Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, April 7, 2018

THE WORLD AROUND US

11

Mountain Views-News Saturday, April 7, 2018 


HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE WITH THE BEATLES

The Beatles are one of the greatest cultural 
phenomena to come from the 20th century, yet 
many people are unaware of their impact on science.

 In ‘Here, There and Everywhere,’ inspired by the 
book ‘La Scienza dei Beatles’ (‘The Science of the 
Beatles’), Viviana Ambrosi shows how the Fab 
Four can bring the study of celestial objects and the 
exploration of the universe closer to a large public 
audience. This was set out in a presentation on April 
3rd at the European Week of Astronomy and Space 
Science in Liverpool.

 The Beatles formed at the start of the space race, 
and have always inspired scientists, whether they 
knew it or not.

 The Beatles’ record company (EMI) used money 
from the sale of the White Album to fund scientific 
research. Some of which went towards Godfrey 
Hounsfield’s research into X-rays, which led to the 
invention of the CT scanner, for which he shared a 
Nobel Prize.

 ‘Across the Universe’ was transmitted into deep 
space in 2008, and numerous Beatles songs have 
been played as the wakeup call for astronauts on 
the International Space Station—including a live 
musical wakeup by Paul McCartney in 2005.

 There are five asteroids named after this musical 
group: Beatles, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and 
Starr. There is also a crater on Mercury named 
‘Lennon,’ and when a diamond star (a white dwarf 
covered in crystallised carbon) was discovered in 
2004, it was nicknamed ‘Lucy’ after ‘Lucy in the Sky 
with Diamonds.’

 This was also the inspiration for ‘Lucy,’ the fossil 
that rewrote the story of humanity, and this in turn 
has inspired NASA to name their first mission to 
Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids ‘Lucy.’

 The Lucy mission will launch in 2021 and will arrive 
at the L4 Trojan cloud (a group of asteroids that orbit 
the Sun in Jupiter’s orbit, about 60° ahead of Jupiter) 
in 2027, where the spacecraft will fly by four Trojan 
asteroids—3548 Eurybates, 15094 Polymele, 11351 
Leucus, and 21900 Orus. 

 After these flybys, Lucy will return to the vicinity of the Earth, whereupon it will receive a gravity assist to take it to the L5 Trojan cloud (which trails about 60° behind Jupiter), where it will visit the binary 
Trojan 617 Patroclus with its satellite Menoetius. Lucy will also fly by the inner main-belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, which was named for the discoverer of the Lucy hominin fossil.

 Three instruments comprise Lucy’s payload: a high-resolution visible imager, an optical and near-infrared imaging spectrometer, and a thermal infrared spectrometer.

 This mission is due to launch in 2021 and will take 12 years to complete its journey. It is safe to say that the Beatles will continue to be an inspiration for many years to come.

You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@MtnViewsNews.com.


OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

CHRISTOPHER Nyerges

EXTREME SIMPLICITY: 

Homesteading in the City

A HEALTHY DOSE OF MEDICINE FOR 
THE SOUL

[Nyerges is an educator and 
author. He can be reached 
at www.ChristopherNyerges.
com is perhaps my favorite 
of the books I have written 
because it is like a personal 
diary of how my wife and I worked towards our 
goal of “living lightly on the earth,” even though we 
had a small budget and lived in a small suburban 
Los Angeles home. We were doing 
what our Appalachian friend used 
to describe as “living country in the 
city.” We pursued all aspects of self-
reliance, and wrote about it. Starting 
as soon as we moved in to our new 
home in 1986, we began task by 
task with limited income. We used 
our front lawn to grow food, we 
recycled our wash water, collected 
rain water, had chickens, a duck, bees, 
and a pig, had solar water heating 
and solar electricity, a wood stove, 
and we planted fruit trees and food 
everywhere. We describe our efforts 
to do “integral gardening” on every 
bit of usable land, to produce food 
(for people and wildlife), medicines, 
fragrance, shade, and useful tools. 
We describe the details of what it meant to raise 
earthworms, chickens, rabbits, bees, a goose, a pig, 
and our dogs in their typical suburban back yard. We 
took the reader along their journey to installing a 
wood fireplace, solar water heating, and a solar electric 
system. Though there is much “how to” in this book, it 
is full of personal stories and rich reading of the learning 
they experienced along the way. There is a section on 
recycling, and a unique section about the economics 
of self-reliance. It’s worth noting that this is not a book 
we planned on writing. In 2000, we were called by 
the Mother Earth News magazine to write an article 
about our meaning of “alternate health” methods, and 
we wrote about the methods that could be called “new 
age” and could be called Hypocratean. We were on 
the cover, and a book publisher contacted us to see 
if we could turn that health article into a book. We 
said yes. But when we submitted the manuscript to 
the publisher, they said, hmm, not exactly what we 
were looking for. [That book, Integral Health, will be 
published eventually]. So they asked us if we could just 
write about how we live, which we did, and it became 
Extreme Simplicity. 

