You Can Find Anything

In the “You can find anything on the Internet” department, this may not be much to you, but I was rather impressed.  Maybe I’m easily impressed, but remember I grew up in an era when phone numbers were four digits long and you had to call the local (and I mean right in the town you were living in) operator to make a long distance call.  And a trip to Wichita, which was only 45 miles away, was maybe a once-a-year thing, and you checked the oil, tires, and radiator hoses in the car before you took off.  If you couldn’t find what you wanted at the local store, you just didn’t buy it.  Or you maybe ordered it out of the Sears, J C Penney, or Montgomery Ward (Monkey Ward) catalogs if they weren’t being used for toilet paper in the outhouse (We DID have a sewer connection, so our catalogs were used for kids to sit on at the table so they could reach things.).

Anyway, the wife and I have had our Buick buggy for about 10 years.  It came with a couple of key fobs, which wore to the point that the hole in them that fit them on our key rings wore through and we could no longer put them on a key ring.  The fobs worked; we just couldn’t put ‘em on our key rings.  So we iced them and used keys.  By the way, the word “fob” has an interesting and varied definition and past.  Google it sometime by putting “define fob” in the search criterion box.

One day, the wife asks if I can somehow fix the hole, maybe by using epoxy or something.  I check it out and decide I can’t do anything with it.  Then I get the brilliant idea to check the Internet to see if someone else had this same problem and what they may have done to fix it, besides going to a dealer and getting a new fob for two and a half prices.

Lo and behold, when I searched, I found a place that sold not only OEM fobs, but also sold OEM fob covers that perfectly matched, down to the name of the manufacturer and part number, our old fobs.  The covers cost about four dollars plus shipping.  I paid I think about twelve dollars all together for two fobs and shipping.

We got them yesterday, and I put the old electronics into the new fob covers last night.  I am now the proud carrier of a fob on my car key ring again!  I am truly impressed with the Internet and the fact that one may indeed purchase almost anything.  I think next I’ll buy some genuine Dead Sea salt.  I hear it’s good for what ails me…

Another Thanksgiving

“Another Thanksgiving down the tubes.”  So said a not-to-be-named brother as he and his family left our house Saturday evening following a day of eating, visiting, card-playing, walking in the park, and whatever else folks did during that time.  He didn’t mean it in a nasty or curmudgeonly way, I’m sure.  It was a long and tiring day for them, as they started it in northern Kansas, then drove back to Wichita and came to our place in time to finish out the day.

Yet in a way, he’s probably more correct than he may know regarding Thanksgivings “down the tubes.”  We all are getting older.  We have had many, many more Thanksgivings in our past than we have in our futures.  And for all we know, we may not have any more in our futures.  So it would seem to me that we would want to make each one count; make each one something to be remembered; make each one genuine and special.  Because we never know whether it will be our last.

Yes, it’s tiring.  We don’t travel as well as we used to.  We don’t have the strength and stamina that we used to have.  It takes more out of us to clean the house, cook the food, set up the tables, and take out the trash.  Gasoline costs more.  Food costs more.  We’re battling more chronic ailments and infirmities.  We like to regress into our ruts more so than we used to do.  And some of us may have to take an hour or so out and nap in the middle of the afternoon just to make it through the day.

God willing, we’ll do it all again Christmas.  We’ll celebrate with the in-laws.  We’ll celebrate with the family.  We’ll try to make schedules fit, possibly having to zip (as fast as old people can zip) from one house to another in time for the celebrations.  We’ll fumble with gifts and ooo and aahh as the grandkids open theirs.  There will be home-prepared food in abundance…some brought in by the guests.  And there will be the traditions that yet another year will help bind hearts and souls together.

And so it goes (to borrow a phrase).  The wise man  said that there is a time appointed for everything.  There is a time to give birth, and a time to die; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.  There is a time for thanksgiving; a time for being together; for enjoying the company of friends and loved ones.  If we are Christians, we recognize that just as we recognize that there is something more…that God has set eternity in our hearts…and we prepare here for that great and unending Thanksgiving feast there in the presence of the God who made us and loves us.

More Science Stuff

More science “stuff” to ponder.  Credit Scientific American.

