Jonathan

Cairo and the Pyramids – August 24, 2018

August 24, 2018August 24, 2018 by JonathanNo Comments

Today was our longest excursion to date--13-1/2 hours, about half of which was spent on the road coming or going between Port Said and Cairo. The highway south from the port paralleled the Suez Canal for about 35 miles. We passed groves of date palms and mango trees bursting with ripe fruit. Vendors parked their donkey carts laden with fruit and vegetables at random spots along the shoulder of the highway. We passed many pickup trucks transporting families. Kids waved at the buses as our convoy passed by. I say "convoy" because our buses traveled with police escort throughout our excursion. A plainclothes policeman sat in the front seat of the bus. When he stood up at one point, I noticed an Uzi holstered under his jacket. Egypt's economy depends heavily on tourism, and the country is taking extraordinary measures to ensure that tourists are kept safe. We passed one beat up old pickup truck in which two women dressed in full abbayas and...

Sidebar: Israeli Taxis

August 24, 2018August 24, 2018 by JonathanNo Comments

One of our adventures in Haifa yesterday was putting ourselves at the mercy of the city’s taxi service, since we had decided to strike out on our own rather than taking the group tour. I’m an Uber guy at home. I like to know in advance what I’m paying, and the question of money never comes up with the driver. Taxis in Athens were a pleasant surprise, as the drivers were extremely friendly and the fares were very cheap. I neglected to ask before getting into the taxi at the port at Haifa how much the ride to the tour meeting point at the Baha’i World Centre was going to cost. I only had a $20 bill on me; I hadn’t had a chance to get to an ATM. A ride of that distance in Athens would have been less than 10 Euros. After all, we could see the place from the port! When we arrived, the driver said, “Twenty dollars.” A...

Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Haifa – August 22/23, 2018

August 23, 2018August 23, 2018 by JonathanNo Comments

Hello from Haifa, the first stop on our voyage. It’s my first time in Israel, and I’m very glad to have had even a short time to see this remarkable country. Our bus tour on August 22 took us to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, although I’ve certainly seen many photos over the years. Perhaps my first surprise was seeing stretches of the border wall between the Palestinian territory and Israel as we motored south along the highway to Jerusalem. Our guide, Elie, explained that Israelis see the wall as not to keep people out, but to protect people in Israel from arms fire coming across from the Palestinian territory. I pause here to mention that as with anything you hear about the Middle East situation, you have to take into consideration the frame of reference of the person who’s telling you the story. Everyone is telling you their truth. Reality is far too complex to be...

The Voyage of Marco Polo

August 21, 2018August 21, 2018 by JonathanNo Comments

For those of you who haven’t been following us on Facebook, my wife Jane and I had a marvelous 4 days in Greece before beginning the main part of our journey. October 2 marks our 25th wedding anniversary, and we have been planning a special trip for a long, long time. We booked Viking’s “Voyage of Marco Polo” on April 14, 2017 and have been counting the days ever since. We took Viking’s Rhine River cruise seven years ago. We appreciated that Viking promotes these cruises as exploration, cultural, and learning journeys, rather than having its ships be floating casinos. When we started thinking about a silver anniversary cruise, we compared our bucket list of places to visit, and Viking’s itinerary looked too good to pass up. We began our trip on August 15, 2018 when we arrived for a 4-day extension based in Athens. By the time we make it back home on September 27, we will have visited: Greece: Athens Mycenae ...

My Renewed Interest in Astrophotography!

July 30, 2018 by JonathanNo Comments

The rollout of "Bringing Columbia Home" took a lot more of my time and energy than I anticipated! It has been a wild, wonderful ride. But it has taken me away from updating my personal blog. In between book-related events, I've been getting back into astrophotography, in a big way. Last summer's eclipse whetted my appetite for getting a telescope and trying my hand at taking photos of the night sky. In the coming weeks and months, I intend to be much more regular in posting the results of my efforts, and passing along some of the tricks I have learned along the way. It's not a hobby for the faint of heart or people who are easily frustrated. Let me leave it at that for the time being. In the meantime, here are a select few of some of my shots taken at a July 2018 star party at Mayo River State Park, North Carolina. In order, they're the Swan Nebula (also...

