Hobbit house
I was lucky enough to stay at this really amazing Hobbit home AirBnB by Kristie Wolfe. I recently read an interesting article on the properties she has created.
Plausible Nuclear Escalation
In 1983, the movie “The Day After” was broadcast as a made for TV movie. 62% of Americans watched it. It became the highest rated television movie in history – a record it was still holding as of last check in 2009. The film postulates a fictional war between NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact countries that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.
I remember seeing that movie. I was only about 10 years old, and I remember how terrifying it was. I don’t think people born since the 90’s appreciate the fact that whole generations in the 70’s and 80’s grew up with the idea that at any time – even by accident – the whole world could be nuked to the stone age in about 90 minutes. This movie brought the reality of nuclear world war into shocking focus.
Fast forward to 2022, and we are again hearing direct threats of a nuclear war. This video, Plan A, was created by a Princeton team that simulated how easily a conventional NATO conflict could turn into a full-scale nuclear exchange.
What’s frightening is that this very scenario of a NATO-Soviet start of nuclear war was posited in 1982. Fast forward to 2020 when this video was made – long before the 2022 Ukrainian conflict. Yet, we are edging closer and closer to this very scenario today. Still, there are those who have hope for a different outcome while we make every political effort towards peace.
Fr Stu
Stu Long was a classmate of mine during seminary days at Mt Angel. His story was like the story of many of other seminarians – people that you might never have expected being calling to discern the priesthood. His story, however, was more unique than most – and his path certainly more twisty. His life has now become a movie by Mark Wahlberg.
After having seen the movie, I can say that it’s about as accurate as one could fit in 2 hours. They combined a lot of real life people into a few characters for simplicity – but I remember almost all these stories in the movie. I highly recommend going to see it. It’s the very kind of person that God often calls and you might find discerning a call to religious life.
If you’d like to read more about Fr Stu, check out these links:
Here’s a news clip on the movie from a local Helena Montana news report:
And this clip exactly matches a lot of the stories Stu had and as I remembered him
Pullman Mansion in Chicago
Chicago is a city full of amazing architecture – something you don’t see as much on the west coast with it’s more modern buildings. There are some really great Chicago architecture tours by the Chicago Architecture Center if you visit the city.
One such architectural marvel was the Pullman Mansion. The Pullman Mansion was built for George M. Pullman on Prairie Avenue and was known as the social center in Chicago for over 50 years. When the area surrounding the mansion became blighted in the 1920s, the Pullman family auctioned all the contents in 1921 and demolish the home.
At the sale, everything was sold – not just furnishings and art, but also the wall panels and decorative interiors. Everything that could be pried loose was sold.
In 1984, architect Michael Shymanski made a discovery in the basement of the old Chicago Historical Society Building that shed light on the Pullman mansion. He found a whole pile of pieces from the old Pullman home – along with the original construction plans. It turns out that the craftsman who built the home had numbered and labeled each of the pieces during fabrication (something very common for the time). It was possible to know exactly where each piece came from.
This video is one of the best put together documentaries about how the house was put together and what it looked like. Definitely worth a look if you like Chicago architecture.
Les Mystères de la Passion, de la Résurrection et de l’Ascension du Christ
For Christians, we are about to enter the mysteries of Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem, is crucified by the temple leaders, and then rises from the dead – an act which opens the gates of eternal life for humanity. There is so much going on in such a few short days, one can barely keep up with it all. It’s no wonder the different events of Holy Week have been the subject of countless masterpieces over time.
On my first trip to Paris, I did the tourist things like visiting the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa. But what’s much more interesting is that when I left the hall, I saw a painting that captivated me far more than fair Lisa. A painting by Antonio Campi called The Mystery of the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ (1569).
Click the image below to see a full-sized scan (4018×3212 px (4,9 Mb))
What is fascinating about it is that the more you look at it, you see all the events of Holy Week until the Ascension of Christ in one picture. I spent a lot of time looking at it and finding all the different parts. There is so much detail in this one giant painting! Just some of the events are:
- Meeting of the women while carrying the cross
- Jesus is stripped and his garments nailed to the cross
- Soldiers throwing lots for his garments
- Crucifixion with the 2 thieves at Gogatha
- Removal of the body from the cross by Joseph
- Wrapping in burial cloth
- Burial in the tomb
- The Harrowing of Hell
- Resurrection and frightening of Roman guards
- Apostles finding the tomb empty
- Mary encounters Jesus in the garden
- The appearance on the Road to Emmaus
- Thomas places his hand in the wounds of Christ
- Jesus meets the apostles fishing and Peter swims to shore
- Cooking of the fish together
- Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep
- Jesus’ final discourse and ascension into heaven.
- The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles
Give this little video clip a watch to see what events you can see.
Links:
Kapla plank tricks
Similar to dominos, Kapla are long thin planks you can use for building things – and set up to fall over like dominos. I was really impressed – especially the sequence right around 0:12 in which there are multiple back and forth movements using the same planks. Crazy!
Luck
“I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.”
I have found this quote to be very true. We don’t exactly make our luck, but we certainly can help or hinder it.
Running Windows 1.01 and old versions of DOS
I learned to program back on an old TRS-80 Model III computer as a kid. Long before Windows and even DOS, most home computers required you type in programs or load them from cassette tapes. If you were really rich, you might afford a floppy drive, but that was an expensive luxury I never had. My next computer was an IBM XT, and it ran the advanced and stalwart DOS 3.30 – which was dramatically better.
Running those old operating systems today requires you either buy one of those old systems and keep it running, or you have to emulate them. You can easily emulate DOS 3.3 and Windows 3.0 and higher on VMWare or Virtualbox, but going earlier than doesn’t seem to be supported anymore.
Enter 86Box – an emulator that lets you emulate REALLY old machines. In fact, I was able to get Dos 3.2 running Windows 1.0.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Part 1 – 86Box Setup
- Download 86Box and install it (source is on github).
- Download the latest romset and put it in the directory for 86Box called roms\
- Download DOS 3.2 image disks here.
- Download Windows 1.01 image disks here.
- [For later fun: download any of the other amazing images on the parent page]
- Start 86Box and set up 86Box by selecting Tools->Settings from the top menu, and set the system up with the following settings.
Part 2: DOS 3.2 and Windows 1.01 install
- Start up the 86Box.
- Set Media->Floppy 1 to disk01.img, then issue a ‘CTRL-ALT-DEL’ to reset it. The system should start up and boot to the dos 3.20 floppy drive
- Run ‘fdisk’ and it should detect your hard drive. You’ll need to create a partition to set up the hard drive.
- Reboot and boot from the DOS 3.20 disk again.
- Format the hard drive by using ‘format c: /s’
- Set Media->Floppy 1 to ‘DISK1-SETUP.IMG’ from the Windows 1.01 (5.25)
- [optional] type ‘set prompt=$p$g’ if you want to see your full path in the command prompt
- Run ‘setup’ from a: and follow the instructions to install Windows 1.01 on C:. Change the disks when prompted by selecting Media->Floppy 1 and setting it to each of the floppy disks for the Windows setup until it’s completed.
- type ‘C:’ to switch to the hard drive
- ‘cd \windows’
- ‘win’ to start windows
- Voila!
Flythrough of the Berlin Tesla gigafactory
It’s amazing how automated the process is – and how few people seem to be required to build cars.
Forever spinning
A new take on the Egg of Columbus