What’s up? The Winter Olympics started in Russia the other day. China already has a space station called Tiangong 1 with people in orbit, but in December they put a rover on the moon! And Gangnam Style has hit 1.9 billion views now — it’s almost to 2 billion!
The skin of my teeth
In other news, my Bible study group finished reading Job and have moved into Psalms, and I am finding Psalms quite refreshing. It’s still got the gritty Old Testament approach to God, but it really shows off that relationship some people had then with God but in the form of their songs and prayers to and about God. I am thoroughly enjoying it.
Oooo, something really cool we read in Job was perhaps the origin of the phrase “got away by the skin of your teeth”:
“My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” (Job 19:20)
The passage above is from the old King James Version (KJV). Reading the verse in other more modern translations, they don’t put it that way. Actually, throughout the King James Version are used a lot of older English phrases that one doesn’t find in the newer translations.
Comics
Among other written stuff, this week I walked over to Funny Business and picked up the new Ms. Marvel #1 and the opening issue is really one of the best comics I’ve ever read. Essentially, the old Ms. Marvel apparently became the new Captain Marvel and so they needed someone else to take on the name’s role and so Marvel Comics decided to create a whole new character who is ethnically Muslim. DC Comics also has a relatively new Muslim character who is a Green Lantern superhero. Ms. Marvel though, they’ve done such a super good job creating and writing this character that the title gets one to really connect the character with one’s own life in a way that other comic books do not. I can hardly wait for the next issue! For more on the latest news to do with the new Ms. Marvel, visit the comic book’s blog at: http://allnewmsmarvel.tumblr.com/.
Another interesting thing has finally happened for me in my comic book reading. I’ve been reading comics for several years now and I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’ve got a pretty good pulse on what I consider really good comics and what I don’t and I’m so pleased to finally be in that place of really knowing what I like in such regards.
Mars News
In Mars news, more anomalies have shown up in the landscape, one of the latest of which was spotted by the Mars Opportunity Rover. The rover was journeying along, taking pictures, and then it moved through the same area for a second round of pictures and a strange rock was sitting before the rover which wasn’t there before. Sounds like maybe one of the maritian people decided to have a little playful fun. ;) Some are chalking it up to that it got kicked to the spot by the rover’s wheels, but we know better.
In an interview with one of the project’s lead scientists, Steve Squyres, they said:
“It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It’s very high in sulfur, very high in magnesium, it has twice as much manganese than anything we’ve seen on Mars…. We’re completely confused.”
Yes, the scientists are completely confused.
And here’s something else pretty cool. This image was captured by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft presently orbiting Mars and taking lots of pictures, etc. Looks like someone was doing some target practice with asteroids and they hit them right on! LOLOLOLOL! But however it formed, it’s a pretty cool looking image just the same:
Flipping through some resieos images taken by the Curiosity Rover, here’s a pretty cool one with some unusual looking rocks, some of which might be perceived as remnants of ruins:
And for the last while, Curiosity has been traversing some dunes, and here’s a picture of a track it made, with some of one of the wheels in the picture, too:
There’s so much other cool and unusual stuff to be found in the Mars rovers’ and other probes’ pictures, but this is a good enough exciting and fun sample for right now. :)
Out and about in Pomona
And we’ve finally been getting some rain here in Pomona, which has been nice, some seasonal atmospheric differentiation to change things up and feed the earth some water.
In the last week or so, I saw a bunch of the filming stuff, and, apparently, they’ve been filming a bunch of the TV show True Blood in the neighborhood here. Pomona is practically Hollywood, or at least Hollywood’s backyard they do so much filming here now.
Oh, a new brewery just opened a weekend or so ago. Someone told me about it and I walked on over and checked it out. It’s the Sanctum Brewing Company. They’re only open on Fridays and Saturdays, and all they really serve is their beer, water and pretzels, but it’s a super great atmosphere, and for a weekend bar crawl in Pomona, it’s a super good place stop! Pomona just keeps getting better and better and better!!!!!
That’s about it for now. I’ve been so swamped with other things I’ve lost track of getting to blogging much, but there’s a little news to keep the blog wheels spinning.
