Daily Archives: February 26, 2025

Dodging and Foraging in Space

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In case you didn’t keep up with the news from space, last week on Tuesday it was announced that there was a 3.2% chance that asteroid 2024 YR4 would strike the earth. The asteroid is approximately between 130 and 300 feet wide – and if it entered the atmosphere, it is capable of obliterating an entire city. I expected to see a follow up article of NASA recruiting a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers to be sent into space to destroy the asteroid. (Hopefully you picked up the reference to the 1998 sci-fi movie Armageddon starring Bruce Willis and others.)

Rest easy, with more observations and data, the estimate of an earth strike by 2024 YR4 is near zero – one in 59,000 to be more precise. I’ll take those odds.

Meanwhile the AstroForge company is sending a robotic forager to asteroid 2202 OB5 to look for rare earth metals. AstroForge’s robotic spacecraft, called Odin, is bundled into a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will also launch a privately built moon lander and a NASA-operated lunar orbiter as soon as today from Florida. Asteroid 2022 OB5 is small, no more than 330 feet across, about the size of a football field.

If the launch and mission are successful, will AstroForge announce “Touchdown” – landing, football field… get it?

Image credit: Pixabay | CC BY-SA

Splinters and Logs

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Perhaps the famous portion of the 8th Sunday gospel is the simile of the splinter and the wooden beam.  41 Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? 42 How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.

This expression did not originate with Jesus. Nor was Aristotle likely the first to give voice to the common expectation that those who reprove others ought not suffer from the same shortcoming. In one form or another, it seems every culture has a similar admonition.  In context it resonates with the caution not to judge others in the preceding section (vv. 37–38). Taken independently, the parable exposes the common human predilection to point out even the slightest faults in others while being blind to our own, even though they may be much greater (cf. Matt 7:3–5).

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