Signs and Wonders

Quite a celestial day, Wednesday, wasn't it?


First, in the morning, the Space Shuttle Atlantis kisses the International Space Station goodbye and glides to gentle landing in Florida. Then, there is an eclipse of the Moon visible from the kingdom of Connecticut (as photographed, by Wild Bill, and posted at the right.) Then, as the delicious maraschino adorning this collection of events, the US Navy blows up a demented, earthbound satellite, somewhere over the pacific.



Just another day in the Life of these United States? Or something more sinister? We distort, you decide.

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While I was reading on the 8:39 express this morning, Mathematics for the Non-Mathematician, by Morris Kline, expecting to take a holiday from politics, and history, I came across the following passage, and I was flabbergasted:


Fears, dread, and superstitions have been eliminated, at least in our Western civilization, by just those intellectually curious people who have studied nature's mighty displays. Those "seemingly unprofitable amusements of speculative brains" have freed us from serfdom, given us undreamed of powers, and, in fact, have replaced negative doctrines by positive mathematical laws which reveal a remarkable order and uniformity in nature. Man has emerged as the proud possessor of knowledge which has enabled him to view nature calmly and objectively. An eclipse of the sun occurring on schedule is no longer an occassion for trembling but for quiet satisfaction that we know nature's ways.We breathe freely knowing that nature will not be willful or capricious.


Professor Kline taught at NYU in the late 1960s. What professor today would dare to write a textbook so brimming with confidence or pride in the technical and spiritual accomplishments of Western Civilization? Even a math book?

Where Angels Fear to Tread

While it was not my intention to appear as a complete fool, at least publicly, I have a feeling that the premature publication of "Canto I" may have created that impression. However correct your estimate of my idiocy may be, I wish to apologize to Homer--and to Humanity--for that poem.

After 20 years of writing, I really should know better than to run off like a maniac and publish early. I spent the weekend recosidering my version of Ulysses and re-reading the Odyssey (Fagles translation). I have no idea what I was thinking. A classic case of hubris. Oh, well...

There may be a few salvagable lines of text. I am going to put the whole thing into a drawer somewhere and forget about it for a few weeks, while I finish reading the Odyssey and begin working my way through my new math book. There is nothing like a little trigonometry to settle a jangled set of nerves.

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On a happier note, the crew of Atlantis has arrived safely back on earth, after a 12 day mission at the International Space Station. Thank Heaven for answered prayers.

Naturally, I missed it....

Here I am all ready to watch Atlantis lift off LIVE (something I haven't done since I watched John Young and Bob Crippen on the first Space Shuttle flight, when I was 13, in 1981) and I wind up photocopying a recent decision from the Appellate Division 1st Department from the New York Law Journal, when the whole spectacular thing happens.

I will have to catch STS-122 on NASA TV when I get home after the gym tonight. It is never as exciting, though, to watch a shuttle launch after the fact. It is a bit like watching a recorded football game. Interesting, yes, but somehow slightly lacking in goosepimples.

I am thinking I might need to get one of these to keep an eye on the comings and going of Mankind in the evenings. I have noticed that there is a whole universe visible above the orange city lights of Stamford, Connecticut. Who'd have thought that such a thing was possible in New England?

I know I never did. That is, until I got out of the car one night and idly looked down at the light on the ground. And then I looked up. (Click below.)

Gentlemen, start your engines...

Book done, back from Houston, and all caught up on work, I find myself able to blog again, and to breathe.


Houston was wonderful. Warm, huge, and friendly. Apart from the cabbies, who had no idea where they were going most of the time, and when presented with a Mapquest map (by the friendly folks at the Hotel ZaZa) were not quite able to read it sufficiently to travel even a few short blocks.


I was only in the city two days, so my chance to sample the city's culture was limited mostly to migas and visits to two excellent musuems--the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Menil Collection--and an afternoon at the Johnson Space Center--which brought back all sorts of starry-eyed memories from childhood, when I was scheduled to be an astronaut. Perhaps, if I had stuck with astrophysics in college I would be busy up there, right now.

No life is without regrets. And none lacks its consolations. If I were orbiting the Earth, for instance, I might never have bumped into you.

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Even so, as we stare at the stars tonight, whatever our choices, or beliefs, let us remember the folks on STS-122, as they begin a new voyage tomorrow.



Safe journey.