New Favorite Books

I can't pick. Repairman Jack, Monster Hunters, or Grand Central Arena.

I finished Repairman Jack's latest release, Fatal Error, over Thansgiving and it was excellent, but not as good as some of the others. HOWEVER, as part of the series, it completely rocks! The whole series has really grabbed me in and won't let go. The series is by F. Paul Wilson and is probably classified as Supernatural Horror. It's only moderate on the horror part, though the drama and tension levels in some of the books probably qualify as horror - I very rarely feel sick to my stomach as a book builds the tension, but this series does that for me regularly.

Monster Hunters is a series by an apparently up-coming writer Larry Correia, and MHI and now the follow-up MHI Vendetta really nail the turbo-charged adventure genre with tons of blow-away-the-monsters action, amped to 11. In the first one, he goes a little bit overboard on the gun descriptions (Larry is a certified gun-nut) but not as crazily as some other authors do (Tom Clancy, I'm looking at YOU) and the story blasts along at lightning pace.

Grand Central Arena is the latest one that my brother got me hooked on - a big one by Ryk E. Spoor. (I REALLY hope that's a publishing pseudonym!) I absolutely loved his first published book, Digital Knight, and I should have followed up on this one too, but I read the beginning and it didn't grab me (because I thought the whole book was about the topic of the beginning). As it is, the universe Spoor builds in Grand Central Arena is absolutely awesome! I won't ruin it for anyone beyond this: an artificially constructed universe/dimension containing an accurate scale model of the universe down to the individual planets around the stars! Gotta love that sort of world to play in!

Personal Data

This post is mainly a reference for myself in calculating how many Joules (or calories or Calories) are expended to lift a mass a certain amount (here on Earth).

1 Calorie is 1000 calories is 4200 Joules.
1 J can lift 0.1 kg 1 meter
1 Calorie can lift 420 kg 1 meter (about 926 lbs).

Lifting 1 lb for 1 meter requires 0.00108 Calories.

Most of my lifts are about half a meter (just estimating).
Going up my five flights of stairs is about 20 meters.

To calculate the number of Calories needed to lift masses, multiply the weight of the mass times the number of meters moved. Multiply the total by 0.00108.

My exercise today has used 29.6 Calories.

The jar of applesauce I had for lunch had 540 Calories.

Just Jumping on the Bandwagon

I don't typically post politics stuff on here, but this one I decided to put up. I was moderately impressed by the recording last week of a guy who refused to have an "enhanced pat-down" when he refused to go through the full-body scanner. A lot of hastles, but I wasn't as concerned about the hastles because I saw them mostly as the product of a confused and rather moronic bureaucracy. The principal of being required to have someone fondle you or look at naked images of you in order to fly is of some more weight than the bureaucratic bungling.

What did impress me was what I found as I looked further into what happens with the TSA's screening. Hands inside the underwear groping around, requirements to display breasts, aggressive groping (to the point of causing accute pain) of genitals and breasts, bursting a bladder bag onto the wearer even after being warned several times, and having a kid (6 to 9 years old?) take his shirt off for a patdown.

The great and horrible irony of this is that this year has more people driving compared to flying than ever before, and if any of that is due to reluctance to go through the enhanced security, the security could wind up being responsible for the deaths of more people (through more traffic accidents) than they might have ever saved.

I am very glad we are driving for Thanksgiving this year, and am really, really hoping we don't have to go through any enhanced pat-downs when we do have to fly. Decisions, decisions - let them pat me down and get on to family on time, or refuse and possibly get refused and blow our entire holiday and family time?

I know! I'll take the great American third option! Let it happen and then sue the TSA for million for sexual assault! :-D

(I suspect there would be a few thousand people ahead of me in line)

My "exciting" stuff

TGM slept through the night! (or not, I woke up this morning to find that C had made a 2 AM trip to get TGM back to sleep) Still, it was pretty cool to wake up at 6:45 and realize that TGM wasn't awake too!

Yes, that qualifies as "exciting" for me.

Paintball yesterday! Had a ton of fun at Nick's place for paintball an there was a group of 20 there! That certainly adds a different flavor to the game from my normal experience of eight players. On the down-side of things, I didn't come away with hardly any welts - only one little red mark on my right shoulder. On the up-side of things, I didn't get many welts because I was HOT!

