The Athanasius Kircher Society Resurfaces

As many of our readers know, I have a great fondness for the Baroque Jesuit scientist Fr. Athanasius Kircher, the last man who knew everything. Kircher frequently got the wrong end of the stick (though not as often as one might think -- his universe was definitely a heliocentric one), but his work is so crammed with wonderful weirdness--a cat piano, a sunflower clock, dragon-shaped balloons with