ATM's and Astronomy

"And, I Abraham, had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me, in Ur of the Chaldees; And I saw the stars, that they were very great…"

From the Nasa web page their "Spitzer Space Telescope has detected enough water vapor to fill the oceans on Earth five times inside the collapsing nest of a forming star system. Astronomers say the water vapor is pouring down from the system's natal cloud and smacking into a dusty disk where planets are thought to form.

The observations provide the first direct look at how water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it, begins to make its way into planets, possibly even rocky ones like our own."

I want to be an ATM soon. For the uninitiated that is amateur telescope maker. Last week we gazed through a friend's 12 1/2" Newtonian Reflector. He built it himself and it only made me realize more my 8" Celestron needs to be replaced. He will teach me how to grind the mirror. We saw the double stars in the handle of the Big Dipper, the Moons of Jupiter, our own lunar landscape, a star cluster and the Andromeda Galaxy, 'and they were very great'.

"the silence and emptiness that is so great..."

This from a Time Magazine article worth reading, maybe even the new book out about her:

“On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the "Saint of the Gutters," went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, 'I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'" she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere — "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive."

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand."

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.”

Brix index and Wal Mart

Regional officials from Wal Wart met with our city government recently and were told by our mayor we were all happy to have them open their new super center in Centerville. Maybe his memory is not so good or maybe he is just trying to be polite, but 72% of the residents in a poll conducted among residents of Centerville by Dr. Raymond Briscoe in 2004 said they did not want that big box here. As the store’s grand opening gets closer I am wondering what I will do to non-observe this event. Somehow I find no comfort in the words of our city manager Steve Thacker when he offered we were going to have the ‘finest Wal Mart in all Utah.’ Several other communities have taken that title away from us though as new and better Wal Warts are being constructed in Utah with better looking fake stone and archways.

Friday I planted 10 bushes and trees in my yard including two Pluots. If you have not discovered this very sweet fruit I recommend trying them. Maybe with the addition of these trees and bushes we can drown out the noise of happy shoppers driving on Main Street to the big box. At least we can reduce CO2 emissions with our new foliage and can look forward to new fruit in a couple years. It is a pleasant experience growing one's fruit and vegeys or getting it from local sources. If only I could grow pineapples in the green house I would not have to buy them at Target.

From a web site I found this about Pluots: “Pluots are a hybrid of a plum and an apricot. They mainly retain the characteristics and flavor of a plum. Their skin is a light reddish-yellow color with small speckles. Every year they become more available in stores across the U.S. as demand and production rises. This fruit has one of the highest brix level readings on a refractometer, meaning that it has a very sweet taste!”

Too bad Wal Mart leaves me with such a sour taste...

Children who are soldiers...

More than forty years ago the Reverend Martin Luther King offered this:

"One day...

Youngsters will learn words they will not understand.

Children from India will ask:
What is hunger?
Children from Alabama will ask:
What is racial segregation?
Children from Hiroshima will ask:
What is the atomic bomb?
Children at school will ask:
What is war?

You will answer them.
You will tell them:

Those words are not used any more,
Like stage coaches, galleys or slavery -

Words no longer meaningful.

That is why they have been removed from dictionaries."

Regrettably our lexicon of hurtful and evil words has not diminished over the decades. We have new words that speak of horror, terror, and death. Death comes from the muzzles of AK-47's brandished by an 11 and 12 year old boys. In Asia, Africa and South America there are by UN estimates 300,000 children who have been kidnapped at gunpoint and forced into government and rebel militias to fight and die. They will never knowing the peaceful life of a child like my grandsons. More civilians have died in Iraq under US occupation than in the brutal reign of Saddam by a 2:1 margin. Where is the outrage? Where is the action by America and the Bush Administration?

Read more if you want at Refugees International

Mormons wrote the book on torture...

Two Mormon psychologists from Spokane WA developed the techniques and wrote the manual for the unlawful torture techniques used by the CIA and DoD at 'Black Sites' in Thailand and other places. The article about these “two knuckleheads" who practice "voodoo"psychology, according to someone familiar with their craft, is found on line from a
Vannity Fair article by Katherine Eban. Brothers James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen are raking in the big bucks, driving Beemers, buying dream homes in Florida and have medals given them by the CIA. Their manual is being used at Gitmo, and they are responsible for the training of the guards at Abu Ghraib as well as additional “Black Sites” operated by the CIA.

Others involved in the interrogation business were revulsed by their crude, degrading, and inhumane techniques developed by Mitchell and Jessen. Associates referred to the two of them and their associates as the ‘Mormon Mafia’. The sad irony in all of this is that their techniques don't work and they have had no success in gathering intelligence of any value.

I am ashamed as an American and as a Mormon.

A Liberal in the best sense of the word... James E. Faust

He was also a life long Democrat because of his belief in and commitment to championing the causes of the poor and the less empowered. We shall miss his wisdom, compassion and voice of reason. Imagine also, he once served as a Utah State Legislator. His kind has not passed that way often.

