tgos

A Pocket Pet's Lesson

By John Taylor; 2008 May 07, 10 Jamal, 165 BE

 

More Fuller

Airships

Baha'i Blog Mentions

Mini-Film Reviews

 

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More Fuller

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 Our recent attention to Buckminster Fuller pricked up the Google Alerted ears of a fan of the great visionary, C. J. Fearnley, who writes,

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 I saw your blogging on Buckminster Fuller:

 http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/p24-fuller.html

 I too have been inspired by Fuller.  I particularly like Fuller's concept of God. So I wrote an assay about it: http://www.cjfearnley.com/god.html

 Maybe you have already talked about that kind of a proof of God?

 Do Enjoy!

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 At the cited site Mr. Fearnley mentions some of Fuller's oracular sayings and sums them all up, saying,

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 "With this background I now present my current working definition of God. God is the loving, superhuman, non-anthropomorphic, intellectual integrity operative in Universe. Loving refers to the inter-attractive and inter-accommodative nature of God's integrity. Superhuman means beyond any one human's capabilities. Non-anthropomorphic means not having human form or qualities. Intellectual refers to the faculty of perceiving experiences and the relationships among them (such as the facts of life). Integrity refers to the unity of the mutually inter-accommodative components in a system. Operative means participating in the operation of a system."

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 Insofar as I understand this, I agree that Fuller intuited the fact that integrity is a proof of God. Thinking back on my transition from atheist to believer at around 17 years of age, it was probably Fuller's ideas about integrity that prepared me for the Baha'i concepts of Oneness of God and unity of humankind. A construction -- like the geodesic dome -- that hangs together in a strong, integrative way is like a truthful person who holds to the truth, and how the universe to its own singular, unitary laws. Fuller was a freethinker who intuited God from his own reflections, and I thank God that his understanding bridged me into the Baha'i Faith.

 

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Intercontinental Express Airships

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I pay close attention to the British environmentalist George Monbiot, whose blog's motto is:

 "Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it."

 This motto is an indication of how polarized the issues of environmentalism are. I guess you have to expect truculence when the rich few stand to lose money every time anything is done to save nature. Monbiot's latest (May 6th) blog entry is:

 "Travelling Light; Is the airship a viable alternative to jet travel?"

 <http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/05/06/travelling-light/>

 As always he gives an excellent summary of the factors involved in reviving the older, unfairly discredited technology of the airship. He points out that this is a very environmentally friendly way to get people around, far easier on the atmosphere than jet airliners, which spew out greenhouse gas and other forms of pollution into the most sensitive parts of the troposphere at a frightening rate. An airship is slower but far greener.

 I remember fantasizing constantly as a child and adolescent about the wondrous possibilities of airships and zeppelins. As I walked to school and sat on school buses I would improve their design in my mind. I made sketches, ever thinking of ways to remove the defects that had kept the zeppelin out of production all these decades.

 First of all, it seemed to my fervid imagination that an airship need not be as slow as Monbiot makes out. My master plan was to make blimps and airships much longer in shape, more like a javelin than a cigar. Then air resistance is minimized. Floating them very high in the atmosphere would reduce air resistance even further. With solar panels along the top surface they would be self-sustaining in energy, so fuel would not be a problem.

 I imagined at least part of the propulsion of my improved airships coming from tiny pinholes in the skin, intake in the front and out-going vents in the rear. The size of the airships would be huge, using economies of scale to reduce their price per kilometer.

 The main danger to airships are takeoffs and landings, where they are buffeted by capricious winds. My super airships would solve that problem by rarely if ever coming down to the surface. They would fly at a very high speed around the world, never stopping. They would constantly be serviced by propeller planes and smaller blimps shuttling passengers and freight up and down from the land. Their flight paths would follow the continents in great circles over the poles, which would mean they rarely would make a sharp turn. The javelin-shaped machines would take over the work presently done by jet airplanes, which I was instinctively suspicious of. It was Monbiot who made me aware of what terrible producers of greenhouse gas the fossil-fueled jet engine is. Now more than ever there is a need for intercontinental express airships.

