Category: Uncategorized Page 15 of 71

They just fade away into a museum. In the case of the soon to end space shuttle program, museums are apparently jumping over themselves trying to, shall we say, ‘land’ the prize.

This was sent to me by a friend; not sure where to find it on line.

My vote is for the museum at the Wright-Patterson AF base near Dayton, Ohio. I have fond memories of that place.

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Shuttle Diplomacy: Museums Launch Bids for Retiring Space Planes
NASA Offers Orbiters Free, With One Catch: $29 Million in Shipping Costs

By DANIEL MICHAELS

WASHINGTON—The space shuttle fleet’s looming retirement ends an era—and launches a new space race. This one is on the ground, among museums scrambling to land one of the three orbiters.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says it has received expressions of interest from 21 institutions. The competition has sparked intensive lobbying campaigns, massive fund-raising drives and a sprint for letters of support from astronauts, politicians and the public.

Because NASA has agreed to give the shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian, one of the museums not selected for the newly retired shuttles will get the Enterprise, a shuttle prototype and a museum centerpiece.

NASA is offering the space planes free to qualified institutions as long as they pay for shipping and handling. The catch: those costs add up to $28.8 million per shuttle, including post-flight repairs and strapping the orbiters to a special 747 jumbo jet. The shuttles also must be displayed indoors, which for most museums means building a giant new structure.

“Everybody would love to have one, but very, very few museums can afford to transport and store one,” says Jay Miller, an aviation historian in Fort Worth, Texas.

Aviation museums haven’t scrambled like this since the Concorde retired in 2003. Then, operators Air France and British Airways received dozens of requests to host the supersonic jetliners. But that decision was simpler because there were 13 Concordes, and the airlines were free to choose the planes’ homes.

The current competition, says shuttle expert Dennis Jenkins, “is going to be stupider than Concorde was because the government is involved.” Mr. Jenkins, an aerospace engineer who wrote an exhaustive history of the shuttle program, predicts that after NASA officials decide, “Congress will immediately go into an uproar and un-decide for them.”

Legislators are already weighing in. New York Senator Charles Schumer in March addressed the Senate to stump for Manhattan’s Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, which proposed building a new structure next to the aircraft carrier Intrepid to house a shuttle. “It’s time to convince NASA that the Big Apple has the right stuff to showcase one of these iconic spacecraft,” he enthused.

Ohio’s entire congressional delegation in April wrote NASA to push for the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton. Florida Senator Bill Nelson—a former astronaut—has been working on behalf of the Kennedy Space Center.

The shuttles’ exact retirement date remains unclear, and politicians are bickering over what will succeed it. But NASA’s choice of retirement homes could come as soon as this fall, say people familiar with the deliberation.

To get a shuttle, museums must first be able to receive it. That requires a nearby runway where a jumbo jet can land. The shuttle must then be able to move from the tarmac to the museum without dismantling, which eliminates most locations.

France’s Cité de l’Espace outside Toulouse, which boasts the only remaining Soviet-built Mir space station, mulled asking for a shuttle several years ago. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Toulouse Airport posed no problem, says spokesman Olivier Sanguy. But driving the spacecraft eight miles would entail destroying and rebuilding highways, bridges, buildings and power lines. “The cost of travel from the airport would be more than the cost of the shuttle,” says Mr. Sanguy. He notes the issue is moot because NASA says shuttles will stay inside the U.S., with geographic distribution a key criterion.

Competitors must also be able to keep the space planes in climate-controlled conditions and away from the elements. Shuttles were designed to withstand extraordinary things like the near-vacuum of space, micrometeor showers and the furnace of re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere. Rain, on the other hand, is a problem. “They leak like a sieve,” says Mr. Jenkins.

The only museum currently ready for an orbiter is the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Its Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, abutting Dulles International Airport, already houses Enterprise, a full-size prototype shuttle that NASA used to test the reusable space plane’s aerodynamics in the 1970s. But most of its insides were cannibalized over the years—and it never went into space.

“It’s not a real shuttle, but it’s unique,” said museum spokesman Frank McNally as he drove a golf cart beneath it on a recent afternoon. “It’s the only one you can see.”

NASA has said it will give the oldest surviving shuttle, Discovery, to the Smithsonian, which is the national repository of space history. NASA will select homes for the other shuttles, Atlantis and Endeavour. Two additional shuttles, Challenger and Columbia, were destroyed in fatal accidents. The Smithsonian will then offer Enterprise to a loser. “We realize we can’t be selfish and keep both,” says Smithsonian shuttle curator Valerie Neal.

Boosters of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton say they’ve got a strong case for Atlantis, which handled many missions for the Defense Department. The Pentagon helped design the shuttles, supplied many astronauts, and the Air Force even “saved the shuttle program in lean budget years during its development,” says museum spokesman Rob Bardua.

Seattle’s Museum of Flight has an edge thanks to its West Coast location, say handicappers. The museum also has close links to Boeing Co., which bought part of the company that built the shuttles in California, Rockwell International. The museum’s campaign is being led by former astronaut Bonnie Dunbar.

