No posts with in the week of July 31, 2010
Falling back to closest date
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My 4th flight today, and because of the winds my instructor decided it was a good day to practice flying in a square. The trick was to keep along side a road in crosswind conditions. In order to keep the airplane flying parallel to the road one has to point the nose into the wind a little. I did alright, but I'll need some more practice to really get it down.
I really made some progress on making turns without losing a lot of altitude. And my instructor had me do a few turns while adding flaps and changing throttle. It's a little tricky but I'm starting to get the hang of it. I tried to fly one handed most of the time--keeps my right hand free to control other items (trim, flaps, ext.). I tried to keep loss but admittedly I found I was rather like a vice on the flight yoke at times. Especially take off and landing.
The reason for the days exercise was for the holding pattern and approach. We started to run through the landing sequence and there I didn't do as well. There are a lot of steps in making the finial, and I ended up having poor control over our altitude in the crosswind leg. I was able to correctly execute all of the turns and line the airplane up with the runway. The instructor told me when to flare and afterward told me I had done the landing--he did not take the yoke.
I decided when I got home to practice a little in the simulator, but quickly abandon the idea. The simulator is pretty much useless without a joystick, and the view isn't wide enough to really reflect how things look in a real cockpit.
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I have been listening to a lecture series on the history of ancient Egypt. One of the lectures was on Joseph--a man in the Old Testament of the Bible who interpreted a dream of the pharaoh. As the lecturer pointed out, there are many people who get into archeology in order to prove events in the Bible. So he asks the question "could this story have happened?" The answer, as explained over the course of the 1/2 hour lecture was that yes, this story seemed to be consistent with the practices and beliefs at the time.
So the old Testament story is true? That isn't what he said, and much care has to be taken. Remember the Greeks and Romans Gods. If the Greeks had a good God, the Romans had a similar God with a similar story. It is pretty easy to take a story, change a few names and some small details, and call it yours. Was Joseph's story really a Semite living in Egypt, or was it an Egyptian story rewritten by a Semite?
There are some obvious ways to answer this question. The first would be to see if there are any similar Egyptian stories, and if so, what do they say of Joseph's character? Is he described as a foreigner? What about archaeological evidence of Semites living in Egypt? The lecture notes that this search is currently on going and is difficult because the areas being surveyed are in the wet delta areas of the Nile River. So for that we have to wait.
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Somewhere in south eastern Wisconsin on the return to Cedar Rapids.
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Spatula this morning at breakfast.
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Mikala and Jess tonight at coffee.
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At long last--a day with weather that won't kill me when attempting to fly. Today we tried some approach, and I am starting to loosen up a little and not holding onto the flight yoke with a death grip.
Pictured is my drive home yesterday.
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Dark clouds in Cedar Rapids.
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