If you were traveling away from the Earth at 40% of the speed of light (74,400 miles a second), and someone fired a laser beam (light beam) toward you, would the light in the laser be coming toward you at 111,600 miles a second (the speed of light minus the speed you are traveling away from the light source, or would the laser beam still be coming toward you at 186,000 miles a second?  Answer:  The beam would still be coming toward you at 186,000 miles a second.  The laws of nature are the same no matter how fast you are moving relative to anything else in the universe.

The faster you travel,; the slower time passes for you.  Additionally, the faster you travel, you become “length contracted”.  That is, you begin to flatten like a pancake along the direction you are traveling.  You also would gain mass the faster you travel.  If you could travel at the speed of light, you would lose the third dimension entirely, but would have infinite mass.

If you push a rock up a hill, it gains gravitational potential energy, and therefore also gains mass, because mass and energy are interchangeable and identical.

If you could turn the mass of an ordinary golf ball into energy, that energy would power a 75 watt light bulb for about 2 million years (about 1,300 megawatts of power).

The path of earth’s movement through space-time is called a world line.  Earth’s world line is shaped like a helix.

As GPS satellites orbit the earth, variations in gravity slow their internal clocks relatie to one another.  Scientists use Einstein’s theory of General Relativity to correct the errors.

The core temperature of the sun is estimated at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.  Every second, it crushes 700 million tons of hydrogen into 695 million tons of helium.  The other 5 million tons is turned into energy.

Photons created inside the sun can take upwards of a million years to get to the surface, even though they travel at the speed of light.  The mass particles are crushed so tightly inside the sun that the photons constantly bounce off of them and only gradually reach the surface.

That’s it for this time.  More cool stuff in a later post.

One Hit Wonders and Parables

Our church custodian is a busy man.  He is continually doing something at the building which involves cleaning, painting, repairing, or something else.  He does have a routine, however, and on Mondays he usually is in the auditorium cleaning up after the Sunday services.  On days when he does this, or if there are times when he will be working some other place for a period of time, he will play a boom box.  The songs are invariably Simon and Garfunkel.

He is about my age, and although I have never asked, he probably grew up listening to them as well as others of that era.  They, however, seem to have a lot more staying power than most of the other groups and individuals that inhabited that era.

There are others, of course.  Peter, Paul, and Mary immediately come to mind.  The Beatles are yet another.  Chicago, John Denver, and others come to mind.  You can make your own list, which may or may not have all of the same groups and performers that mine has.

Then there are the one hit wonders.  Steam, the Cuff Links, Zager & Evans, Lemon Pipers, The Fifth Estate, the Murmaids and many others hit that list.  You can find a complete list at Wikipedia, by the way.  These groups or performers had but one hit on the top 40 charts.  Some of them, such as the Statler Brothers, were hits in their own right in other venues, not all that concerned with being in the top 40; it just happened that way.  Others really tried to break into the industry as a career, but it just didn’t gel.

We had a sermon yesterday on the parable Jesus told about the sower who went out to sow his seed.  As he scattered it, some fell on a hard pathway.  Some fell on rocky places where there wasn’t much soil.  Some fell where there were thorns and thistles growing.  But some fell on good soil and produced a good crop.

The lesson from the parable is, of course, the idea of the message of God being scattered and falling on the hearts and minds of people.  Some are like the hard, pathway soil and the message doesn’t penetrate.  Others are like the rocky soil where the message sprouts, but can’t get a good footing in the shallow soil.  Still others are like the soil where the thorns and thistles grow…the good plants are crowded out by the bad.

But there are some people upon which the message is like the seed that finds its way to the good soil.  The message of God’s love for mankind sprouts, grows, and produces a crop…a child of God and another sower who goes out and scatters seed.

Although the story is old and familiar, the meaning remains fresh to this day.  Our job as Christians is not to determine who will or will not accept the message.  Our job is to “scatter the seed;” spread the message to all who will hear.  It’s up to them to decide what kind of soil they will be in their hearts and minds for the seed of God’s message of love and forgiveness.

The one hit wonders sort of remind me of those people within whom the message of God sprouts, but has no firm footing…those with rocky soil.  They spring up for a short while, but don’t last.  The ones who had a lasting career remind me of the people with the good soil.  They are the ones that have what it takes to produce a crop over time.  I know, that’s not true every time with every one hit wonder and every long-lasting group.  But from now on, I’ll probably connect those two separate thoughts in my mind whenever I think either of the parable of the sower or of the one hit wonders of the 1960’s.

Week Off

Taking this week off.  See you next week.