“The legacy of (Alan) Turing the mathematician rises above any possible sensationalism. His contributions were supremely elegant and foundational. He gifted us with wild leaps of invention, including much mathematical underpinnings of digital computation. The highest award in computer science, our Nobel Prize, is name for him.
The Sunday before last, there was a one-hour tribute on 60 Minutes to the recently deceased Don Hewitt. Don created and was the inspiration behind one of TV’s longest running shows: 60 Minutes. While I don’t usually watch shows that pat themselves on the back, this one caught my eye. Unfortunately I didn’t get to watch the entire show.
I left Provo on Friday. Luckily, I didn’t have to drive. I was physically and emotionally beat. I needed a break.
After I crashed in Page AZ for 36 hours, the crew from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) headed out to the lands of the Navajo Reservation. The first day we spent with tribal members living in the very isolated Navajo Canyon. The area is a Garden of Eden, blessed with several springs (of living water). The families living there ned help with further developing their water resources. In the past, there had been water development, but much of the infrastructure is now deteriorated. The old orchards need pruning.
About the only official (or near official) Mormon publication I enjoy reading these days is BYU/Magazine. The recent edition (Fall 2009) is an excellent case in point. I really enjoyed the Commentary “Loving Our Neighbor” by Barbara Culatta, a BYU professor of communication disorders. Ms Culatta is a convert to the Church from Catholicism, and has a brother who is a priest. Her essay was a condensed version of a devotional address given in February. After reading the one-page sermonette in BYU/Magazine, I decided to find the whole text.
Years ago, before I could face the pain of dealing with our Regional Office, I stopped at what is now Carl’s Jr for breakfast. After a delightful snack, I started back toward the SLC Federal building. As I was leaving the fast-food joint, I heard someone call “Roger,” but I looked around and didn’t see anybody I recognized. I then heard “Roger” again. This time a bearded indigent man approached me. It was an individual that I had gone to graduate school with, an economics major.
In a recent edition of SIVault, L. Jon Wertheim writes about the decision-making of the football coach for the Pulaski Academy Bruins (a high school located on the west side of Little Rock AR). For me the article, brought to my attention by my son, is more about life than sports.
After flying from Utah to New Mexico, we headed north out of Albuquerque and then turned left at Taos. After crossing the volcanic Rio Grande Canyon, we arrived at Earthship, a troglodyte community located in the New Mexico desert. While waiting for our host, we walked around the visitors center . . . and wondered what we had gotten ourselves into?
On June 12, represenatives from several NGOs and I arrived in Kampala, Uganda. Our plane trip took way too long: 4 separate flights that covered 4 continents and took 48 nearly-sleepless hours. Our Africa hotel was overbooked, so a friend and I had to stay in a nearby hotel. We were staying in old Kampala, a working-class portion of the city. That night after visiting an Internet cafe, I started to walk alone back to my hotel room over a route I wasn’t familiar with. I wandered slightly of course and fell into a deep stone-and-mortar-lined ditch. I cut my head and lost consciousness. There was urban runoff flowing down the open sewer. The rest of the story I have pieced together from witnesses I could find.
National Geograph claims they have found the remains and burial site of folk- and cult-hero Everett Ruess. Ruess disappeared in southern Utah in 1934. He was 20-years old at the time of his disappearance.
There are several individuals I wished I’d have met and had lengthy conversations with. Unfortunately all are now deceased. They include: Henri Pirenne, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Josephine Baker, and Albert Camus. All have strong ties to France and Walloonia, although Baker was born in America. I guess that makes me a bit of a francophile. I served an LDS mission in the Franco-Belgian Mission in the 60s and fell in love with France and the French.
Belgian medievalist Henri Pirenne