Hank Morgan faced death in the worst way. The king had ordered he be burned at the stake. His heart sank. There was no way out. “I shall never see my friends again—never, never again,” he whispered mournfully. Unless…
Facing his doom, Hank confidently warned, unless the king freed him, “I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the last man!”
No one believed him… until it was so!
King Arthur released this Connecticut Yankee; thus, scoring the perfect theatrical tension in Mark Twain’s famous story. Ah, the power of fiction. To create worlds that we can only dream of. To craft scenes we can only wish for. To fashion from our imaginations that which could only happen in the land of make believe.
But wait! Twain’s story telling borrowed from actual events (as Hank Morgan attests in the Continue Reading “Famous Eclipses In History And Literature”
Faith, Reason, And The Shroud Of Turin
Image of Shroud of Turin showing positive and negative displays by source: Dianelos Georgoudis, CC BY-SA 3.0 https:creativecommons.org licenses by-sa3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
As the “science guy” in school, I got a lot of questions. They weren’t science questions, unless it was for answers on the high school chemistry exam. (And they were asked during the actual taking of the exam!) No, my friends usually asked me questions about science fiction.
That irked me.
OK, so here’s something many people didn’t know about me back then. As much of a Trekker that I was (and still am – but only for Star Trek: TOS), I was no fan of science fiction. Sure, I liked 2001: A Space Odyssey (the movie, I hated the book). Yes, I read Isaac Asimov’s I Robot (during catechism class at St. Pius because I was bored, and it was on the bookshelf I sat next to).
But, in general, I found most science fiction too dystopian, too depressing, and, well, too Continue Reading “Faith, Reason, And The Shroud Of Turin”