 

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Baha'i Blog Mentions

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Today there were a couple of interesting mentions of the Baha'i Faith in the blogosphere.

On a personal blog that appears mainly concerned with the American political scene called: "So Soon No More; Alternate History, factual takes on world politics, and whatever else interests me," appears the following entry for Tuesday, May 6, "The Baha'i faith, an anecdote."

<http://sosoonnomore.blogspot.com/2008/05/baha-faith-anecdote.html>

A friend of the writer has become a Baha'i and he muses on how her conversion has changed her thinking. On the whole it is a positive reaction, and it is a relief to see the Faith having such a direct, transforming effect in the world.

Another blogger mentions the marriage of Hand of the Cause Louis Gregory to Louisa Matthews, a match made by Abdu'l-Baha Himself.

Elemental Change Blog: "Love in the Age of [Overt] Racism"

<http://elementalchange.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/love-in-the-age-of-overt-racism/>

In the conventional press, on April 19th an opinion piece on the persecutions of the Baha'is in Iran appeared in Canada's right wing paper, The National Post, by a Baha'i professor by the name of Payam Akhavan,

"The greatest threat to Iran's Islamic hardliners: The democratic aspirations of the Iranian people."

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/04/19/payam-akhavan-on-the-greatest-threat-to-iran-s-islamic-hardliners-the-democratic-aspirations-of-the-iranian-people.aspx

Akhavan strays fearlessly onto ground that might be construed as political here. I cannot help but wonder whether this article was his own initiative, and whether he remains a Baha'i in good standing. He seems strangely unconcerned that openly talking against this regime might get fellow believers killed. Maybe one of my readers can give more details on this.

 The kids find the following "Global Wombat Cartoon" amusing. An amusingly hectoring message about world-around thinking,

<http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml>

I was interested to learn lately that wombats make structures that can be seen from space.

 

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Mini-Film Reviews

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I ordered over the internet a DVD biopic of Jan Comenius, the great Czech and Christian hero. The kids and I watched it the other day and I will review it in detail in an upcoming Badi' Blog entry.

At Silvie's request, Peter loaned us his DVD copy of the Canadian film, "Eve and the Fire Horse." Although this is not a kid's film, it is an adult drama involving kids as central characters, I was surprised that both Silvie and Thomas enjoyed this film a second time. It is a coming of age story of a pair of ethnic Chinese sisters in Vancouver. It demonstrates how religions can conflict, as one sister becomes a Christian and the mother renews her ties to Buddhism, while the father, a traditional Chinese believer in luck, is torn in the middle. The fractious role a Catholic nun plays in the story gives a demonstration of how exclusivist religion tears minds and families apart. Fortunately, we have been reading the Book of Matthew and the kids can refer to the actual teaching of Christ. In one scene one of the little girls imagines a potbellied Jesus and a thinner-than-usual Buddha dancing a slow dance together. The nun maintains that such a friendship could not be. The kids asked me about that a couple of times, and it gave a good chance to talk about progressive revelation.

 

"Dr. Doolittle III; Tail to the Chief"

 

This looked to be a stinker, what with Eddie Murphy gone, but Tomaso wanted to see it and I found it surprisingly not-terrible. I definitely did not puke. What happened, I suspect, is that the money they would have used to pay Murphy they used to hire some hotshot writers. I cannot object to that strategy.

I especially liked the sub-plot of a gossiping chinchilla who comes to a realization that the reason she had indulged in the greatest Baha'i sin is that she wanted always to be the center of attention. Looking back, I noticed that the gossips in my life did indeed latch on to this surefire attention-grabber in order to keep an exclusive hold on the tiller of the conversation. As a Baha'i of thirty five years, I find it humiliating to learn such a profound and important new lesson about gossip from a mere pocket pet.