Weekly Adventure

This week is coming to an end and I do not really know what to blog about. Thus, I thought I would relate one of the events that occurred during this week. This particular occurrence happened on Monday. I was working in the shop at around four-fifty in the afternoon when I got a call from one the kids in the youth group I help lead. Basically, they wanted to know if I could take them and a couple of the other kids “exploring.” By exploring I mean walking through the storm tunnels under Joplin around the Main Street area. Well, I am always up for new things, most of the time, and I told them that after I got off of work at five I would come and pick them up. They were hanging out at the church all by themselves for whatever reason, and I had to go over there to get them. After loading up we headed down Main Street to around Fifth Street where the entrance was to be found in an alley behind the first row of buildings. After parking, the kids showed me where exactly the opening was, and it looked like at one time the area had been fenced off, but someone had clipped the fence and rolled it back. Anyway, we jumped down into the place where the entrance was, and proceeded into the gaping dark hole. For the most part the tunnel was pretty clean and dry, but it became cramped as soon as we were inside. Well, at least for me being six foot it was pretty hindering. Thus, I was doubled over for the first few minutes or so, but the passage eventually widened and the ceiling rose to the point in which I could stand up straight. I thought it would continue at the same dimensions for the rest of the way through, unfortunately, I was wrong. After about another ten minutes the tunnel size started to decrease, and remained the same for most of the rest of the way. The entire time we were traveling two of the kids were pretty nervous because they happened to be girls, but for the most part I think they did pretty well. Every now and then we would hear the scraping and scurrying of animals, but we never saw any. At one point we came across a fairly large object some distance from us in which we could not perceive what it was exactly. We thought it could have been an animal because the kids thought they saw it move. I thought it was a guy sleeping in a blanket at first, and proceeded to call out to them. However, there was no noise or response being made. So, I had to go ahead of everyone and see what it was in order for us to keep moving. As I got closer I realized it was a huge log sitting off to the side of the tunnel. This was really kind of funny at the time because we had sat for a good fifteen minutes discussing whether we should continue forward for fear that it was some wild beast that would maim us all. Eventually, after an hour and a half we made it through to the end. Indeed, it was a pretty interesting time.

The Aliens are Coming! (PS)

Life on other planets, does it exist? I do not know, and really am not very focused on the possibility. However, when I came across an article featuring Stephen Hawking warning if life does exist elsewhere in the universe humans should be a little worried, I thought it would be an interesting topic to blog about. Basically, Dr. Hawking was portraying aliens to be similar to humans in their way of thinking of gathering resources. He likened any possible encounter with aliens to Christopher Columbus coming to the “New World.” Except this time, the natives are everything on Earth. I mean that could make sense assuming that these aliens moved in a similar development of society. However, I am not completely convinced of this view (or with the existence of aliens.) Anyway, if aliens have achieved a level of ability that would give them the capability to travel throughout the universe I think that they would have matured along with their technology. This is because having such power means the destructive abilities of such a race would have been first turned upon themselves. That is of course assuming, like Dr. Hawking, that their social development would be like the history of man. The only reason weapons of mass destruction are made is to wage war upon our own race, thus any advanced aliens would have had to go through a stage of extremely destructive warfare, and after such a war in which neither side would have emerged as the victor there would probably be a maturing in society towards a peaceful way of living together. Thus, through peaceful efforts they would achieve their super-advanced status. Hence, instead of exploring space in a nomadic fashion looking for resources, as Dr. Hawking explains in the TV show Into the Universe, the aliens would have learned to be good stewards of their world, and would explore space for more civil reasons. A couple of these motives for space travel could be seeking other life to commune with, cultivating new life on planets showing promising signs, and the exhilaration of exploration. I mean, “To go where no ‘alien’ has gone before.”

I found it interesting that an earlier article talks about Dr. Hawking giving another opinion about life in the universe. Essentially, he was saying that if life does exist elsewhere in the universe most likely it is primitive. To be more exact, he was saying that primitive life is more abundant than intelligent, because such is the example we perceive here on Earth. Of course, I do not really think it matters too much. The thing about any theories of extraterrestrial life is they cannot be taken much further from the theory stage at this point in time.

