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Eclipse 2024 notes
Composite image of August 21, 2017, total solar eclipse, Madras, Oregon. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) Monday, April 8, 2024, will be the nearest a total solar eclipse has come to Tulsa in my lifetime. The path of totality stretches from south Texas to northern New England. Oklahoma southeast of...
Christopher Alexander: Finding patterns, and God, in urban design
From the BatesLine Bookshelf, a very occasional feature on authors and books that have influenced me: Christopher Alexander was an architect, but he might more appropriately have been called a philosopher of the built environment. He spent his career trying to describe and name the qualities that make a place...
2023 Tulsa sales tax and bond issues: Seven reasons to vote NO
Here are seven reasons to vote no on <a href="https://www.batesline.com/archives/2023/07/2023-tulsa-sales-tax-bond-issue.html">all four City of Tulsa ballot propositions at the special election next Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Covington Catholic and the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
Mollie Z. Hemingway asks, regarding the unraveling of the mainstream media narrative about activist Nathan Phillips and his confrontation last weekend with the young men of Covington Catholic School: The thing I keep thinking about: if many media types are dishonest about reporting contradicted and shown to be dangerously false...
Paul Gray, RIP
Paul Gray, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1980 to 1990 and the man who handed me my college diploma, died today at the age of 85. Gray was the last true MIT nerd to hold the post, possibly the last who ever will. In his years in...
Bono: Karma, grace, and Jesus -- nutcase or Messiah?
Some interesting theological perspective, in this excerpt of Bono's interview with Michka Assayas on a website called "The Poached Egg." Here's what Bono had to say about karma, grace, and atonement. You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out...
Booker T. Washington High School curriculum, 1921
This Land Press has posted photos of every page of the Booker T. Washington High School Yearbook from 1921, the year of the race riot that destroyed the community which Washington High served. Faculty: Nine men, six women, and all appear to be African-American. Course of Study Freshman Class Latin...
Walter Lewin, MIT physics professor, retires
This past weekend I visited Boston and the MIT campus for the first time in 14 years to attend my 25th reunion, which coincided with the centennial of my fraternity's chapter at MIT (Xi Chapter of Zeta Beta Tau) and MIT's sesquicentennial. The headline in the latest issue of the...
Thoughty blogging
I told a friend a few weeks ago, "I don't even like writing software anymore." That's a problematic sentiment, given that I'm a software engineer by trade. I'm happy to report, however, that in the heat of hardware/software integration and long hours of focused effort on Making Things Work, I'm...
Tulsa City Hall, as seen from Houston
On the blog Cosmic Rantings, AJ Coyner, a Tulsan and a physics grad student at Rice University in Houston, has a nice synopsis of the situation at Tulsa City Hall, which those of you coming in late may find helpful: It's been a fairly quiet month here for notable stories...
Fall break
The beginning of this week was fall break at Joe's school. We had considered a trip to Silver Dollar City, but we learned it wasn't open on Monday and Tuesday this time of year, so we decided to make day trips and visit places around Oklahoma. The failure of our...
Augustine, Pelagius, and 1960s sci-fi novels
Separation of church and state notwithstanding, you can't separate your theology (or lack thereof) from your politics. What you believe about the existence and nature of God and the nature of mankind will shape your ideas about government and society. If we build public policy on a solid foundation of...
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