The Gettysburg Address

One hundred forty-seven years ago today Abraham Lincoln spoke these 262 powerful, perfectly chosen words as he dedicated the Soldier's National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania...

Image of the Nicolay draft courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-
field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave
their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot
consecrate…we cannot hallow…this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it
far above our poor power to add or detract. The world
will little note nor long remember what we say here, but
it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us…that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom; and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

November 19, 1863

If you'd like to know more about the Gettysburg Address and the marvelously complex man who wrote and presented it, I strongly recommend Gary Wills 1992 book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America.  Wills does an incredible job peeling away the layers of what some people incorrectly assume was a hasty piece of writing and an extemporized delivery of one of the finest speeches in the history of the republic.

Eid al-Adha

Do you remember a time when we Americans imagined the only religious holidays were Christian ones?

another fine photo from our friend Sam at photos8.com

Gratefully, the world is a much more interesting and diverse place than we Baby Boomers thought we grew up in.  In the Muslim tradition the patriarch Abraham was instructed by God to sacrifice his son Ishmael (instead of Isaac, as in the Jewish and Christian traditions).  At the last moment this test of ultimate obedience was called off and a ram was offered as a sacrifice instead.  Eid al-Adha is a family holiday that celebrates the event.  As with other Muslim holidays, Eid al-Adha is determined by the lunar calendar. In 2010 Eid al-Adha is on Tuesday, the 16th of November.  Happy Eid to all our Muslim brothers and sisters around this world we share.

The Other Brain

Neurons comprise 15% of the human brain; the rest are glial cells...

The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries about the Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science by R. Douglas Fields, Ph.D. is an in depth look at the roles, positive and negative, played by glial cells in the central nervous system.  This accessible book lays out the many ways the various glia affect early childhood development, recovery from brain and spinal cord injury, psychiatric illness, neurodegenerative disorders, addiction, and stroke.  Fields was featured on episode 69 of the Brain Science podcast if you'd care for a sample of his research on this fascinating topic.

The Orbital Dance of Epimetheus and Janus

This is just too cool...

Two small moons of Saturn - Epimetheus and Janus - actually swap orbits every four years!  How incredible is that?  More details here at APOD.  Of course, the entire Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn is utterly awesome, and the source of many wondrous and very expensive computer wallpapers.

A New Sort Of Scope Failure

Broken scopes don't always tell you when they quit.  This malfunction was more obvious...

The other afternoon I was at the range refining the 200 yard zero of Erik's Kimber and my Remington. That mission accomplished, I wandered over to the range officer's bench to wait for a cease fire. He was spotting for his sons who were attempting to zero their Savage 110 30'06 rifles at the 100 yard line. Since being put away last season the elder son's rifle developed a need for a foot of left windage correction. When he tried to removed the turret cover to get at the adjustment knob the entire turret came off in his hand, leaving a sad little hole in the side of his scope. The scope was a $60.00 Tasco 3-9x, aged about ten years. As I left he said he'd be visiting the local Gander Mountain that evening to buy a Redfield (the one with the Leupold lifetime warranty).  When a Redfield 2-7x costs but $130 there is no reason to put up with a cheaper or less reliable scope.  Remember, buying a good scope once is better than buying cheap scopes a couple times.