personal
I can until I can’t
I just came back from a work-related trip to Belfast and Paris. I learned these things:
I hate being away from my family.
I don’t adjust quickly to timezone changes.
I don’t adjust quickly to timezone changes.
For that, I’m not a bad traveler.
I approach the world with humility
And a sense of humor.
And a sense of humor.
And I truly enjoy myself
As long as I make time for lone walks,
Share meals with other people,
And the destination itself offers wonders.
Share meals with other people,
And the destination itself offers wonders.
I function okay on lack of sleep – until I can’t
And then I lose things like my camera.
And then I lose things like my camera.
This photo of Galeries Lafayette, Paris is like one I took on my lost Nikon P5100
Short link: http://jkat.me/g4fN3l
What difference does it make?
Over a year ago, my daughter were walking down a Chelsea sidewalk.
A homeless man walking in front of us froze so suddenly we stopped in our tracks.
He glared at an advertisement showing a human cadaver casually posed it’s skin removed to expose, muscles, tendons, veins, arteries and nerves. Vital organs extending out from its half rib cage.
“not right…”
The man turned to the people flowing past him. “They shouldn’t do that!”
Bodies’ Exhibitors Admit Corpse Origins Are Murky:
“After more than two years of assurances that the cadavers on display in a popular South Street Seaport exhibit were legally obtained in China, the company that runs the exhibit admitted on Thursday that it could not prove that the bodies were not those of prisoners who might have been tortured or executed.” — May 2008 NY Times
In a settlement with the State of New York, the exhibitor has promised refunds to anyone who has seen the exhibit and have changed their policies around acquiring new bodies.
The article quotes a man visiting the exhibit, “When you’re dead, you’re dead. What difference does it make?”
Short link: http://jkat.me/iTW5WZ
The channeled scablands
By 1920, earth scientists had come to embrace a theory of Uniformitarianism, a world shaped by slow, inexorable forces observable in the present day.
Uniformitarianism fit the evidence of the time and served to separate Geology from Bible scholarship. Glaciers and plate tectonics not God’s miraculous, scourging hand.
The channeled scablands in Eastern Washington State are hard-rock canyons cut by non-existent rivers, alkaline lakes, and house sized boulders scattered on flat plains.
Based on evidence gathered from this terrain, Geologist J. Harlen Bretz came to believe the channeled scablands were, in fact, formed by a catastrophic flood.
The scientific establishment refused Bretz’s claim. Still, over decades, he continued to teach. He continued to champion his work.
Within his lifetime, Bretz’s theory gained wide support based on corroborating evidence of a 2,000 foot deep prehistoric lake over what is now Missoula, Montana and research into ice dams and hydrodynamics.
The channeled scablands were carved out by massive, rapid floods. 500 cubic miles of water traveling 30 to 50 miles an hour draining a lake half the size of Lake Michigan in days.
Recent evidence bridges uniformitarian and catastrophist world views. The scabland floods cycled over thousands of years. Glacial movement would re-establish the ice dam, a new lake would form, water would reach critical height, the dam would shatter.
The origin story of a landscape I’ve loved since childhood from father-son fishing trips, solitary hikes, college road trips and vacations with my wife and daughter, is awe inspiring.
The path to understanding that origin story is both hopeful and cautionary. Science lived up to its ideals though it took the passing of a generation of scientists to get there.
Once an idea hardens into a belief, a belief that supports a deeply held world view, even people dedicated to reasoned debate have trouble hearing evidence to the contrary.
Natural and human events prove unsettlingly complicated. In response, we humans can turn even our most enlightening ideas into weapons of ignorance.
Short link: http://jkat.me/k2dfvV
