Photography, something I love

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We should all find, make, or steal the time to do at least one thing that we really, really love. Come on now, you know I'm right. In this modern age there are so many pressures on us that sometimes we struggle just to get from one day to the next. The trouble with that is simple. You will only live this day one single time, you have just one bite at it. So spend part of it doing something fun, or rewarding, or delightful. It's not decadent to do that, it's an expression of who you are, to yourself, to your family, to friends and aquaintances, and to the King of Creation too. Unless of course you think he's not interested in who you are, or think he doesn't exist. But even then, you still owe it to yourself and to those around you to express the real you.

Something I love is to capture images of things that impress me by their beauty, things that amaze me.

Here's a slideshow of photos I took during the last two months. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them. Leave me a comment and tell me which image is your favourite (and why).

You can also open the full version of the gallery with options for viewing the photos at much larger sizes, or even downloading the originals. Each picture tells a story, can you work out what it might be? Once you're in the full gallery you can comment on each picture individually if you want to.

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Things you can do with cornflour

Some You Tube videos of cornflour have been doing the rounds and they're quite fascinating to watch.

You might think cornflour is only good for thickening sauces or making cornbread (yumm). Well you'd be wrong.

You can try running on it...



Or you can pop it on an upturned bass speaker and play it some music!...



So what's going on? Why is cornstarch so goofy and weird?

It's something called non-newtonian behaviour. Slow, gentle movements meet little resistance to flow; but sudden, forceful motion causes the matrix to lock up and resistance becomes much, much stronger. If you want to know more, read the Wikipedia articles on cornstarch and non-newtonian fluid.

Oh, and don't forget to enjoy the videos :-)

Eaton Ford - Prayer

Only very brief notes were made this week. We spent much of the time talking, but we also prayed for Pam's Mum who has been unwell, and for Jim and Sean who have both been heavily overworked.

Let my people go

I wanted to reply to Frank Viola's recent blog post 'Favourite Song of the Season', but comments were closed so I'm going to reply here instead. Do visit Frank's item by clicking the link above (or the image), read the words and listen to the song. I agree with Frank, it's a great song. I love it!

The theme is one that's been very real to me for many years. It applies to the Church today, indeed it's applied to the church for the bulk of its history. Let my people go!

What do I mean? Let's say that Egypt represents the world, and Pharaoh therefore represents the Prince of this world. Meanwhile the Israelites, Yahweh's chosen people, represent the Church. The problem the Israelites had was that not only had they got into Egypt, but Egypt had also got into them. They arrived in Joseph's day, hungry and desperate and glad to find a land where there was food enough to go around. As the generations passed they became more and more dependent upon the Egyptians. At the same time, as far as the Egyptians were concerned they became a serious refugee and immigration problem, aliens in the land.

It has always seemed clear to me that the Church has gone to live in the world. The Church has adopted the world's methods of management, organisation, authority, and structure. The methods seem to work for the world and have therefore been seen as a good way to do things. Maybe we have become so used to them that they appear to be the only way to do things! If it works for government and for big business, surely it will also work for the Church?

Well, after a fashion these methods seem to work for the Church, but at a serious price. Either we do things our way or we do them the Lord's way, but we can't mix and match. We really can't. We have been making bricks without straw, and it is so, so hard for us! And when we cried out in despair, Yahweh heard us and has come to remind us that in Christ we are truly a free people.

In the end Yahweh calls Israel out of Egypt. He is also calling the Church out of the world, but like Pharaoh, the Prince of this world is unwilling to let us go. And as the Church walks away from the world it heads out, like Israel, into the wilderness. What did Israel do? They complained most bitterly. 'Why has Yahweh brought us out into the wilderness to die? At least in Egypt we ate all we needed.' So the Lord sent manna and then they complained that it was not the kind of food they wanted!

We are just the same. We hanker after the reliable and safe provision of the world rather than trust to the uncertainties and hardships of the wilderness. Yet the wilderness is just a place we must pass through to arrive at the promised land, flowing with milk and honey. But we cry, 'It's too hard, we don't like it, we're afraid, we want to go back to the world's ways, we'll make a god of gold and worship that, we will die in this wilderness, there's nothing to drink, the land he promised us is full of giants, we can never succeed.'

Listen, we have to leave the world's ways. We are in it of course, but we should never have become of it. We have to leave our comfort zones and go. We have to trudge through the wilderness, we have to learn to depend on the Lord alone, we have to believe that in him and with him we are safe and will succeed in the task he's given us.

Yes, not only have we been in the world, but the world has been in us. Enough! If you want the detailed story, read 'Pagan Christianity' by Frank Viola and George Barna. If your eyes are open the book will open them even wider. It will explain how the church came to be the slave of the world, both in it and of it. And it will explain how the Church needs to throw off everything that encumbers her and go back to the Promised Land. And live in it. Like Israel, the Church was originally in this land of promise but left, and now it's time to go back again to our inheritance.

