there are giant lizards that breath smoke and belch fire living inn the deep hollows of mountains on hoards of gold, (the shiny lava) and that desolate the entire area around them by burning it with fire so that there is nothing that can live there. In order to do this they must be able to fly.
When the volcano is no longer active then the dragon left fro somewhere else, or someone killed it.
You see, this is what I think about when folding the laundry too.
I find my theory a satisfying enough explanation. I wonder if sociologists would agree with me.
PS. thanks for the retweet.
I just finished Mary Eberstadt's The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism. You simply have to read it (if you haven't already.) Awesome.