MoAmy+

Second Coming of the Jesus Phone

I loved my Blackberry. Really, I did. But not this much. The iPhone is just, so, you know, intuitive. I do miss copy-and-paste abilities. I sure wish the camera could do video. And then there's the prayers of please-god-give-us-flash-on-the-iPhone-so-i-can-watch-hulu of which I am not proud (and for which I do not have much hope. sigh.). Oh, and! the manager of the Apple store gave me a $50 iTunes gift card because I had so much trouble trying to upgrade. (I like to think it's because I was so nice while I was having so much trouble.) Anyway, I'm spending it on buying too many apps. [There was a whole section here on what I bought, but it got really outdated really fast so I deleted it.] The last screen just holds the apps I don't use but can't delete: Contacts (Can be accessed via the phone button. This redundancy will not stand, man!), Stocks (Riiiiiight. I spent all my money on this new phone I heard about...it has a touch screen!), and Weather (not as good as Weatherbug app). PS, @stevejobs, you can't groom a generation of customization addicts and expect us to go willingly into your little forced placement icon grid. xoxo

Do Martians have their own Santa?

The Phoenix Mars Lander seems to have landed near the north pole of Mars just before 8:00. Hoping later tonight there might be some photos--photos of part of God's creation we've never seen before. More info at NASA.gov and CNN.

[update: photos now available!]

Here's an interesting map of Mars' north pole (read about these maps in my earlier post).

@NASA: you could use a few more ladies in the Jet Propulsion Lab. Call me.

Considering the work

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars
you have set in their courses,
What is man
that you should be mindful of him?
-Psalm 8

PS, That's a photo from a Messier Marathon.

PS2, Wonder what the presidential candidates have to say about funding space programs? Here's what CNN, NPR and Popular Mechanics have to say about what they have to say.

And the darkness did not overcome it

The earth's airglow, as seen from the Space Shuttle Columbia, which was destroyed upon re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003.

wordie.org

Matter of fact, it ' s all dark.

Maps are cool, right? Then astrogeological maps are even better. Wired wrote about these in November. If you're willing to go through the not-very-user-friendly-but-
worth-sticking-it-out USGS Astrogeology Research site, you will find more maps of the moon, mars, venus, and mercury. They download as pdfs.

This one's from the dark side of the moon.


Here are some of the maps as jpegs:
Mercury 1 | Mercury 2 | Moon 1 | Moon 2 | Moon 3 | Moon 4 | Moon 5

Queen of Heaven

I keep thinking about this photograph of the moon at the south pole, which made me think of this Durer print, which made me think of the Madonna chapel at St. Sulpice.

Be still my heart.

Billy Collins on the moon

Riding the lunar eclipse made me want to paint or write poems or produce some other form of proclamation thanking god for the extraordinary creation in which we live. Since this is as close I get to that when not preaching, I turned to Billy Collins:

Moon
Invention
Man in the Moon

and from his haiku chapbook She Was Just Seventeen:
Moon in the window—
the same as it was before
there was a window.

Lunar Eclipse

Tonight I led a Lenten talk at St. Paul's Henderson about our work with Hannah Ministries in our companion diocese in Byumba, Rwanda. Everyone was apologetic that I had to drive back to Louisville so late by myself. I, however, knew that I'd be driving right into tonight's lunar eclipse, so I couldn't wait for the trip home. Isn't the moon beautiful? We take it for granted now, I think, but can you imagine life without it?