Coprolite is s*#t

I saw a sign like this recently and appreciated the humor. Coprolite for the uninitiated is fossilized dinosaur poop or for that matter any poop that has been fossilized. One of my favorite things to do is to visit the local rock shop, Rock Pick Legend , at 1017 South Main Street in Salt Lake. I went by there today and bought a polished sample for a family member. I like to give dinosaur poop to my friends and family.

They have a number of fine samples of coprolite that are cut and polished. Many other local rock specimens are found there from Utah and the intermountain area as well as other places in the world. Utah has an abundance of dinosaur poop and much of it is found between Moab and Lake Powell. It can be very small in size, almost BB, and so large it would be impossible for one man to lift in its petrified state, as big as a washing machine I have been told. Analysis of the poop by paleontologists can determine if the dinosaur was carnivorous or an herbivore. I have never seen one, but I understand some samples of coprolite have bone fragments encased and fossilized within the dung. If you don’t have anything to do and you find yourself on 10th South and Main in Salt Lake stop by and check out their petrified doodoo. You will not be disappointed.

Nazis, Lord Voldemort and the Albanian Forest

Albania is a very old country. Its language is unique and unlike any other. It is an Indo European language with ancient roots but different than Greek, Serbian or Russian. Throughout its history Albania has withstood the wars and occupying armies of its neighbors, including the ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantine Greeks, Ottomans, Italian Fascists, and the Communists.

We don’t hear much about Albania in America. It is a small country and far away and has not oil to interest Bush and Cheney. Its history is an ancient one. I am not sure many areas or people can boast of such a long history with a distinct language. Archaeological research suggests that the lands that are today inhabited by Albanians were first populated in the Paleolithic Age over one hundred thousand years ago.

Some may be aware of the contested Serbian province of Kosovo under UN or NATO supervision. Albanians are the the ethnic majority but were massacred by the convicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic in the years after the collapse of the Communist government of Yugoslavia. Albania is also mentioned in the latest Harry Potter novel as Lord Voldemort, a.k.a. Tom Riddle, hid in an Albanian forest for several years prior to his return to England.

The past couple weeks we have had an Albanian young lady with us in California. She is remarkable in many ways and maintains a 3.9 GPA at the university. She taught herself to speak English by studying alone an English Book of Mormon. In addition she speaks Russian and Italian. Her Spanish is good enough to get around in any Spanish-speaking environment.

From one source I discovered that Albania is unique in another way. This pertains to the Holocaust, quote: “…it was the only European country occupied by the Nazis that ended World War II with a larger Jewish population than before the War. The Albanian response to the Holocaust is especially notable because it was Europe’s only largely Muslim country. Even so only a Jewish family of six was deported and killed during the Nazi occupation of Albania. Not only did the Albanians protect their own Jews, but they provided refuge for Jews from neighboring countries. The Albanians refused to compile and hand over lists of Jews. Instead they provided the Jewish families with fake documents and helped them disperse in the Albanian population.” They were also helped in this by the Italians who refused to cooperate with th SS.

Thanks E. for introducing a little bit of your country and culture to us. It is worth knowing something more about Albania than what appears in the latest J.K. Rowling installment of Harry Potter.

America the Beautiful?

No. 1 son posted this on his blog, Shenpa Warrior



"Sunday, July 29
"America the Beautiful (maybe some day)"
Today in church for the closing hymn we sang “America the Beautiful,” and I seriously had a hard time. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with patriotism, but it was difficult for me to feel patriotic singing words like “O beautiful, for heroes proved in liberating strife,” when we continue to invade countries that didn’t attack us first.

“Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears!” This line bothered me quite a bit too. Are we talking about America or Heaven?

Maybe the song is how America should be. It’s just hard for me to feel patriotic when there are so many problems, and I’m so much better off than Mexicans, or Africans or whoever. I think the only way we can truly be grateful to live in this prosperous country and not be arrogant is by doing our best to help others, whether they live next door or in Darfur, whether they are legal or illegal, whether they watch Fox News or the “liberal” mainstream media. We're all immigrants."

My comment:
I refused to have the BSA troop in Centerville, plant for dollars, the US flag in my yard on the high and holy days for America for this reason and others. I gave them a donation, 2X what they asked on condition they would not post any flags on my property. Our history is a bloodthirsty one. We took, stole and murdered our way across North America, bringing death, disease, and destruction wherever we went. Our history is a metaphor of the American Bison and those (the indians) who lived from them. Ours wars, other than WW I and II, have been wars of exploitation and imperialism. We stole Florida, Texas and the Southwest including CA from the Mexicans. The Spanish American War was faked up over the explosion of a Battleship Maine in Havana Bay. Viet Nam was a trumped up and escalated war by LBJ who had the DOD fake reports of NVA attacks on the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy. In Iraq, W led us all down the path, (Hillary voted for it, Obama did not), because of WMD and the Al Qa'ida connection that never existed. What we really were after is the oil in Iraq, just an extension of the land grabs of previous conflicts and imperialistic notions. Shame on us for what we have allowed America to become.