Thursday, May 24, 2007

So Stupid...

...I had to write it.

Apparently last year there was an American Airlines flight where people started to complain about a smell much like matches burning. Fear of a part malfunction or worse, the plane made an emergency landing in Nashville and everyone was taken of the plane. After a sweep of the plane they did find burnt matches, a pile of them under a seat. They found the woman who's seat it was and asked what it was all about. Apparently she had gas and didn't want anyone to know/smell it, so she decided to burn matches on a plane to cover the smell.

She's not allowed to fly with AA anymore...

T

Saturday, May 19, 2007

What We Can Learn From Antarctica

Just wondering if people have been watching the news with the south pole. It's quite interesting.

First, science has again proven how it's assumptions can be wrong. Since the north pole was explored underwater and it was cold and desolate and no new creatures were found, people thought that the south pole would be the same. That is until someone sponsered a research team to go. Tons of new creatures were discovered, things we've never even seen anything like before. Instead of taking guesses, maybe we should look for facts.

The other one, for those that don't know, the Southern Ocean absorbs a lot of the excess carbon dioxide in the air, right now holding about 1/4 of the earth's CO2. Problem is though we've managed to fill it. The water cannot hold anymore since apparently in the last few hundred years we've managed to pump an extra 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the air through pollution (think that's more pounds of pollution than Bill Gates has dollars.) The sad part is, what are you as an individual doing to rectify that problem? America is one of the biggest contributors, we use 40% of the world's resources for less than 5% of the world's population.

So take some lessons from the land of penguins. We don't know all we think we do and we can't guess truth, and if we don't start changing some of our habits soon, it won't matter anyway...

T

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Traffic Solution

In the interest of our time travel discussion and Rich Clark's question about Sumerians or Romans, I found this that I found funny.

So we all hate traffic, of course. Apparently during 200-250 AD, the city of Rome was over 1 million people and had the same problem. So Julius Caesar came up with a solution. No wheeled vehicles were allowed in Rome during daylight hours.

Can you imagine that flying today? Actually, what I realized would stink is that poor idiot who left home for a two hour ride to Rome, then had to wait until dark to bring his chariot into the city, or park it outside the wall where he'll be nowhere near it and hope no one steals it, outside the city, behind the wall...

Be happy you get to drive where you need to go!

T

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

When Would You Go?

This morning I was reading about real people who have claimed they have time travelled. Quite interesting. A high up Catholic that had a magic box (like a TV set) that allowed him to only look and hear other times (like a TV set) and was worked with two magical dials to pick the time you wished to visit (like a TV set). There was another guy who claims to have come back from 2036 to find a piece of technology needed in the future that was wiped out by a nuclear bomb in 2015. All sorts of stories of people who "really travelled through time."

Then I started thinking about our fascination with time travel. HG Wells, Michael Crichton, Back To The Future, even Einstein mentioned not the ability to travel across time, but the ability to slow time down to you when you reach the speed of light so when you returned to normal speed, you would have aged a day while the world around you aged a century. Interesting...

So here's my question to those who discuss this on bulletin boards (believe it or not, some do!), where and when would you go? Leave comments here, or go to the discussion boards, but please, no Eloi or Morlocks.

T

Friday, May 04, 2007

Huh?

The last few days a revelation has come to me. It's one of those ones that kind of hits you, but then over the next few days it becomes more and more apparent and possibly even easier to understand. It's not really a mystery, I should have seen it coming, I just never thought about it until the other night. And then again Wed. And then again tonight.

I enjoy being confused.

I know, that doesn't sound like it makes much sense (which adds to the confusion), but trust me, it's true. I like not knowing. I like trying to "figure it out." Then I like that moment, that all encompassing fleeting moment when comprehension suddenly kicks you in the back of the head and you do all you can to stop from shouting, "OH!"

I think part of the reason I like this feeling is because it reminds me I'm not in control. I don't know it all. I don't have it all figured out. Then, suddenly, this burst of intelligence sweeps in and for a small, tiny, insignificant microsecond, I feel as if I totally understand. Then something else happens and I'm back to square one.

And we admit it too. Well, most people. There's always that person that claims they saw the end of the movie coming (and I know, sometimes it's so Hollywood predictable I do too, but some people claim to know it every single time.) There are the people that know everything, even the answer to the question before it's posed. And somehow they enjoy that. But where's the adventure? Where's the mystery? Where's the excitement of life if you always know what's coming next?

And yet, for some incredibly strange reason, we can admit we didn't see the end of a movie coming, but we think we have God all figured out. Maybe that's why I love the end of Job (ch.36 on.) Read it today if you can, I love it. Especially one little verse at the start of the section...

Job 36:26a ~ "Look, God is greater than we can understand." (from a wise young man named Elihu)

T