Yabusame: An arrow shooting metaphor for Hayabusa

Yoritomo time travels...

Chiyoda Onomoto: Yabusame

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Yoritomo: Is your “Hayabusa” a peregrine falcon?

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JAXA Scientist: It’s a metaphor. Hayabusa will pass Ryugu and then fire an arrow at it like samurai used to do in yabusame in your times

JAXA: Shooting an arrow,
galloping to safety

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Yoritomo: Is Ryugu a country?

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JAXA Scientist: It’s a small asteroid, a rock spinning in space.

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Yoritomo: And you will attack it? For what purpose?

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JAXA Scientist: For knowledge. Not to conquer. When the device detonates, the Hayabusa will have moved around to the safe side of the asteroid, away from debris fallout.

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Yoritomo: Aha. Like the samurai who galloped on by to safety.

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Voice-over

Nice use of metaphor using samurai skills to explain modern Japanese science and technology feats.

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Inspired by Galileo's Telescopes

An early interest in astronomy…

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Jacques: When I was ten I joined an astronomy club. Someone gave a talk about Galileo building his own telescope. I thought I’d try to build one too.

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Antonia: And did you?

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Jacques: Well, I didn’t grind the lenses like he did but I put two lenses at opposite ends of two sliding cardboard tubes.

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Antonia: It worked?

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Jacques: After a fashion. It only had a magnification of about 3 times, and the image was fuzzy. But I painted the tubes red and gold like Galileo’s. It looked artistic.

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Voice-over

The telescope was not even as powerful as a spyglass, which preceded Galileo’s models. He ground his own lenses and went from 8 times magnification up to 30 times. And the instruments looked good too. An age of art and science.

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Humboldt and Bonpland as polymaths

Going different ways…

Friedrich Georg Weitsch (1810):
Alexander von Humboldt and
Aimé Bonpland near Mt Chimborazo
(imagined landscape)

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Bonpland: It’s been a propitious five years. Finding 6,000 new species. We’ll go back to our countries to report of course, but I think someday I’ll settle back here.

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Humboldt: To grow maté on an orange plantation?

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Bonpland: I like farming and being a jack of all trades.

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Humboldt: You’d rather be a jack than a polymath?

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Bonpland: You’re the academic, Alexander, the geographer and naturalist. I see an opportunity in herbal teas.

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Humboldt: A jack of all trades is somewhat skilled in many trades, a polymath is learned in many academic fields. I still think you are as much a polymath as I am, Aimé.

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Voice-over

Both were polymaths: von Humboldt an explorer, geographer, astronomer, scientist, botanist, zoologist, artist and more. Bonpland an explorer, botanist, physician.

“He saw the earth as one great living organism where everything was connected…” Andrea Wulf: The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt.

Their conversation in 1804 foreshadowed Bonpland’s return to South America in 1816 where he lived until his death in 1858.

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Om: Spirituality and Science

Ask freely...
Disciple: Sensei, the teaching says that chanting OM as a mantra reaches out into the universe.

OM symbol (Devanagari)

Guru: The vibration of OM began the universe, it became the name of God, it is divine energy. By chanting OM we connect with the universe.

Disciple: A man of science, called Murakami, says that when we chant mantras like OM, the sound of it affects our DNA. He cites experiments with DNA and with frogs.

Guru: Chanting sets up a vibration which reaches inside us and creates wellbeing and spirituality. Sound waves, and light waves too, affect us in ways science has not yet well investigated.

Disciple: So when I chant OM, am I connecting with the universe, or am I connecting with DNA and feeling good?

Guru: The outer, beyond us, and the inner, within us, may be connected. Neither view contradicts the other. They are in harmony.
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Voice-over
The guru acknowledges observations of thousands of years, but accepts that modern experiments may reveal another explanation. He seeks understanding and accepts an alternative approach, and doesn’t insist on a differing dogma.

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