Category 6 Hurricane

The first hurricane of the season gathered strength during the storm's slow progress across the Atlantic. Florence had one point has classed a category 4 storm and the Carolinas prepared for the worst, however the tempest weakened in the shallow continental shelf and struck Cape Hatteras as a Category 1 hurricane.

A category 1 is no joke.

Sandy destroyed New Jersey and New York in 2012.

No surfers challenged the waves in Sandy and no one was fool enough to mess with Florence.

The name lost its popularity in the 1930s.

Florence Henderson is the only woman with that prenom in the 1970s.

She was born in 1934.

Strangely had been revived in the 2010s.

Hence Hurricane Florence.

Donald Trump said we have everything under control.

From a gold course.

He shot a 65.

In stiff winds.

The US Meteorological Survey predicted that the rainfall would amount to nineteen trillion gallons, which is about 1/13th of the water in Lake Superior.

A cold lake to surf.

The Atlantic is a big ocean.

An expanse of salt water stretching from pole to pole.

The melting ice caps have created the Swell.

The water does not spread evenly across the globe.

It pools in height according to the power of the cosmos and climate scitentists are now predicting a Category 6 Hurricane.

Enough to engulf the coast.

And cast the world into darkness.

Not forever.

Just enough to make man realize that we have to deconsume.

It's the only way to go.

And there's more to come.

Galileo's Eternal Salute

Galileo Galilei helped restore science to Europe with his telescopic exploration of the solar system and stars. The Holy Mother Church in Rome was confounded by his heliocentric beliefs that the Earth revolved around the Sun, which was contrary to geocentricism. His Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems attacked the ignorance of Pope Urban VIII's Vatican. The Pope had him tried for heresy by the Inquisition. Galileo was found guilty and sentenced to house arrest for life. For an additional punishment the Holy See required his reading seven penitential psalms once a week in the presence of papal representatives.

Upon his death in 1642 the Grand Duke of Tuscany wished to bury the great astronomer in splendor. The Pope refused him and Galileo's remains were stuck a small chamber of the Basilica of Santa Croce.

In 1737 his corpse was transported to better surroundings and during transportation his middle finger was snapped off for veneration.

Upright it says everything a heretic would want to say about the Church.

Which is 'Fuck you.'

Now more than ever.

See it at the Florence History of Science Museum.

It's there.

Among the more famous of its collections is the middle finger from the right hand of Galileo Galilei, which was removed when Galileo's remains were transported to a new burial spot on April 12, 1737.

Along with his thumb

It is a remarkable bit of irony, the finger: venerated, kept in a shrine, subjected to the same treatment as a saintly relic. But this finger belonged to no saint. It is the long bony finger of an enemy of the church, a heretic.

As with a fine wine, it took some years for Galileo’s finger to age into something worth snapping off his skeletal hand. The finger was removed by one Anton Francesco Gori on March 12, 1737, 95 years after Galileo’s death. Passed around for a couple hundred years it finally came to rest in the Florence History of Science Museum.

In 2009 two more fingers and a tooth belonging to Galileo were discovered at at auction. The spare parts had disappeared in 1905, not seen for 100 years. But then the purchaser was able to deduce their origin, and has returned them to the Science Museum where they match a detailed description from when they were last seen.

Today the middle finger sits in a small glass egg (presumably soon to be joined by the newly discovered fingers) among lodestones and telescopes, the only human fragment in a museum devoted entirely to scientific instruments. It is hard to know how Galileo would have felt about the final resting place of his finger. Whether the finger points upwards to the sky, where Galileo glimpsed the glory of the universe and saw God in mathematics, or if it sits eternally defiant to the church that condemned him, is for the viewer to decide.