If you want to know more about Stephen Hawking he has an official website. I checked it out because of my interest of finding out more of his ideas, and there was some interesting information. However, for the most part I think Dr. Hawking and I have some different perspectives on the fundamental workings of the universe. Though, he certainly has better credentials and experience than myself, but even so I think it is possible to go an entire lifetime asking and answering the wrong questions.

Wildlife

If I had the ability and the free time, do you know what I would do? I would go out on a walk-about. That’s right I would take a lesson from Dundee. I have always wanted to go into the forest and live out in nature for a while or for good, which ever one suits me at the time. I think I first started thinking about this when I was in high school. At the time though I just wanted to escape from reality, I did not like the world or anyone in it, so, I thought it would be good to live away from everything. Of course, I never really built up the courage to do such a thing. I mean, I had crush at the time, and then there was the idea of having to find and cook my own food. I think the latter is probably what deterred me the most, because I was pretty lazy back then. (Though, I still get lazy these days too.) Also, another reason for my desire to live in the wild at that time was I wanted to experience some pretty fantastic adventures. By adventures I mean, the kind of quests that are displayed in the world of fantasy. For example, I would daydream of finding a forgotten place of old with hidden mysteries waiting to be discovered, and possibly meeting an adventurous gal that I could fall head-over-heels for. Alas, nothing ever came of those fancies accept procrastination.

When I came to know the Lord, I still dreamed of living in nature. I would say, probably even more so than before. This was because, I desired to escape from what I believed was a world without hope. I thought I should just live alone and wait for the Lord’s return because I believed there was nothing that could be done for this world to steer people away from the path of destruction they walked. I was pretty pessimistic. Fortunately, I know that is not true because even one person coming to know Christ is enough to make the world better. Really, I would say that was the reason I did not abandon society, because of the command to live among people to be salt and light.

These days I would like to go out into nature for a short while and live. Mostly, I think of Jesus fasting for forty days and nights as my inspiration for this. I would be fasting from the world more than from food. Though, I guess in a way I would be fasting from the foods of society. However, I mostly would want to get a way to focus myself on God and grow deeper in Him. Also, I would like to foster a discipline of going out and appreciating the daily task of survival. Yeah, I definitely feel like getting out there and making a walking stick that could double as a spear to go fishing with, that sounds really good right now. I will definitely have to do that sometime.

iPhone Prototype (PS)

I am assuming that most people have heard about the drop-of-the-year involving the lost prototype of the new iPhone. If not, I will relate some of the details. I learned from an article that the person who happened to lose the priceless piece of equipment was an Apple engineer by the name of Gray Powell. Apparently, he had gone out to a bar about twenty miles from Apple’s base site, and was testing it while having a drink. Well, according to the article I read he said, “I underestimated how good German beer is.” This was because, he happened to simply leave the prototype sitting on the table when he left. If someone has not said this yet I will, “Epic fail!” Seriously though, I feel a little sorry for the guy. I did not really check to see if Apple gave him the boot, but maybe they did and maybe they did not. Though, I think it might be safe to say that if they didn’t Mr. Powell got a pretty good reprimand, but who knows. I mean, to be trusted with a prototype of the new iPhone says a lot about his position and capability. Anyway, after Mr. Powell left someone noticed the prototype, and an unknown person claimed it was theirs. At this time no one suspected that it was a prototype because it was in a cleverly designed case made to look like an older iPhone. However, once this person found out what they had I hear they actually tried to call Apple and give it back, but because customer service, obviously, does not know anything about prototype iPhones they wrote the call off as a joke. Thus, the guy takes his offer to the people who run a site called Gizmodo, and they pay him five thousand dollars for this thing. Now, at the time they do not know if this is the real deal, but they still paid the guy a good chunk of cash. Once in their possession they dismantle the device, and play around with it for about a week before posting an article on their site. The article goes into pretty good detail about the device, and some speculations about new features. Needless to say, Apple is most definitely not happy. Another article I read talks about the police investigating on behalf of Apple to see if they have grounds to take legal action over the issue. According to the article there is a law that calls what happened theft because they knew whose property it might have been.