HERE ARE SOME SELECTED EXCERPTS 

WOOD FIREPLACE

Our freestanding fireplace has completely transformed 
our home. We would strongly encourage anyone 
without one already to seriously consider installing 
one. On very cold nights, we had been using those 
small electric heaters that really drive up your electric 
bill. The fireplace made the house really feel like a 
home, and we now are uncertain how we got along 
without it. In our case, the transition to wood heating 
was fairly easy, because we had plenty of firewood 
readily available. We were actually doing a neighbor 
a favor by cleaning up and carting off large amounts 
of dead and fallen wood from his property. Our first 
season of firewood came entirely from our weekly 
cleaning of his yard, just for the cost of our labor. How’s 
that for a win-win situation? 

TIME AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE

Many people today believe that they’re spending 
all their time working, yet with very little in return. 
Unfortunately, such realizations may come too late to 
be remedied. We think that the Amish people have the 
right idea when they keep their schools and work close 
to home. They don’t have to go a long way to a job, 
thereby avoiding wasted time and 
energy, unnecessary expenses, and 
disconnection from their community. 
They can protect their families from 
undesirable influence, and there is the 
added bonus of having youngsters 
nearby where they can learn a trade 
from an early age. The Amish are 
firmly committed to valuing “quality 
of life” over all the stuff that our 
modern society deems important 
or indispensable - car, home 
entertainment system, fancy clothes, 
foods bought for “convenience” and 
prestige rather than fresh garden 
flavor and nutritional value. 

4 MAGIC WAYS TO IMPROVE 
YOUR FINANCIAL SITUATION

Once, during a period of homelessness before we were 
married, Christopher was engulfed in thoughts of “poor 
me” and “I’m destitute,” and he could scarcely see a way 
out of the darkness. Dolores provided him with a simple 
set of practical tools that anyone can use if only they 
choose to do so. Here are four “magic” ways to improve 
your financial situation: 1. Never waste anything. 2. 
Continually improve your personal honesty. 3. Leave 
every situation or circumstance better than you found 
it. 4. Tithe to the church (or organization) of your 
choice. We know that these are genuine practical 
solutions. We have heard people say that they cannot 
make these efforts - such as tithing, or improving an 
environment - because “we are poor.” Our perspective 
is that they have their reasoning backwards. They are 
poor because they do not engage themselves in the 
world in these ways. Logical thinking leads to erroneous 
conclusions when the premise is false. 

3 STEPS TO HOUSEHOLD ENERGY EFFICIENCY 

1. You can do without some electrical devices.This will 
probably involve changing your behavior, for instance, 
thinking twice before switching on an electrical tool or 
appliance when a non-electric alternative will work just 
as well or better. 2. You can learn to use your existing 
devices more efficiently. This step, too, requires changes 
in habit, but once you’ve understood the extra expenses 
caused by inefficiency and waste, you’ll feel good about 
it - plus you’ll save money by practicing efficiency. 3. 
You can purchase new appliances that render your 
household inherently more energy efficient. This step 
requires initial outlays of money, and in some cases 
higher short-term expenses, but with certain especially 
wasteful appliances, the best way to save energy and 
money is to immediately replace the old, wasteful 
model.

A large segment of the human population takes 
things way too seriously for their own good. The 
strange anomaly is that most people laugh at the 
wrong thing and fail to laugh at the right thing. 
This serious incongruity has robbed people of a 
healthy attitude towards life in general. 
Those who take life too seriously are in danger 
of missing the great joys of living in a crazy world 
like ours. I am not sure about the scientific research 
but I would guess that for every sad moment it 
takes one hundred laughs to balance the books. 
Some people are about ninety-nine laughs short 
of a real sane moment.