That's not so much a reflection on my own skill, but rather on that of my team - we all stuck together, moving forward as a spread-out and mutually supporting group. It was marvelous to be a part of. I just happened to be the most aggressive on my team on my half of the field, so I tended to be the one who was moving forward under the cover fire of my team, so I racked up the kills.

Today is my only day of work this week! (at least the work that I get paid for) Tomorrow I'm heading out to cut wood again. If anyone in my area knows of anyone who could use some help with heating this winter and uses wood at all, let me know. I think we'll have more than the people we already know about can use.

This weekend we're going to be able to go to my niece and nephew's dedication! A couple scheduling things came together and it seems like the entire family will be there all on the right day.

And, then a bit of news stuff that I find exciting:
Baby Black Hole Spotted Being Born Very, very cool!

Engineered Bacteria Can Fill Cracks in Aging Concrete You've got to read all the things they've engineered the bacteria to do!

Early Orthodontic Treatments

Getting Paid to Eat Dinner

Yes, that is what we are doing. We are getting paid to have dinner tonight. We're getting paid $0.45 to be precise.

The pasta sauce - 5 cents paid.
The pasta - free and a 50 cent coupon got us 50 cents back!
Pie for dessert - free.

Oh yeah! C is a wonder worker!

Ballet Magnificat

For anyone who might be interested, I thought it was well worth it. Ballet Magnificat is an excellent touring ballet troupe that is dedicated, as they put it, "to presenting the good news of Jesus Christ to the whole world."

The ballet skill and production was excellent, especially considering they were performing in a gymnasium! They have a Nutcracker production that I dearly wish we could attend, but it's all the way down in Mississippi. I suspect that their production (using the Nutcracker music and general flow) is up to rivaling the much more famous ballet troupes.

Some of their choreography was absolutely stunning, as was some of their imagery used. If anyone has the chance I would highly recommend it!

Many thanks to SS and SG who babysat TGM for us so we could attend on the spur of the moment!

Favorite Author (at the moment)

Timothy Zahn!!

I've gone through a few of his books over the last couple months, and I've found that he writes fantastic mysteries! And just to make them even more uber awesomer they're sci-fi too!

Night Train to Rigel
The best "train mystery" I've read since Murder on the Orient Express. And not only that, but there is an entire series with this character, though the later ones move away from the "train mystery who-done-it" genre a bit more.

Along the same lines is Icarus Hunt, which is also very much a who-done-it mystery, though it's certainly has a bit more adventure in it than Agatha Christy or Dorothy Sayers put into their books.

MANY years ago I read Zahn's Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy and I think they are better than the original books, and I would vastly prefer to see these books made into movies than the prequals which actually got produced.

However, my favorite author may be changing soon to F. Paul Wilson. He latest in the Repairman Jack series has just come out, Fatal Error, and when I read it, my favorite author (of the month/week/day) will probably change again.

Despite the rain, it's a GOOD day

Partly because TGM nearly slept through the night last night. She woke up at some point during the night, but C was able to get her back to sleep in the crib. Thank you, honey! It's a rainy, blegh day out there, but I'm feeling pretty good!

How about a couple news items? Why? Just because.

Broken Taboo: A Major Journal Publishes Evidence of ESP I obviously can't see the study itself, but it sounds like it did a pretty good job. I am a bit suspicious of the picture-beautiful test's validity in detecting ESP, but the picture-location test sounds pretty solid.

Libraries reinvent themselves as they struggle to remain relevant in the digital age I particularly enjoyed some quotes in there by a former president of the ALA: "The argument that all these young people would turn up to play video games and think, 'Oh by the way, I must borrow that book by Dostoyevsky' — it seems ludicrous to me." I'm not sure that is really the argument being made, but it's still a funny quote!

That's about all for today. Just a quick bit of fluff.

Geocentrism Part 5

And yes, Part 5, and final segment, has been posted with a wrap up of suggestions to the conference.

Basically the summation is to put on a more comprehensible production. I'm not sure that is entirely feasible. A LOT of their reasoning required a heavy glossing over of details, hand-waving, and things like that. There's only so much that sort of stuff can be made comprehensible to others without becoming blatantly and obviously ridiculous. (right now the disorganization hides some of the nonsense)

But, anyway, on to something else.

I ran across something online that I thought was a good question. It wasn't something I had noticed before, because Noah's Flood has never been something I have studied to exhausting, er, exhaustive detail.