Personally, I think Apple has legitimate excuse to prosecute, but at the same time I do not think they should. I say this because they got the item back. Sure, I see they might have lost some edge on the competition because of the leaked information, but that happens all the time. I do not think it is worth giving someone a hard time over, especially after they gave the item back. Besides, Apple is most definitely got some hardcore publicity for free from the Gizmodo website. Really, the real culprit is the person who played the finders-keepers game, and got 5k out of the deal. Then again, I guess he did try to give the prototype back according to what I was told.

Anime Interest (PS)

I am going to use this week’s blog to talk about an interest of mine that I have had since I was just entering into adolescence, namely, anime. Yes, I am one of those guys. Really though, since I play RPGs like Final Fantasy, this should not come as a huge shock to anyone.

One of my main things about anime is they are just fun to watch, and there are so many different genres of anime that anyone could find something they like, story-wise. Whether you like watching people with over-exaggerated features is, obviously, a completely different subject. Apparently, this was one of a few reasons why no one else in my family wanted to watch anime with me. Another, being not able to get into the storyline, but my favorite excuse was because they thought anime was for kids.

Wait a second; I am sorry, I did not give a proper definition of anime. That happens sometimes when I get into a subject; I forget to explain things to those who might not know what I am talking about. Anime is actually a Japanese word. I’ll give one try to anyone who wants to guess the meaning…if you guessed animation that would be correct. Basically, Japanese cartoons are the best way to think about anime. However, anime is not considered in the same light in Japan as cartoons are in America. In Japan, anime is more like another form of media medium, rather than shows mostly for kids. Sure there are a lot of anime generated for kids, but a good portion of it is not. Though, it is true a lot of anime that comes to the U.S. is pretty much child oriented.

In truth, there are many different styles of anime both good and bad. I found a decent site that has some definitions of different types of anime. (Warning: some of the definitions will describe genres that are, in my opinion, perverse, and should be avoided.) My favorite style is called Shonen, which is geared toward young boys under eighteen. Okay, so maybe there was some legitimate claim to the “that’s for kids argument” when it comes to what I like to watch. Though, in my defense I have to say the stuff for men between eighteen and middle-age has elements I do not think anyone needs to watch. That could be said of a lot of cartoons these days as well. Besides, the general plot for Shonen is the coming-of-age storyline, and there are a lot of good lessons depicted in them. This is especially true of my favorite title Naruto Shippuden. The official site for this show is through Vizmedia, which is responsible for bringing Shonen Jump, the official producer, to the United States. The site has a lot of information about the show and plot line. For those not aware of Naruto the anime is about a young bright-eyed-gung-ho ninja and his pursuit to become the best ninja and leader in his village, the Hokage. Hokage is the title of the head ninja, in Naruto’s village, that means “dancing flames.” Come on, how can anyone not want to know more about that!? Well that is my brief plug for anime; I hope it sparked some interest.

