Getting power to disaster-affected areas is always a tough task, but Andrew Leinonen’s undergrad industrial design thesis (and recent first place entry in the 2008 ACIDO Rocket Show) might be able to solve the problem in an efficient and clever way. Dubbed Solarial, the idea is to use small unmanned airships made out of materials embedded with CIGS solar cells to autonomously deliver clean power to disaster sites by deploying anchored “power boxes” that have 12 total 120V outlets and 2 240V sockets.

I think this is absolute genius. As one of the commenters said, feels like “Why didn’t we think of this already?” You could build units to specific sizes for specific power requirements, and float them high enough to avoid clouds. There’s another concept that’s been around for doing similar things with communications technology.

We visited York on Wednesday which was really lovely. Now we’re in Birmingham. Yesterday while here, we visited Warwick, took some photos of the castle, and returned a dog to it’s owner. Today will feature a trip to Hard to Find Records, and then Stratford! W00t.

SYMPTOMS
When you run a batch job that runs under the context of a regular user account on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer, the script may not run. If you run the batch job by using the Scheduled Tasks feature, the following error message may be logged in the Scheduled Tasks log file (Schedlgu.txt):
0×80070005: Access is denied.

CAUSE
This issue occurs if all the following conditions are true:
• You run the batch job on a Windows Server 2003-based member server.
• The batch job runs as a non-interactive process.
• The batch job is configured to run under the context of an account that is not a member of the Administrators group.
In Windows Server 2003, the Users group does not have Read and Execute permissions to the command processor (Cmd.exe).

Jeff Bridges played an excellent villain. Totally well done. Robert Downey Jr… what can you say? Tony Stark. To the letter. The suit, perfect. Pepper Potts, lovely! For those of you in the know, who stayed till the end of the credits, Nick Fury: Excellent! Can’t wait for Hulk.

What’d you all think?

There are no shortcuts to maturity. Someone has an intense spiritual experience, insight, or revelation, and the impression is that this person suddenly will be more mature, responsible and exemplary. This is often not the case. How many men and women have we seen who set themselves up or are set up by others as spiritually advanced or insightful only to find, in due time, that they are just as human and fallible as the rest of us?

Take Ken Wilber’s article on “The Strange Case of Adi Da”, the Fiji guru who initially had Wilber’s support, only for it to be withdrawn later because of the intense controversy surrounding the “pathological” guru. In another article, Wilber writes:

“Over the years I have made numerous very strong and sometimes contradictory statements about Adi Da, mostly because he is a very strong and sometimes contradictory personality. . . . I called attention to the fact that, even though Da might be highly spiritually realized, he seemed to have several problematic, perhaps even pathological, aspects to his personality and the way he was running his community. . . . Contradictory? Perhaps, but only because Da is contradictory. Contradictory and problematic — deeply problematic.”

This applies to the Christian and church realm too. We see our youth go off to camp or missions or whatever and come back incredibly zealous and inspirational. We love this and encourage it, but we must not put the burden of expectation upon them that they are more mature, responsible or exemplary than they actually are. It is the same with tele-evangelists. It is also the same with the more visible and commendable members of our communities of faith. We must not allow their zeal, intelligence, influence, or vision to blind us to their frail humanity, their solidarity with the rest of the fallen human race. It is not fair to them to elevate them above the mundane work of personal development because of their extraordinary giftedness.

This does not mean we suppress the gifting of individuals. No matter how immature or mature anyone is, their contribution to the community and to the world is encouraged, nurtured, supported and valued. But not at the expense of their own personal growth, transformation and stability. It is possible, and indeed probable, that one can be “highly spiritually realized“, and yet have deep pathological issues that must be struggled with and healed, I think preferably in the context of a safe and healthy community.

Article here. Seems like there’s a scantily clad lady in the reflection of his glasses… or is that just an illusion?

And a book review:

I just finished studying Frank Viola’s and George Barna’s recent book, Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices. I want to start to say what I appreciate about the book and finish with what I think are some concerns.

Reading this book reminded me of the hours of ambitious dreaming and passionate debates that occurred during my bible college and seminary days with other visionary young radicals. It evoked the intensity with which I first went into the pastoral ministry, like a bull in a china shop, like Jesus with a woven whip into the den of thieves. In other words, I agree with almost everything they say. I have a problem with churches owning so much money, property and buildings; I question liturgy and orders of worship; I struggle with the one-man monologue sermon model; I have always wrestled with “full-time paid ministry” pastor positions; I disregard Sunday dress; I don’t like the control of worship music by a select and talented few; I don’t believe in tithing; I question the sacraments, formal Christian education, and our whole approach to the New Testament. In short, I too kick against the system. So, if you want to get an idea of what the authors insist are the pagan roots of most of our religious practices and compare them to the New Testament and early Church, get this book. With the plentiful footnotes and bibliography, it’ll give you enough to study.

But I have some concerns. Even before I got to the substance of the book, I read a line in the forward that concerned me. The following, they say, is their “proposal“…

I plan to get this book. It sounds interesting.

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