Generally, on those occasions when I read something from the Bible my reaction is either, “Hmm, hmm . . . sage words,” or, “What kind of crack were these writers smoking and where can I get some?”

But I stumbled across the following yesterday while leafing through an old copy of The Magnificat given me a few years back, and was pretty impressed with the writing.

Whoever Qoheleth was he sure could paint a picture.

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,
Before the evil days come
And the years approach of which you will say,
“I have no pleasure in them”;

Before the sun is darkened,
And the light, and the moon, and the stars,
While clouds return after the rain;

When the guardians of the house tremble,
And the strong men are bent,
And the grinders are idle because they are few,
And they who look to the windows grow blind;

When the doors to the street are shut,
And the sound of the mill is low;
When one waits for the chirp of a bird,
But all the daughters of song are suppressed;

And one fears heights,
And perils in the street;
When the almond tree blooms,
And the locust grows sluggish
And the caper berry is without effect,
Because man goes to his lasting home,
And mourners go about the streets;

Before the silver cord is snapped
And the golden bowl is broken,
And the pitcher is shattered at the spring,

And the broken pulley falls into the well,
And the dust returns to the earth as it once was,

And the life breath returns to the God who gave it.

“Vanity of vanities,” says Qoheleth,
“All things are vanity!”

– Ecclesiastes 12:1-8

Apparently this is also the origin of the “silvery cord” image adopted by occult literature and popular role-playing games. Who knew?

Here at the Broad there seems to be a constant re-construction of the work-space going on. In fact since I started here I’m not sure if there’s ever been a time when some part of the building wasn’t being torn apart and reorganized. My collegue Abderrahim and I have been displaced twice already due to this construciton and apparently in an upcoming phase of the process we will be displaced yet again, although in theory we’ll eventually end up back in our current space after the work is done.

In preparation for our potential move we were actually asked if there was anything necessary to make our temporary accomodations more suitable to the work we undertake. Since the proposed new space (a decontaminated, decomissioned BL 2 lab) is situated next to another area (the weighing room) owned by our team, we thought possibly we might be able to combine the two spaces in some way, potentially by expanding through the separating drywall.

Not knowing how far the facilities folks would be willing to go in reorganizing the space I drew up several proposals of how the space might be arranged to our advantage, a few of which are detailed below:

Drawings are to scale except for wall thickness which I found difficult to estimate accurately.

After reviewing these proposals the facilities folks informed us that Proposal 1 was out. Breaking through the drywall would not be feasable since that wall contained a significant amount of plumbing and electrical conduit.

Sadly, though I had a warm place in my heart for it, Proposal 3 was rejected as well. No reason was given for the rejection, though I suppose the high pricetag on research grade ethanol stock solutions might have something to do with it.

Ultimately it looks like they’ll be implementing Proposal 2, most likely due to it’s simplicity.