Yes, I like the song. 'Let my people go!' Remember who it was who told Moses to speak that way to Pharaoh! It was the Creator of this universe, the King of Kings, Yahweh speaking out of his Shekinah Glory. If he says 'Let my people go' who can stand against him? So what reason can we possibly have to be afraid? Hmm?

Get walking!

Improving car efficiency

This is an idea I had recently for improving the efficiency of internal combustion engined vehicles. 'Green' is becoming the watchword of the decade (rightly so), and anything that can reduce fuel consumption is a good thing whether your car burns petrol, diesel, or biofuel.

Engines run much more efficiently when they are at their working temperature. Every increment in starting temperature will increase initial efficiency and reduce the time required to reach full working temperature, a double benefit by starting 'further up the curve'.

For very little extra manufacturing expense I suggest fitting a network of piping between the roof of a car and its internal lining. The network would be fed engine coolant by flow and return pipes that could be concealed inside the front pillars between the windscreen and side windows. The coolant would be warmed by solar energy and would flow to the cold engine when the vehicle is idle, returning to the roof network to pick up more heat.

A miniature pump in the engine compartment would keep the fluid flowing slowly, I suggest the pump should be controlled by temperature sensors so that when the water in the roof network is not warmer than the engine block the pump does not operate.

This scheme would improve the efficiency of any internal combustion powered vehicle, cars (including hybrids), lorries, buses, boats, aircraft etc. It would work while your car was parked in town or at the office or outside your home. On a hot day it would have the added benefit of keeping the car slightly cooler, on a cold day it would enable the heater to start working a little sooner. And the fuel efficiency would increase - especially for those short journeys.

There - I've published it. It cannot now be patented (at least in the basic form described here). It's available to any vehicle manufacturer or add-on kit maker that cares to use it.

What on earth?

This is an amazing image for a variety of reasons. What is it? Could it be a pulsating jellyfish from deep in the ocean? An iridescent soap bubble against a black background? Maybe it's a cell viewed in a fluorecence microscope?

No, the truth is stranger than any of these. Much of the 'light' you see here is invisible, the rest is far too faint to see. This bubble is the result of a sudden event witnessed by the Saxons, although it actually happened during the Stone Age. The photograph was taken by a range of telescopes, not all on the earth's surface.

This is SN 1006, a supernova remnant. Everything about it is awesome, almost beyond the human mind's ability to appreciate. And of course it's not on Earth at all. An astonishing feature of this little corner of the universe where we live, our Milky Way galaxy.

What is Supernova 1006? How did it happen? How was the image made?

Exploding stars
Supernovae are exploding stars; but don't worry, our closest star (the Sun) is not expected to explode and will not change fundamentally for about another four thousand million years. It won't affect you!

There are various things that might cause a star to blow its top. In the case of SN 1006, a small, dense, white dwarf and a more normal star similar to the Sun were circling one another. As the sun-like star entered its red giant stage, the strong gravity of the white dwarf pulled gas away from the giant's atmosphere. Over a long period of time the white dwarf grew ever heavier at the expense of its neighbour. Eventually it became unstable, and violently exploded in an unimaginable cataclysm (too feeble a description by far, but there are no words to describe a detonation like this one). The mechanism is fairly well understood.

Seeing the light
The explosion happened about 8000 years ago. The fearsome burst of light and heat roared out and after travelling for around 7000 years arrived at the Earth in Saxon times, about 1st May 1006. The 'new' star was recorded by astronomers in Japan, China, Arabia, and Europe. It must have been noted in wonder by millions of people throughout the southern hemisphere and much of the north. The pinpoint of light outshone everything else in the sky apart from the Sun and Moon. It was visible even in broad daylight, bright enough to read at night. It remained visible for about two years, dimming, brightening again, and finally fading away. As the generations passed it was forgotten.

The aftermath
The gaseous debris of the broken star spread out behind the wave of light and heat. The star's substance travelled out so fast that it would have travelled the distance from the Earth to the Moon in less than a minute (it took the NASA astronauts three days). In 1965 it was identified by radio astronomers as a circular feature.

The image
This image is itself amazing. It looks just like an ordinary colour photo, but this has very little in common with a typical holiday snap. Like any full colour image this one contains three superimposed images in three different wavelengths. In a normal photo these more or less match the sensitive ranges of the the three types of colour detecting cells (cones) in the human retina. But in this image, a little astronomical imaging sleight of hand has been committed.

The red image is not light at all, or not as we normally understand it. It's an image in radio frequencies captured by the 23 mile equivalent 'lens' of the Very Large Array (VLA) and by the Green Bank Telescope. The yellow, orange and pale blue images are visible light recorded by optical telescopes. The deep blue is an X-ray image collected by NASA's Chandra satellite.