Saturday, January 01, 2011

First post on the first day of a prime year...

So, what do I want to write? Something about God? Or computers, or molecular biology, or astronomy, or the elements? Or Chesterton, or Jaki, or Duhem? Or on the design of our new university? Or an awesome fictional story?

Or all of the above?

Please God I will get to all these sometime this year.

All right, just a few tiny bits to hint at the direction of things:

"That their hearts may be comforted, being instructed in charity and unto all riches of fulness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Christ Jesus: In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."
[St Paul to the Colossians 2:2-3]

"You are the Portal to life immortal - pray for us, o pray for us, o Mary."
[from the English version of O Sanctissima quoted from memory]

"If your mind needs a tonic of iron and wine, and a thorough rough-and-tumbling, try ... The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton."
[Roger Mifflin's notice in his bookshop; quoted by Christopher Morley in The Haunted Bookshop 20]

"Ten minutes exposure to the imagination of Theodore Tibbetts would blow the dust out of any one's mind."
[Note: Ted Tibbetts is eleven. See Lee Kingman, The Saturday Gang 30]

"...we forget that free speech is a paradox."
[GKC Robert Browning 174]

"If there was a dragon, he had a grandmother."
[GKC "The Dragon's Grandmother" in Tremendous Trifles]

"I have returned healthy and safe. How did you fare? If you have drowned, inform me."
[Pierre Duhem to a sailing friend quoted by SLJ in Uneasy Genius: the Life and Work of Pierre Duhem 57]

"My opinion was asked concerning the scientific part of the problem. Then, I told squarely all these good Catholic philosophers that If they obstinately continued talking of science without knowing of it a single word, the freethinkers would hold them up for ridicule; that in order to speak of questions where science and Catholic philosophy touch one another, one must have done ten or fifteen years of study of the pure sciences, and that, if they had not become men with deep scientific knowledge, they must remain silent... The idea, once launched, will advance..."
[Pierre Duhem writing to his mother. Ibid. 114]

"Science was for Duhem such a sacred cause, hardly a crime if Galileo, Darwin, Freud and many others deserve perennial accolades for their devotion, in the teeth of much opposition, to the cause of science as they saw it. In fact, so sacred was that cause to Duhem - who, it is well to recall, chose physics as his life career after having been seized as a youth by an ideal view of it- that he never recoiled from taking great personal risks for that cause."
[Jaki on Duhem, Ibid. 161]

"...if the work was useful in God's eyes He would not let it go unfinished."
[Pierre Duhem about his masterwork, Le Système du Monde. Ibid. 196]

"There are three essential elements I use in my shows: humor, adventure, and heart."
[Glen Larson, paraphrased from memory; said in a documentary about his "Knight Rider" show]

"We need to write in 25 words or less why we want to found this new school. If we can't do the Ambrosian just now, at least we should have a college of Liberal Sciences to go with all the ones that do Liberal Arts."
[one of the Bridge Builders, private communication]

"Hey Doc when are you going to finish this Saga you've been talking about since the last millennium? C'mon!
[from many of my anxious and hungry readers]

764 138 474 831 467 is a prime palindrome.
[from my computer]

"Somebody has to do the hard jobs."
[Mark Weaver in The Three Relics (by Dr. Thursday)]



Wow-squared. Better fasten your seat belts. And this isn't even a leap year.