Hang glider pilots discuss God and “religion”

It started as an innocent enough request from a pilot brand new to a forum, for knowledge of the identities of others in his sport who had found and chosen the way of life. The resulting discussion was lively with wide-ranging opinions. From my point of view it brought into focus a few facts. God is good. Religion, not always so. A lot of evil has been done in the name of God and unfortunately often people look at that to form their opinions rather than looking at the facts that the faith of a multitude is based on. It seemed to me that there was a contribution I could make, a few hints here and there about how the truth could be discovered. I got the feeling that I needed to tread carefully because unfortunately people take offense at this topic disproportionately more than other topics, even those about which there is strong disagreement. Jesus himself predicted this in Matthew 5:11-12 among other places, but gave some great words of encouragement.

 

Although there have been plenty of opposing views, and many votes to "bury" the thread (send it to the "basement" so it doesn’t appear on the front page of the forum), it has also been one of the most encouraging discourses on the internet that I have had, as I have found brothers in Christ who share another major interest of mine. There have also been a couple of tremendously encouraging private messages come my way. So what actually happened? To find out, go to http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=10298.

 

This brings me to another pleasant thought – that I will be resuming my hang gliding training in Newcastle in just a couple of days, with the weather looking like it will play ball for at least the first few days 🙂 To any of my Christian brothers and sisters who may think this pursuit is a bit self-indulgent and distracting from my true purpose in life (and I have thought about this myself at times), I would say that if you want to make a difference in being a light to the world, it does help to broaden one’s friendship horizon. Why not do so by getting to know some people who like to experience one of life’s finest pleasures – flying like a bird? Watch the www.hanggliding.org forum for reports on how it goes, though I might not get to a computer until I return at the end of the week.

A new hope?

Is this the end of the phoney and ill-defined "war on terror"? Seemed more like a war on everyone who disagreed with the Bush administration at times. There is a similar sense of anticipation of better times ahead with Barack Obama becoming the new US president as there was when Kevin Rudd defeated yesterday’s man John Howard to become Australia’s prime minister.

 

Perhaps the only downside is that there will probably be no more memorable additions to dubyaspeak.com, although the site will remain up so you can continue to be entertained by the foibles of perhaps the most illiterate American president in history. That’s a small price to pay though for a prospective rebuilding of respect for a nation that has the power to so much good in the world if it has the will, and hopefully an end to a lot of needless killing.

 

The significance of the time can maybe be best summarised in this video…

 

…while I think it can be said that the legacy of the Bush era can be captured here (watch out for a couple of rude words)…

 

…Oh, and here too.

Welcome to the International Year of Astronomy

It might just be the nudge I need to finally re-enter the world of Astronomy by joining one of the amateur clubs in my home city. Something that I’ve thought about doing for years but not actually done due to the busy-ness of life. Since completing my PhD in 2001 and attempting without much success to organise my thesis material into published papers soon after, I have not managed to keep in close touch with the field. If I join one of the clubs I could perhaps regale the members with some stories about how the "big boys" do Astronomy with their "big toys" such as the AAT and the ATCA and the computers and software to process the data, or at least how it was done 10 years ago. However having been out of the game for a while I’m likely to learn much more from them about building telescopes, amateur astronomical photography techniques and equipment, and the names and positions of thousands of objects that make good viewing. For when you are plugging the big telescopes into computers to point them at objects too faint to see with small ones, and sucking the electrical signals from the light of those objects into the same computers for hard-headed scientific analysis, you generally can’t see the wood for the trees and it really is possible to not know one’s way around the sky at all.

 

I was fortunate enough to have a prime position with a few friends to welcome 2009 with a bang, or more precisely, the approximately 100 000 bangs in the Sydney NYE Creation-themed fireworks show. It was an impressive sight from my position not very far from the harbour bridge, which is always the central focus of the displays these days. OK, I haven’t said anything about Christmas. Basically I just haven’t got around to it. Maybe I will do so in the next few days.

 

I have had all the usual re-focusing thoughts that inevitably come with saying goodbye to the battered and torn 2008 on its use-by date (just think of all that’s gone in the Middle East over the last 12 months and the global financial crisis just to name a couple of things, not to mention all the plans and ideas which have gone pear-shaped to a greater or lesser extent for me personally) and being presented with the shiny new 2009 with not so much as a scratch or dent on it. But of course we know that just as much will likely go wrong in the world this year as last, if not more. Being goal-oriented has sometimes worked a treat for me but more often has not. So I start this year mainly thinking good habits in life generally, and more discipline, are probably good ideas. One more specific thing which I thought of and put into action yesterday was downloading one of the year-long Bible reading plans available from biblegateway.com or bibleyear.com. Could be useful for someone who has trouble getting into the world’s best seller daily despite the obvious benefits of doing so. If you read this soon, maybe you’d like to join me in doing the same? Shouldn’t be too hard to catch up since you’ll only be a couple of days behind if you act now.

 

Well, that’s about it for this post, except to say Happy New Year to everyone who reads it, and that I hope it’s filled with good times for all.