Though the title of this post might imply that I may place a value on schooling that is not in alignment with some of my peers, I can assure you that is not my mindset. One of the things that I've grown to appreciate that has come as a result of my walking is that I've developed a curiosity about the things I observe more than I have in the past.
That curiosity leads me to research, and thanks to the wonders of technology, that research brings the equivalent of a great many volumes of information and data to my house with the stroke of a key or the click of a mouse. Good old Johannes Gutenberg, the innovator who combined movable type, oil based inks, a wooden press, and adjustable moulds leading to the modern era of a knowledged based economy would be marveled to the point of declaring the internet pur sorcery. He even has an entire website containing a body of knowledge that rivaled the best libraries through the ages leading up to his contemporaneous time. It's called The Gutenberg Project, and I recommend that you peruse one or two of the over 50,000 eBooks that it offers to users for free. We live in magnificent times.
I snapped this photo today with my cellular phone of the Moon and Venus or "The Morning Star" rising just above the eastern horizon. Forgetting for just a moment how spectacular it is to capture this high quality image on something that has a lens a little smaller in diameter than a small marble and the processing power fits in a palm sized computer that has more calculation power than the computers that accompanied the Apollo missions to land on the moon, snapping this photo led me to wonder just why exactly Venus is called the morning star. It turns out that there are a number of explanations, but the one I like is the theory that the planet was regarded by South and Central American cultures as the bringer of light, and they had a whole section of their calendar dedicated to the appearance of the planet in the morning or evening sky.
I really enjoyed the journey, from the jungles of the Amazonia basin to the cold vacuum of space, that my walking today took me along. More tomorrow if I'm lucky.
That curiosity leads me to research, and thanks to the wonders of technology, that research brings the equivalent of a great many volumes of information and data to my house with the stroke of a key or the click of a mouse. Good old Johannes Gutenberg, the innovator who combined movable type, oil based inks, a wooden press, and adjustable moulds leading to the modern era of a knowledged based economy would be marveled to the point of declaring the internet pur sorcery. He even has an entire website containing a body of knowledge that rivaled the best libraries through the ages leading up to his contemporaneous time. It's called The Gutenberg Project, and I recommend that you peruse one or two of the over 50,000 eBooks that it offers to users for free. We live in magnificent times.
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| The Moon and "Morning Star" |
I snapped this photo today with my cellular phone of the Moon and Venus or "The Morning Star" rising just above the eastern horizon. Forgetting for just a moment how spectacular it is to capture this high quality image on something that has a lens a little smaller in diameter than a small marble and the processing power fits in a palm sized computer that has more calculation power than the computers that accompanied the Apollo missions to land on the moon, snapping this photo led me to wonder just why exactly Venus is called the morning star. It turns out that there are a number of explanations, but the one I like is the theory that the planet was regarded by South and Central American cultures as the bringer of light, and they had a whole section of their calendar dedicated to the appearance of the planet in the morning or evening sky.
Thus, the term morning or evening star can be used to describe venus. It's also interesting that they considered the 20 day cycle of Venus to equate to the cycle of life.
I hope to live long enough to see the generations that follow me return to spaceflight that gets a bit farther out into the universe than the more recent low earth orbit missions that have defined my childhood. That would mean that my generation served some role as the bridge keepers to the entrance into one of the finest epochs of man.
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| Severn River Bridge at Night (That's why it's so dark) |
I really enjoyed the journey, from the jungles of the Amazonia basin to the cold vacuum of space, that my walking today took me along. More tomorrow if I'm lucky.
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