 I like the old English proverb that says, “Laugh 
and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you 
cry alone.”

 From my perspective, if you cannot laugh with 
someone you will not be able to cry with him or 
her and have it mean anything.

 According to some medical advice, it takes 
more facial muscles and energy to frown than it 
does to smile. Of course, the only exercise some 
people have is frowning and who am I to take that 
away from them.

 I am determined, no matter what, to exercise 
my right to smile and laugh and enjoy the world 
around me. I must confess that I get this attitude 
quite honestly.

 My paternal grandfather was a Past Master in 
the area of practical jokes. No amount of time 
was too much to spend preparing for one of his 
famous practical jokes. His favorite holiday was 
April 1 and began preparing for this holiday right 
after Christmas.

 The fact that his practical jokes at times got him 
into trouble did not seem to affect him at all.

 Once while in the hospital for an extended 
period he had somebody smuggle in to him a can 
of snuff. For some reason he liked chewing snuff. 
It is the most disgusting habit I know of on earth.

 He no sooner received his smuggled goods then 
he began chewing it. If you know anything about 
chewing snuff, you know it is accompanied by a lot 
of spitting. As usual, his timing was impeccable. 
Just as the head nurse passed his door and looked 
in, he leaned over and spit in to the garbage can he 
had next to his bed. The nurse, not knowing about 
the chewing snuff, thought he was spitting blood 
and immediately went into emergency mode. 
Immediately my grandfather was rushed into 
the operating room and the surgeon and medical 
team were assembled.

 My grandfather was very sick at the time. Some 
did not think he would get out of the hospital.

 Just as they got him situated in the operating 
room he pulled from under his sheet his can of 
chewing snuff and smiled at them. The only 
person in the room that thought this was in any 
way amusing was my grandfather. The doctors 
were so angry with him that they refused to see 
him for three days and confiscated his can of 
chewing snuff.

 My aunt and uncle lived right next to my 
grandfather. My aunt was hyper clean when it 
came to her house. Dirt in any form was not 
welcome under her roof. She had a broom that was 
always within reach because she never knew when 
a piece of dirt would try to invade her domicile.

 That year my grandfather found something new. 
I am not sure where he found it but he probably 
spent a lot of time looking for something like this. 
It was a rubber facsimile of a very nasty looking 
piece of vomit. To him it was a prized possession.

 Most of his practical jokes were executed on 
April 1. Whenever we saw grandfather coming on 
this particular day we usually ran for cover.

 He went over to visit my aunt and was sitting 
on the couch in the living room. They chatted for 
a little while and then my grandfather began to 
cough a little bit. He said to my aunt, “I haven’t 
been feeling good lately. I really don’t know 
what it is.” Then he started to cough a little more 
seriously, to which, my aunt got up and went to 
the kitchen to get him a glass of water thinking 
that might help him.

 When she got back, she was shocked to see 
on her new coffee table a very horrible sight. My 
grandfather was bent over the coffee table hacking 
and coughing as though he was in the process of 
dying. On the coffee table was a very nasty looking 
piece of vomit.

 My aunt went into hysterics. She whirled 
around and within a moment had grabbed her 
broom and started towards my grandfather. My 
grandfather was laughing but not for long.

 Suddenly he realized that the flailing broom in 
my aunt’s hand was aimed at him. She chased him 
out of the house, down the driveway and for at 
least three blocks yelling obscenities at him that I 
dare not repeat in public society.

 Laughter is the fresh air of the soul. Even the 
Bible thinks so.

 “A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: 
but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken” 
(Proverbs 15:13). And, my favorite, “A merry 
heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken 
spirit drieth the bones” (Proverbs 17:22).

 I recommend a healthy dose of medicine for 
your soul.

 

 The Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family 
of God Fellowship, 1471 Pine Road, Ocala, FL 
34472. He lives with his wife, Martha, in Silver 
Springs Shores. Call him at 352-687-4240 or e-mail 
jamessnyder2@att.net. The church web site is www.
whatafellowship.com.


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