Genesis 8:7-12. It is Noah sending out the birds after the Ark has gone aground. The hills around him are starting to show their peaks, and after 40 days he sends out a raven. It flies around (it doesn't say exactly how many days) and the water recedes and dries up from the land. After that, it says Noah then sends out a dove but it can't find anywhere to land because water covers all the land.

What's up with that? The water had receded down so that the land was once again all dry. Then suddenly the water has again flooded over all the land. Then seven days later a dove goes out and the water has apparently receded again and an olive tree has had time to grow up and produce a leaf in those seven days.

The question of how that could work out was put forward to a writer for AiG and so far the guy has danced around replying, only saying that it is "complex". Individuals who write for AiG aren't supermen or anything, so it's not like all of AiG is stumped just because one of their writers doesn't know the answer, but it doesn't look likely to have a decent reply, and I would be really interested to find one.

I've done a bit of Internet research and haven't found anything addressing this question, so I'll put it forward to those few who read my blog - anything coming to mind how Gen 8:7-12 can make sense?

Geocentrism Part 4

***HEAD EXPLOSION***

Wow, I got my answer to the question "Why aren't other planets, stars, and galaxies flying off instead of staying in their orbits around earth while traveling thousands to trillions of times faster than the speed of light?"

Apparently that's just not a problem for the "omnipotent aether plenum". That's your first clue that cuckoos are flying thick and fast.

Then comes the explanation.

What is the "inverse" of nothing? Infinity! (I suspect he meant "opposite", not "inverse".)

Therefore God is the "inverse" of nothing. Got that?

Ok, now E=mc^2 means that omnipotent equals infinite density. (I'll bet you didn't know that, did you?)

Thus the plenum is infinitely dense. (ahhh, it all makes sense! ... or not quite)

But how can things move through something that is infinitely dense, you may ask, you dense ignoramuses, you. Well, obviously that's not a problem because as everyone knows, motion through an infinitely dense plenum is possible if the plenum is uncreated and the movement is cyclical. (duh!)

And then you need to take into account the "Planck particle" (the what?) that is the "firmament" of the Bible. (ohhhh, I see ....)

The plenum is God's power and is infinite, and so we need the Planck particle to protect us from that infinite power. (so that's why my socks go missing!)

So voila! As has been clearly demonstrated, science firmly proves that geocentrism is true.

The series by Dr. Wood who attended the conference on geocentrism and has been good enough to share with us is on his blog, toddcwood.blogspot.com, and his part 4 of the series is found here.

Waking up at night

TGM seems to have gotten into the habit of waking up at night, usually around 12:30 to 1:00 in the morning. We're hoping it is a phase she leaves quickly. We went through that phase before (thankfully it was quite short) when she was much younger, and there is zero desire to go through it again.

This time there's a twist, though. I can't get her to sleep again. It has to be C to put her back to sleep. I can pat her all I want, but she won't quiet down, but if C walks into the room TGM will calm down just by having C there.

Ahh, the power of mommy.

Last night was a bit extra frustrating though for a few reasons. I gave it a shot, but wasn't having any success until C came in and stood next to me where TGM could see her. Then it was all better. TGM was satisfied. TGM was happy. TGM was not going back to sleep.

After 10 minutes, we thought she might be asleep, but 10 seconds after my hand left her (a process I took several minutes to cautiously achieve) she woke back up. I tried again. No luck. C tried several times. No luck.

We eventually caved and C nursed her. No luck. We finally had to go through her entire bedtime routine, complete with two books read to her and goodnight prayers before she settled down to sleep. At 1:30 in the morning.

This too shall pass.

My mother

My mom is very important to me.

I love her very much.

I even sometimes call her.

Like today, I gave her a call to wish her a happy birthday.

Today is not her birthday.

Oops.

Geocentrism Part 3

Hanging out with the Geocentrists, Part 3

This one is more about history than anything else. It sounds like a lot of bits of history were glossed over, fuzzed, tweaked, and otherwise fiddled with. And, then toss in the positions of the main speaker as an RCC and his view that the Magisterium can never be wrong, no matter what.

Geocentrism Part 2

Yesterday was a post about a Geocentrism conference, and here's the second part. Hanging Out With the Geocentrists, Part 2

I'm afraid my question from yesterday became even more severely a problem. Apparently one of the speakers stated that the entire universe rotates around the Earth every day. I can't imagine where there could be any possible support for that, but apparently the majority of the speakers weren't obvious lunatics and had at least some sort of explanation for things.