New Yorkers say Intrepid is ideal to fulfill NASA’s goal of giving shuttles maximum exposure, thanks to the city’s status as a tourist mecca and media capital. Intrepid, a decommissioned aircraft carrier, also has space history because it retrieved early astronauts on splashdown, says Executive Director Susan Marenoff. “It’s a no-brainer,” she says.

Bill Moore, chief operating officer of the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex, argues that his engineers can design the coolest exhibit. After all, each of the 132 shuttle missions lifted off from the center. “A shuttle’s not something that should be displayed on three wheels on concrete,” he says, suggesting the center would show its shuttle as it operates in space.

Ms. Neal at the Smithsonian says a key issue will be keeping the shuttles as intact as possible “for reference 100 years from now.” She has asked NASA to keep Discovery’s toilets and galleys installed, even though they won’t be visible to the public.

“Who knows,” muses Ms. Neal. “Maybe one day we’ll have some extraterrestrials come here to look at our space history.”

I lived for nearly 25 years in Manatee County, Florida which has, as it’s mascot, Snooty, the longest living (in captivity) West Indian Manatee.

I admit that Snooty is not the best looking guy in the animal kingdom, but I never really considered him repulsive. But now I find out that his cousin, the West African Manatee, whose looks are not all that distinguishable, is famous for being overlooked. This article in the NY Times on ugly animals says this:

Assessing the publication database for the years 1994 through 2008, the researchers found 1,855 papers about chimpanzees, 1,241 on leopards and 562 about lions — but only 14 for that mammalian equivalent of the blobfish, the African manatee.

“The manatee was the least studied large mammal,” Ms. Trimble said. Speculating on a possible reason for the disparity, she said, “Most scientists are in it for the love of what they do, and a lot of them are interested in big, furry cute things.”

Helpful to me in understanding the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is an image I first heard articulated by John Calvin in which he says in effect that as we take bread and wine into our bodies, the believer in that act is through the mouth of faith taking Jesus to himself. As the bread and wine represent the common food of everyday life which feeds and nourishes our bodies, so taking Christ to ourselves by faith not only represents a radical break from all other devotions, it is the way that we genuinely find strength for our faith and trust in him.

Expressing that much better than I are two Anglican sources I encountered this morning. The first is from the Anglican preacher John Stott and the second, quoted in a commentary by Anglican scholar F. F. Bruce, comes from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Christians anticipating communion this coming Sunday could do well to reflect on these things.

“Just as it was not enough for the bread to be broken and the wine to be poured out, but they had to eat and drink, so it was not enough for him to die, but they had to appropriate the benefits of his death personally. The eating and drinking were, and still are, a vivid acted parable of receiving Christ as our crucified Savior and of feeding on him in our hearts by faith.” (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, pages 72-73)

“Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your heart by faith with thanksgiving.” (Anglican Book of Common Prayer)

Prolific Mike at The Frailest Thing (for whom there is no uninteresting subject) recently pondered the rise of the ellipsis.

I thought of that as I watched this captivating and strangely thought provoking reflection on language.

Nothing frustrates me more than smart people buying and forwarding internet rumors. Snopes.com should be the place we all run to find out if indeed we’ve been left $10,000,000 in Nigeria or if really atheists are getting the FCC to ban all religious broadcasting. (Would that be a bad thing?)

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but this interview with Snopes’ founder is a fascinating insight to human nature, the power of the internet, and why we believe what we believe.

Plus it’s just plain interesting. This is just a husband and wife in their house? Yep. And someone who is gracious when he could be caustic.

His observations are worth pondering:

“…for a good many people, it’s not important whether things are true or not. It reflects what people want to believe. It reflects a worldview….

“A lot of people are unwilling to acknowledge anything that contradicts their worldview. So telling them that it’s false doesn’t necessarily slow them down.”

I still believe that some woman tried to dry her poodle in the microwave.

…in the way he should go;…”

“…even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)

This IS what Solomon had in mind, right?

“Domitian’s claim to ultimate power and his rigid law enforcement produced the same unhappiness that plagued China when rewards were given for reporting on the misdeeds of others, and vexed Aparta when each man was the enforcer of his brother’s morals. The atmospere in Rome grew so oppressive that Tacitus expressed gratitude that his much-loved and missed father Agricola had died before Domitian’s reign: ‘Domitian no longer left interval or breathing space…. Under Domitian more than half our wretchedness consisted in watching and being watched, while our very sighs were scored against us.'” (Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World, page 739)

There are those in history who, in frustration at the disarray and messiness of human society, conclude that the solution to such disarray is law. Whether a family or an empire law is imposed as the holy grail of order. The more law, it is assumed, addressing more of life, the greater the happiness.