Late Night Thoughts

The funny thing about me is that I think a lot when I am in bed about to sleep. Sometimes it is good, and at other times I wish I didn’t because I just want to get some rest. Tonight, I happened to be thinking about what I needed to do for this week’s assignments in my classes. Naturally, blogging popped into my mind as a close second to my math assignments. Thus, I started thinking about what I talked about last time on my blog. This happened to be of parallel thought with what I was doing before I hit the sack, which was reading the Bible. I was reading in Hebrews the last part of chapter eleven and beginning of twelve. Basically, the subject was the great cloud of witnesses, which are all those believers who came before the present (whether now or back when it was written) that demonstrated their faith even to the point of suffering. This made me think of how timid I really am when it comes to sharing Christ with others. Yeah, maybe I share over the internet pretty boldly, but, honestly, it is easy to talk about Christ when I am not sitting in front of anyone else. It is similar to Paul when he talked about being bold in letter, but not in person. Although, his situation was about correction, where mine is just being scared of what people might think or say. I mean, I always look for the moments where it is easy to bring up Christ to say something. The funny thing is there are almost never any easy moments. When I thought about that, the next thing that occurred to me was, “why would Satan make it easy for you Joe?” It is really easy to forget that this world is a war zone ranging from spiritual to physical. Though, I think it might just be spiritual because I think physical war is the result of spiritual war. Paul said we war not against flesh and blood, but against evil powers and principalities. Eventually, my thoughts brought me to the realization that each encounter is a battle. That is because everything in this world is at odds with Christ. I cannot expect to have it easy when it comes to sharing Christ, because the opposition hates when Christ’s Love is displayed. I mean, the truth is we wouldn’t have to ban certain subjects from being talked about if it were not for Christ. Because everything He represents goes against what the world says or rather what the world wants. The creed of the world is to do as one pleases, “It is okay to do whatever I want as long as I do not hurt anyone or get caught.” Where as the Lord says, “follow me and my ways, do as I command it will be well with you.” For a long time I thought those were just commands of whim. I thought, “Why are those ways better than what I want to do as long as no one is hurt?” However, I bought into a lie. I was blinded to all the hurt and calamity that already existed because of that way of thinking, and to increase the irony of it I even blamed God for all the suffering of the world. Answer me this skeptic that dwells in my mind, “If everyone does what they want in such a way that no one gets hurt, why does suffering abound?” Yeah, maybe some stuff just happens, but how much effect would that have if everyone lived for everyone else in the knowledge of eternal security. The power of charity is best shown in calamity, but what if society was like that all the time? Why does it take something like 9/11 or Katrina to band people together to help others? Thus, what I have found is that God commands us to live His way because it is the best way to live. It is the only way to live in peace with no suffering for eternity. Some ways may be good for awhile, in fact even centuries. However, there is a way that seems right to men, but in the end it only leads to death. I pray I love people enough to tell them that being separated from Christ leads to eternal destruction even knowing that they will hate me for doing so. I hope I have the strength to tell them Christ wants to be with them no matter who they are or what they have done. That everyone would be together forever.

Thoughts about Truth

So, I cannot think of a subject to blog on for this one, thus I think I will just talk about the basics of my understanding. I used to think a lot of things were true based on my perceptions of people, but now I know not everything or everyone is what they may seem. Honestly, this is pretty baffling to me because it just makes sense that honesty is the best road. I realize that hiding ones true self is a defense mechanism, but I think this is sad. Also, some would say that the truth can be hurtful at times, but I think that I would rather heal from a wound of truth than fester under the sickness of a falsehood. Actually, for the most part I find the truth is eventually revealed, and sometimes to even greater detriment than would have been if it had been displayed from the beginning.

Obviously, I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. That verse says that no one comes to the Father except through Christ Jesus. This is definitely a hard truth for people to except at times. I believe this is probably the truth that brings up the most contention over Christianity. The question is, “why should there only be one way, and how do you know that this is the right way?” The answer is pretty simple, by faith I believe what Jesus taught to be the absolute truth. Many people believe faith is not a justifiable answer or means to claim something to be true. I used to believe this too at one point. However, then I examined what I believed at the time and why I believed that way. (This is another reason why Christianity is disliked I believe, because in order to trust in Christ one has to examine everything about oneself, and realize everything they based reality on was actually false.) I realized what I believed in was not a result of intricate research for the truth, but accepting what I wanted to be true from what other people said was true so that I could live the way I wanted. I did not realize it at the time, but everything I believed to be true at that time and thought was based on fact was actually based in faith. This is because I did not actually test to see if those things were true, but I accepted the opinions of others as truth. Thus, I had faith that those people were correct even though I had never met them and had never tried to see if what they said might be false. I believe everyone is biased, as humans we cannot escape being so, thus even the most objective view has a foundation of bias based on what that person wants to be true. I wanted to do as I desired, and not be bothered with what others thought. The truth is this is the very essence of pride and selfishness. In the end, I believed in Christ not because of what other Christians said about Him, but because I met Him myself. I had an encounter with His presence and love that I could not deny. I did not see His face or hear His voice, but I did feel His presence. One day I will see His face and hear His voice, and maybe that will be while I am still in this body. I pray that anyone who reads this will feel His presence and love as well. God loves you so much.

