Regular visitors here will know that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins frequently intrudes into my thoughts.
Articles with 2006
Photo by Samuel PASTEUR-FOSSE on Unsplash
Wernher von Braun (center) with other Nazis at Peenemünde • Deutsches Bundesarchiv (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
Where the rockets come down
In July, 1943, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun traveled to Hitler’s military headquarters in East Prussia to brief his Führer on the A4 Wunderwaffe, or wonder weapon.
A portion of the Ultra Deep Field • NASA/ESA (Public Domain)
Billions and billions and billions…
14 billion is the age of the universe in years.
Stonehill College campus • Photo by Jennifer Macaulay (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Mission
This week’s Musing is not addressed to the usual visitors to this site, but to friends and colleagues who are concerned about the mission and identity of Catholic institutions of higher education.
V838 Monocerotis • NASA/STScI
The here and now
I had occasion the other day to take down from the shelf of the college library a tattered copy of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. I found there the inconspicuous marks I made in the margins 40 years ago (and failed to erase), when I first read the book.
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
They don’t know neither do I so there you are
In his 1977 book The First Three Minutes, big-bang physicist Steven Weinberg famously concluded: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
The Ultimate X
Spry little x, with its feet planted firmly on the ground and its arms uplifted in surprise, is our emissary to the unknown.
Walden Pond • Photo by Pablo Sanchez Martin (CC BY 2.0)
The little green book
In 1992, Shambhala Publications issued an abridged edition of Thoreau’s Walden in their Pocket Classics series.
Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash
Through a glass darkly
Pascal’s Pensées is a grab bag of platitudes, nonsense and substance, a disorganized sketch of the book Pascal might have written had he lived long enough.
Photo by Erik Karits on Unsplash
Knowledge and love
Foraging Saharan desert ants roam hither and yon from the nest looking for food. When they find a source, they head straight back to the nest along a beeline, in an environment devoid of landmarks.