Some Christian thinkers latching onto this propose that the law which should receive such broad imposition is ‘Biblical Law’. Sophisticated proponents of this view nuance that this cannot work without a broad spread of spiritual renewal. These propose that a great spread of Christian faith will allow for a righteous imposition of biblical law, resulting in the greatest glory to God in a universally righteous earthly kingdom. They do not advocate, strictly speaking, the imposition of such law when Christians are the minority. But they do long for a time when a society predominantly converted, will structure itself best around God’s law.

This is sophisticated, careful, and frightening to the core. They do not question the premise that law is the solution to social disarray, nor do they properly estimate the remaining corruption of the redeemed heart left to wield that law.

The quote above speaks of an experience in the Roman empire when legal restrictions multiplied into moral application, where every sin became a crime. We ourselves have come to understand the resulting oppression of certain muslim regimes based upon religious law governing every sphere of behavior.

But these are examples of law in the hands of converted men. True. But I’ve been a Christian long enough, serving as a pastor nearly half my life, to know that redemption does not cure all the ills of the corrupt human heart. Christians are as capable of oppression and misapplication of law as the next guy. And we pastors are often the most culpable.

Law does not tame the human heart, Biblical or otherwise. We ought not dream of a society which is someday ruled by law. It should scare us when the enforcement of morals falls into the hands of powerful people. We should never fall into the illusion, no matter how skillfully presented, or how seemingly ‘rooted’ in ‘Biblical’ notions, that the solution to social disarray is the enforcement of law (which is normally law which we find pleasing enforced upon those who seem to so easily disregard it).

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even when it is in the hands of Christians. Especially when those Christians are drunk on the idea that the power they wield is the power of King Jesus.

The title of this post should send a shiver down the spines of all honest parents. It does for some, but not for all.

A good biblical theology tells us that there are no good children, only sinful ones. But somehow, somehow, by some miracle of theological pretension, many conclude that by the application of the proper parenting techniques, Biblical parenting techniques, we are told, these no good, sinful children, will emerge as lovely specimens of godliness, gems of their parent’s faithfulness.

Which leaves parents who are as faithful as they know how whose little Johnny or Janey grows up not nice with only one possible conclusion: we were bad parents. And so, they are back to the slogan in the title, with the added guilt and shame attached to the fact that their parenting just must not have been ‘biblical’. So, the Christian version is something like this: “There are no good children, only sinful parents.”

No, we modify it still: “There are no good children, only parents who fail miserably to be the kind of parents that God would have them be.” Try living with that self-assessment for a day or two. That is what the logic of ‘Biblical technique = godly children’ leaves us with.

Call me negative if you will, but though it is clear that there are some parents who do a better job than others (I in no way want to suggest that we ought not try to be the best parents we can) yet I am convinced that each of us inject just enough parental screwiness into our parenting that the ONLY way ANY of them come out the other end as remotely godly, well adjusted kids is the grace of God.

My book on parenting, due out in, oh, well, maybe I should write it first, will be titled something like this: “Eight Ways to Totally Screw up Your Kids and How God’s Grace Can Fix the Mess“.

I clearly DON’T have parenting figured out.

I find that THERE IS ENCOURAGEMENT then, in an unlikely source, for those of us who do our best as parents and can’t therefore figure out why our children subsequently make bad choices. A psychiatrist in the NY Times pondering why bad children happen to good parents, makes this startling judgment:

Not everyone is going to turn out to be brilliant — any more than everyone will turn out nice and loving. And that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behavior, have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.

Don’t we call that ‘hard-wired’ reality sin? Yes, I think that’s it.

The article is called “Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds“. Read it. Especially if you are feeling guilty.

I find the article interesting because so many of the presuppositions of the Perfect Biblical Parenting schools, and there are many out there, are the same presuppositions of the secular Baby Einstein schools. It’s called behaviorism.

Both schools not only overlook the sin that can lead to a rebellious child, but as well both fail to credit the grace that alone produces the stellar child.

Barb and I have been richly blessed by that grace. God has had to spend extra amounts to overcome our stumblings. But I think there is still enough to go around!

This, if true, explains a lot, about me, and about those to whom we speak (in reference to John 5:43-44):

“If a man is not thoroughly honest in his professed desire to find out the truth in religion, – if he secretly cherishes any idol which he is resolved not to give up, – if he privately cares for anything more than God’s praise, – he will go on to the end of his days doubting, perplexed, dissatisfied, and restless, and will never find the way to peace. His insincerity of heart is an insuperable barrier in the way of his believing.”

(J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, quoted by Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, page 334)

Problematic teachings often march under the banner of the Bible. Jesus gets blamed, therefore, for a lot of stuff that is not his doing.

With gentleness and grace, and yet intellectual and theological rigor, Tulip Girl and friends alerts us to one such set of teachings in which the Bible is invoked:

Ezzo Week 2010

I appreciate the care with which this is handled, and I have been convinced of the necessity of the alert.

If you or any you know are considering or using the method of child-rearing taught by Gary Ezzo, I highly encourage you to visit Tulip Girl’s site and to ponder her material.