Saying Farewell to Saturn: Part 2—The Final Plunge and a Legendary Party

September 21, 2017 by JonathanNo Comments

Friday, September 15, 2017 I managed to fall asleep sometime after 9 p.m. Pacific Time Thursday evening. I awoke just before my alarm was set to go off at 2 a.m. Friday. I again felt grateful to the wise people in JPL media relations for making us go home Thursday afternoon so we didn’t have to stay “on Lab” overnight! When we left the hotel at 2:30, my colleague Stephen van Vuuren had already written his social media post to go live at 5 a.m. accompanied by a mosaic of Cassini’s final portrait of Saturn compiled by Jason Major, who has done much of the image processing for In Saturn’s Rings. The drive from our hotel in Arcadia was very smooth until we got near Flintridge. Caltrans had blocked off all three exits from the westbound 110 to the JPL area for road construction! Fortunately, we were able to get off at the next exit and double back. Thank goodness for GPS...

Saying Farewell to Saturn – Part 1

September 18, 2017September 21, 2017 by JonathanNo Comments

This is the first part of a three-part blog about the end of the Cassini mission to Saturn, and my small part as an observer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during mid-September 2017. Everyone remembers their first glimpse of Saturn through a telescope. It seems unbelievable that you could see a planet with rings—but there it is! I gazed at Saturn a few weeks ago with my new 90mm spotting scope, and I attempted to capture my first image of a planet that evening. I shot several minutes of video through the scope and then used image stacking software to make a composite of the hundred or so best frames of video. To my surprise, the image came out pretty well. The image in the video is much larger than Saturn appeared through the eyepiece. You can just make out some of Saturn’s atmospheric bands and maybe a hint of the Cassini division between the A ring and B ring…or am I...

My Second Eclipse

August 28, 2017August 28, 2017 by Jonathan Comment Closed

As I noted in a recent blog entry, I witnessed a total solar eclipse in 1970 when I was thirteen years old. After that eclipse ended, I recall looking up the date of the next total eclipse in the eastern US. Monday, August 21, 2017. Wow, that seemed impossibly far in the future. I would never be here for that. But 2017 finally came around. Dad Sweats the Plans My excitement level began to rise over the summer. I originally planned to play it by ear on eclipse day. As the media began to forecast potentially millions of people traveling to see the eclipse, I realized the safest bet would be to book two hotel rooms in the middle of the path of totality in South Carolina. That would get us into position the night before the eclipse and enable us to drive either northwest or southeast to seek better weather if need be. I booked two rooms at the Hampton Inn in...

Review of “Dr. Sadler and The Urantia Book,” by Sioux Oliva

August 13, 2017August 13, 2017 by JonathanNo Comments

Dr. Sadler and the Urantia Book: A History of a Spiritual Revelation in the 20th Century by Sioux Oliva My rating: 4 of 5 stars Dr. William Sadler was a highly-respected physician, surgeon, psychiatrist, Seventh-day Adventist minister, lecturer, teacher, author, and investigator by day. By night, from 1911 through 1929, Sadler and his wife Dr. Lena Sadler (who died in 1939) claimed to be in contact with numerous celestial beings who communicated with them through a sleeping man in Chicago. The 196 “papers” that were dictated or delivered to the Sadlers formed the 2,097-page Urantia Book, a treatise on cosmology, God, the history of the local universe, and the life of Jesus and his disciples. William Sadler published the book in 1955. I had not heard of the Urantia Book until a mutual friend introduced me to Dr. Sioux Oliva last week. I had the good fortune to have coffee with her the next day, after I had an evening to do some...

Review of “The New Libertarianism: Anarcho-Capitalism”

August 6, 2017 by JonathanNo Comments

The New Libertarianism: Anarcho-Capitalism by J. Michael Oliver My rating: 4 of 5 stars [Disclaimer: I am a friend of Mr. Oliver and his family. I am not normally predisposed to reading books on economics, politics, or objectivism—indeed, I have never read any of Ayn Rand's books, and I did not know what objectivism was until I read this book. I do not self-identify as a Libertarian. I read the book because I wanted to understand more about the underpinnings of Mr. Oliver's economic and political views than we have been able to discuss in our conversations during social gatherings. All this is to say that I do not feel as qualified to judge the merits or shortfalls of Mr. Oliver's arguments as would someone who is more knowledgeable in these subjects.] Oliver's book is divided into three broad sections, covering Objectivism, the State, and Capitalism/ Voluntarism. I'll start my discussion with the second section, which launches into the evils inflicted on mankind...