Friday, April 16, 2010

ISS

SOMETHING STRANGE: The International Space Station

Just a little flash animation/interactiv, but what a crazy thing to think about. The amount of time and energy/money/science/boredom/grinding hours that it took to make something so "small" is crushing. In only ten years there is a space station of reasonable size and capability. It takes ten years to build something so small and limited.

I love space. The vast unconquered and unknown black (because it's so far away) dark, above and enshrouding the crowded, busy, catalogued Earth seems so close and no one from here has ever been there before. Having boundaries and discoveries more than 1 person could ever explore in one lifetime (no matter how long that lifetime was) is an almost unbearable thought.

So instead... we make it up?

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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

WHERE IS MY HAT?

I find myself blogging again. A bit odd because I thought I had gotten over that particular bug...

4 months and it's the 13th again, but of April and not December. Wow. 4 months is only a 3rd of a year, but it's (on average) 120 days. That's a lot of days, isn't it? Not the full 365, but you're a third of the way to your next birthday if you were born January 1st...

To right is one of my favorite pieces of art depicting biblical characters. The other one's the Moses with the horns. You know which one I'm talking about. I think this piece is so satisfying because it says a lot about this particular guy. From Wikipedia's mouth:

"It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels prostrate to Adam, and they prostrate; not so Iblis; He refused to be of those who prostrate."
(Allah) said: "What prevented thee from prostrating when I commanded thee?" He said: "I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay."
Qur'an 7:11–12

>I like this interpretation (of course somewhat unorthodox):

One of the most amazing images of love that I know is in Persian – a mystical Persian representation as Satan as the most loyal lover of God. You will have heard the old legend of how, when God created the angels, he commanded them to pay worship to no one but himself; but then, creating man, he commanded them to bow in reverence to this most noble of his works, and Lucifer refused – because, we are told, of his pride. However, according to this Muslim reading of his case, it was rather because he loved and adored God so deeply and intensely that he could not bring himself to bow before anything else, and because he refused to bow down to something inferior to him (since he was made of fire, and man from clay). And it was for that that he was flung into Hell, condemned to exist there forever, apart from his love.

Almost too sad, no?

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