Toomas (Tom) Karmo
("metascientia"):
An Astrophysics-Oriented
Catholic Layman
Anticipating
a Troubled Epoch
of Climate Change,
Petroleum Depletion,
and Sociopolitical Stresses

"metascientia"
(Toomas Karmo):
a single-person
Ontario-based quasi-monastic
suburban hermitage
embracing spiritual poverty
and scientific service
in imitation of St Benedict of Nursia,
Catherine de Hueck Doherty,
and the Catholic Worker pioneers
Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day

[Visitors looking for my essay on the 2008 shutdown of Canada's David Dunlap Observatory can find it by searching in the "QUASI-LITERARY" section of this site as described below. But alternatively, and more rapidly, they can find the essay by clicking on this shortcut link.]

BUSINESS pages: expounding not so much business in the commercial sense as the business of my life; the key document in this section is my essay "Helping to Build a New Civilization in the Shell of the Old, as a Catholic Scientific-Conservation Worker in the Crises of Climate Change and 'Peak Oil': Principles Guiding My Activities"

TECHNICAL pages: supporting a couple of already-started projects (including materials on Iraqi peace activism, but not including the current big David Dunlap Observatory conservation project); probably of interest only to a few specialized visitors

QUASI-LITERARY pages: archiving writings on several unrelated themes, including the 2008 David Dunlap Observatory shutdown (in my "Future of the David Dunlap Observatory: Corrections in Language from the University of Toronto Press Release of 2007 September 10"), the looming fossil-fuels crisis (in my environmentalist manifesto "Utopia 2184"), no-frills GNU/Linux and noosphere conservation (in my "No-Frills GNU/Linux: Philosophical Foundations" manifesto), the indexing of tomorrow's Web-delivered World Wide Library, current best practices in Web development, the core-American-values case for restraint in Iraq, Catholic homosexual chastity, Canadian railway travel, and the future of TeX typesetting under XML; conceivably useful to anyone, whether prospective co-worker, established co-worker, or casual visitor

"Strenuous labour and the contemplation of God's nature are the angels which, reconciling, fortifying, and yet mercilessly severe, will guide me through the tumult of life." - Einstein at age 18, as quoted in the A. Pais biography "Subtle Is the Lord" (Oxford University Press, 1982)

"Since his primary aim was union with God, the material results of his work were less important to [a certain kind of medieval Catholic] than the growth in virtue that accompanied them. Undistracted by desire for visible success and fear of failure, [he] was able to concentrate all his energies upon the task at hand. He was freed from the enticements and terrors of the world and its values and from the tyranny of his own passions by his desire for God. Refusing to be the slave of the material universe, he became its master. As a result, he moved in serenity. A leisure of spirit marked all he did with the sign of freedom and peace." - A. Meisel and M. del Mastro, introductory note to the 1975 Doubleday (Image Book) Rule of St Benedict