However, just to point out the immediate issue with that claim, let's consider one of the Alpha Centauri stars which are about 4 light years away. With Earth at the center, and a 4 ly radius, that is a 25 light year circumference path which those start take if they are orbiting the Earth every day, which means those stars must be traveling over 9000 times the speed of light!!! The figures get even more ridiculous as stars and galaxies even more distant are considered.

How can he possibly explain this?

Beyond just the speed issue, there is also centrifugal force. (nobody get all hinky on me, I know that centrifugal force isn't really a force in itself, yadda, yadda, yadda) As a weight on a string is swung around your head, faster and faster, the force that pulls the weight away from the center becomes greater and greater. If you keep swinging that weight around faster and faster, the force gets greater and greater until eventually the string would break, and the weight would go flying off in a straight line from the position when the string broke.

So, what keeps the Alpha Centauri from flying off? That is such a ridiculously obvious question that I can't imagine they haven't had to deal with it in some way. I just can't imagine how they could deal with it.

Geocentrism

I have caught a couple chuckles from various sources about a geocentrism conference that just recently happened. I was curious to know how it turned out, and it looks like a blog author I follow attended!

Hanging out with the Geocentrists, Part 1

One of the more interesting things I learned is that the modern geocentrist movement doesn't have everything in the solar system orbiting the Earth, instead the other planets orbit the Sun, and the sun orbits the Earth.

That still opens up a massive problem to me - orbits are no longer even vaguely circular, and there must be massive forces which are at work keeping them in the paths we see instead of being slung outward by the gravitational changes that would be happening were the Sun really orbiting the Earth.

For example, Jupiter would be tugged in drastically different directions as the sun moves from one side of its orbit around Earth to the other, and yet we don't see those changes in acceleration. Picture it like this laid out on a piece of paper - Jupiter is WAY out from the Earth in the "up" direction rotating clockwise while the Sun is to the "left" of Earth, also rotating clockwise. The sun would be tugging Jupiter "backwards to the left", slowing its orbit and tugging it "inward". Six months later, the sun would be on the opposite side of Earth, and Jupiter wouldn't have moved much in relation to the earth in just that six months, so we can envision it in pretty much the same place. Now, the Sun's gravity would be pulling it "forward to the right, accelerating Jupiter's orbit.

I won't describe all the different things that would happen, but suffice it to say that there is no possible way that Jupiter could stay in orbit around the Sun if the Sun had a 150 million kilometer radius orbit around Earth.

Dr. Wood said they had a lot of different explanations ready (not all of them comprehensible), and I would love to hear their explanation for my question.

Good comment on 1 Cor 8:9-13

Nothing particularly earth-shattering, but I thought he put it together very nicely.

Good Theology Rightly Applied (1 Corinthians 8:9–13)

Hyperbole? Never!!!

I have a question that may appear somewhat out of the blue. I'm wondering if any readers have comments.

What might be a word other than hyperbole that fits this phrase? Or, is the phrase indeed a hyperbole?

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, 'Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.' And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?'
Acts 2:5-11

The specific phrase I'm looking at is in the first verse, "every nation under heaven". Now, I would not have called that hyperbole since hyperbole is an overstatement to make something seem more extreme than it is. Maybe that's what Luke was trying to do - make it seem bigger than it was. I don't think so though, especially in light of what he puts shortly after - he lists out the groupings of "nations" which describes his "every nation under heaven" phrasing.

So, to me, it doesn't seem that what he says is really hyperbole, but I can't come up with a term that really fits what I think he was doing - a common turn of phrase that wasn't intended to exaggerate but rather to communicate that there were a lot of nations there.

Is there a concise term which means that? The closest I'm thinking of is something like "figure of speech". Is there a better one?

The reason I bring this up is that I read an article in "Acts & Facts" (publication of the Institute for Creation Research) where they apparently take offense at the idea that "hyperbole" can be used in a historical account in the Bible, and so they try to prove that it is a literally precise and accurate statement which would hold up to a scientific counting and comparison of every "nation" on Earth.

How that ties back into my question about the term "hyperbole" is thus: I think it is the term "hyperbole" and its connotations which cause a reaction of such a bizarre interpretation. I suspect that if they looked at the the "every nation under heaven" phrase and approached it as a commonly used turn of phrase that isn't intended to be taken literally and isn't intended to exaggerate, they wouldn't have nearly so extreme a reaction.