Memristors (PS)

“I love technology, not as much as you, you see, but still I love technology.” I was checking out the technology section of the New York Times for a topic to blog, and came on a sweet article about something called a memristor. This “new” technology is typical of a lot of our societies discoveries in that someone figured out what it was before there was any way to apply it that we knew about. His name is Leon Chua, an electrical engineer from the University of California, Berkeley, and he proposed the idea of memristors back in 1971. If you are wondering what these things are, then you should check out this article from IEEE Spectrum for some better understanding. However, I’ll give the definition I gleamed from reading. Basically, this thing is on the level of the basic elements of electronics (i.e. transistors, capacitors, and inductors). If you do not know anything about these things, that is not a problem. Okay, the basic rundown of how computer processing works goes something like this; all the calculations done are stored in some type of memory form, that form takes shape as what are called gates that have two states, on and off, thus ones and zeros which are known as binary code, all of a computers operation comes down to storing and calculating these ones and zeros. Now what these gates are made of and how many there are is a key component to the processing power of a computer. Many processors today are engineered to fit more and more gates onto a smaller chip. Thus, the processor, which is essentially the brain of the computer, has more speed and power to calculate.

Memristors are considered to be a break through because of their size and what they can do at that size. Essentially, they can store memory after being shut off. Normally, a small amount of power is needed to maintain memory. This is why when a computer is completely shutdown the machine must be rebooted, but one of the supposed uses of memristors is a computer will not have the need to reboot after being turned off. Also, memristors are extremely tiny. The example given in the New York Times article hypothesized that three years from now the development will have a device that can store 20 gigs per square inch. Some techy is drooling after reading that I’m sure.

Another interesting note, and I’m sure this could be pretty controversial if it is not just whimsical fancy, is that this technology could be used to simulate the human brain. This is because the memristor is similar to the functionality of a synapse, which is how nerve cells communicate signals. This could have some really big implications for diseases related to the nervous system if proved able of integration.

Oh, if you are wondering who is spearheading this research, then look no further than HP. Here is a link to their website if you want to know more about the company go to the HP Labs link on the homepage to check out more research topics. Honestly, I never gave HP much thought before, but my grandma likes them a lot. I guess that means something.

Peeps! (PS)

It is the time of year in which the Lord’s death and resurrection are celebrated in the holiday of Easter. This is an excellent point in the year for candy sales, and really big rabbit costumes. Really though, does anyone else find the idea of a rabbit going around and hiding multi-colored eggs slightly creepy? Anyway, if you are not familiar with the sweet marshmallow delights called Peeps I do not think you can really be considered American. Sorry, that is just the way it is in my mind. Once, again I ran across a story on Yahoo, and this time it was over how people are using peeps in interesting ways from recipes to dioramas. I found this to perk my interest because I have always enjoyed peeps, perhaps to an unhealthy extent.

Apparently, one of those uses includes the Washington Post’s peep contest. From what I could pick up this is the fourth time they have done this competition, and there were some pretty interesting entries which can be viewed in the photo gallery. The big winner for this year was a piece entitled “EEP” which was a model of the house and balloon invention from the movie UP. Overall, I think the contest was a pretty interesting idea though the reason behind it eludes me, but obviously people really got into it since there were one thousand one hundred entries. Personally, I would be too tempted to eat the peeps before I could do anything artistic with them.

The edibility of peeps was another subject I read about in the article. There are a lot of different recipes listed on the peeps official site. These recipes include the peeps in a decorative type fashion on cakes, cookies, cupcakes, and even lollipops. An interesting thing I learned from the official website was that there are peeps for Halloween, Christmas, and Valentines as well as Easter. Also, there are flavored peeps including chocolate mousse and strawberry crème. By the way, I have to say I really liked the snow globe cupcake idea from the recipe archive, and was pretty entertained by the sight.

One thing the article on Yahoo mentioned was the shelf life of peeps being pretty much forever. I have to say that I cannot consider this to be a good thing. Though, I also have to say the source cited as a link in the phrase “scientific fact” in their article is a little “weird.” In fact, the link leads to a piece on Weird Science, which, according to the author, is what science professors do for fun. I did not find the article to be to supportive of the claim, but then again I did not read the last few paragraphs because of lack of interest.

As a final note, I would just like to say that the only way to truly enjoy eating peeps is fresh out of the box. For a reason unknown to me some people like to wait to let the peeps harden and then eat them. I feel this is just not right. Why would anyone want to stick a hard marshmallow in their mouth? I do not understand it at all.