I think the label used is creating an adverse reaction. So, my question - is there a term that fits that phrasing better than "hyperbole" that wouldn't evince such an adverse reaction?

The labeling aspect is only one thing, though. Ignoring that, I have to shake my head at the bizarre reasoning and linkings used which is supposed to show that "every nation under heaven" is a scientifically accurate phrase describing the gathering in Jerusalem. But, dealing with that part is just beating up on a defenseless target.

W00T on the car!

God is good, All the time! All the time, God is good! Now that's true even when we're going through hard times, but it's easier to cheer that out when the good times are here.

This is one of those good times!

C had a car fire, perhapse some have heard. She and TGM were safe. It happened shortly (30 seconds?) before she got to her destination, and when she called 911, the responding firetruck was pulling up before she had gotten TGM all the way out of the car! The fire stayed relatively small, and they put it out quickly.

Still, the repairs were going to cost close to $1000!!!! (the alternator had failed and started the fire, so it, some casing, and a couple sets of wires around it needed to be replaced)

However! We found out that the alternator, which had been replaced earlier this spring, was still under warranty and they would cover everything - parts and labor!!

Happy dance! Happy dance!

So, we are happy to throw a celebration and thank God since we were just blessed with considerably more than recovering a single lost coin!

Good training!

Yesterday was another training day which AP lead, again working on gun defenses. We used a real pistol this time instead of the hard rubber one, and it made quite a difference - it has a lot more little variations in shape, weight, etc, which make it tougher to handle smoothly.

We finally moved up to having it loaded so we could have a more realistic training and it was so much fun! My ears are still ringing and I have powder burns on my cheek from it going off as I twisted it out of his hand. I didn't get shot any, but there were a couple close calls, and I got a bit of a nick on my ankle when a stone in the ground splattered off shards. All in all, an awesome training!

After that we worked on defense against someone with a rifle-type gun. My favorite thing which I got from that was that many times when you've taken the guy down or hit him and then take away the gun, you are usually in a great position for jabbing the gun right back into him, hard, or coming around for a butt stroke with the gun.

(Ok, ok, that second paragraph was made up.)

Coolest part which would only happen in the movies - AP showed me how to do that really cool one-handed disassembly of a gun barrel.

1) Step in and grab the attacker's wrist/forearm as you smash his face/throat with your elbow. (head butt gets bonus points, but be careful)

2) As you step back, grab the gun's barrel and press-toggle the button and release on the sides.

3) Continue stepping back, sliding the barrel off of the pistol.

4) LOOK REALLY FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!!

Halloween weekend

I will try my hardest to get some pictures up on here of costumes. I promise. Until then, you'll have to suffice with the verbal description.

TGM was a bumblebee, and Jeremiah was a ninja, complete with nunchucks. Saturday evening we went to a Trunk or Treat at a nearby church, and both Jeremiah and TGM loaded up with candy. What is a "Trunk or Treat"? There were about 20 vehicles decorated up with their trunks/backs opened up and handing out candy. There were also some games, food, prizes, and puppets. A very nice set up - safe and contained, yet with enough candy and festivities to be fun.

Sunday didn't start out so well for TGM - about 5:00 she woke up with some dry heaves. After a bit of nursing, she had two more bouts of throwing up, and some more heaving. But, by the time Jeremiah and I headed off for church she seemed to be doing better. It was either the fastest virus I've ever heard of, or maybe she ate something that didn't agree with her, but neither of us can figure out what it may have been.

After church, Jer and I headed out to a corn maze at a farm not too far away and had a blast out there for a couple hours. The favorite (as measured by time spent) was a huge jumping pillow about 80 feet long and 30 feet wide. A very close competitor was the Pumpkin Cannon and the Corn Gun - lots and lots of fun!

After Jer left, I headed over to the P's house which they had done up VERY well! The kids seemed to be a bit sparse this year compared to what I remember from last year, and I wonder if it might have been due to the Halloween parade in town. Still, there were some fun costumes and AP's daughter, dressed as a princess, was in full-blown royalty mode as she handed out candy to those who came asking.

Did anyone have a "problem" with people coming without a costume? We had at least a dozen kids without costumes come walking around asking for candy. The common excuse was that they were "serial killers". Groan. That might have been clever the first year some kids used it, but it has long since gone OLD! No candy for them!

There was one that I didn't get at first - I thought it was a no costume girl. When asked though, she said she was Snookie! Well, I guess it beats "serial killer".