Sunday, March 17, 2024

Poor Irish immigrants

But not always, apparently. Tyler Anbinder got ahold of bank records, which included quite a bit of info about the people who held the accounts. "four in 10 day laborers could end up in white-collar jobs"

What winds up in a jewelry box

Some jewelry, of course, including some necklaces that seemed like a good idea at the time but didn't get worn. Mali beads. My father's ruptured duck. And some coins.

These were easy to identify, except for the Louisiana public welfare tax token. Apparently those aluminum coins were for paying sales tax on small purchases where the sales tax was less than a cent. I'd not heard of them before, but my father must have used them.

And a couple of replicas of a bronze coin from Bar Kokhba, though I suspect these are replicas of a coin minted late in the war when they needed lots of money and weren't so careful about the dies.

Several daughters make art, and we have some African friends who might enjoy some of the necklaces. I gather that certain colors and styles go with different face shapes and hair colors and outfits, though I never got the hang of how that works.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

16 days early?

Platinum-crystal hydrogen fuel cells work more efficiently with caffeine. At least on the P(111) and P(110) crystal faces; on the P(100) face the caffeine molecules attach with a bad angle.

The coffee jokes write themselves.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Unexpected finds

We opened her car's hood so I could help youngest daughter replace a headlight bulb. Over in the opposite corner, near the A/C, we found wedged the bulk of a sandwich roll (one chunk soaked with water, the other parts dried crispy). The last oil change was a few months ago, but the bread wasn't moldy at all.

I hope this didn't reflect a culture of over-rushing work at the repair shop. I wouldn't care to eat while working on an oily car.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Naval Traditions

I'd heard of pollywogs and shellbacks. Apparently there are more traditions than the crossing the equator one: "blue nose", "red nose", and "Sea Squatter", among others. The opening paragraph about "rum, sodomy, and the lash" probably couldn't be penned today: it talks about vices.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Emblems of Texas

I gather that visitors to Texas are required to make a pilgimage to the Alamo. I was AWOL on that one. Another, possibly more important requirement, is to visit Buc-ee's. This we did. My impression was of a bigger and more open--friendlier--Walmart, but with a startling amount of "cult" merchandise. My wife got sensory overload quickly; neither of us having quite this reaction. The restrooms were as clean as advertised.

I wonder if the Texas enthusiasm will translate to Wisconsin--they're planning to build one in DeForest. That's not a huge trek, but Walmart and Target and Kroger and Menards and Woodmans and FleetFarm(*) are all closer to me. Midwest practical ... a "one stop for everything" has its appeal, but several of the listed places try for that title too.

(*) Not the same as Farm and Fleet, a similar but unrelated store not much farther away.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Summary

The trip reached everyone we had scheduled to meet and a few relatives we hadn't, and almost all the proposed sights along the way. Pretty much all trip's the surprises were pleasant--except for discovering that the A/C+heater system in the car suffers from a common problem with the Caravan/Voyager line--one of the internal control doors won't budge from the "full hot" position. We had to drive with a window open to keep from roasting. Testing the A/C isn't something you usually do in wintertime...

It gets tiresome only meeting distant relatives at funerals. This was a happier occasion.

Interpolations

The sermon was on the bronze serpent, about how the serpents weren't elminated, but their effect was made easily healable. I got the idea that this was set up in the center of the camp--which is perfectly logical, and would even carry a message to these not-quite-yet-monotheists: "The center of the camp is where God is, and the bronze serpent reminds us of Who sent this plague (and why) and that if we turn and look to where He is He'll freely heal us."

Well, it almost certainly was set up there, but I made the mistake of checking it out before commenting. I will in charity decline to link to numerous sites that interpolate "in the middle of the camp" when quoting Numbers, but Blue Letter Bible seems to indicate that that phrase isn't there.

Oops

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Thanks to first responders

Like Grim. Traffic was stopped for an hour and a half on I65 north at about 318 last night with a 3-vehicle accident: a semi smashed the guard rail on a bridge to flinders. Then the fire and rescue truck that showed up to help was hit by a car. No injuries, but it emphasizes that those guys have a risky job.

Sunday, March 03, 2024

A few thoughts on lesser aspects of the Transfiguration

Why Moses and Elijah? Why not others--Abraham, or Isaiah?

In one sense Abraham and Isaac are present already--in their descendants. In another sense the Father and the Sacrificial Son who are present remind us of Abraham and Isaac who so distantly pre-figured them.

Moses brought the Law, Jesus fulfilled it, embodies it.

Moses had no known grave and Elijah of course had none--both were taken from human knowledge and are returned here together, the resurrected and never-dead together.

Elijah was to be the forerunner of the new representative of God that Moses prophesied. He appears here to salute the new Law and new Lawgiver--and also the little christs who would go on to spread the word and become the new humanity--the church.

This church is represented by 3 men--one who is killed young, his brother who lives a long life and dies naturally, and a third who was executed later after having had a great deal more apparent influence than the one who died young. I have no hard knowledge, but all three were sent, and all three seem to have been largely faithful. Peter had an early dramatic example of not being faithful, and of being forgiven. I suspect all of them benefitted from similar forgiveness later in life as well, as we also hope to.

Peter reflects us and our usual response--make a memorial to capture the uncapturable event.

A word to the wise.

It may be overcast, and be early March, but you can still get sunburned sitting hatless through the 20'th birthday party of an 80-year old submarine. And get mosquito-bit watching for aquatic birds afterwards. (The party was a couple of days late and was an unexpected surprise during our visit to Galveston.) One does not generally get mosquitoes in Wisconsin in Feb/Mar

Friday, March 01, 2024

Houston Space Center

The Space Center at Houston is worth visiting. I’d never seen a Saturn V in person. It’s amazing. It’s also sad to see the corroded electronic cards and chassis; you start to wonder if we could ever do it again. Well, Artemis/Orion has launched once, but there’s not the same drive or, I fear, vision.

We had an overhead tour of the training area. One section of the floor had gratifyingly cluttered benches and desks, but quite a bit of the area’s desks were clean. The spiel of the guide on the tram included the cheerful assertion that the goal was to have a woman person of color on the Moon.

NASA has a bit of a history of trumpeting its "firsts", no matter the details or the significance, so this kind of foolishness has some precedent. But in an era of greater budget squeezes and no great obvious public enthusiasm for the project (or, I'm afraid, clear science or exploration objectives), it seems remarkably stupid to advertise a science/technology project as a social engineering project. The people most interested in "diversity and reparations quotas" would find this a rather inefficient use of money–much better if the money went to projects easier for them to govern.

On the brighter side, there must have been about 400 youngsters there from schools in Texas and several nations south of the border, in brightly color-coded shirts, apparently having a blast. The James Webb lecture was a LCD talk, but with some gorgeous before and after photos. There were lots of hands-on things for the kids, and some of the grownups, and tons of artifacts.

One thing they can do better is the signage. What’s there is OK, but if, for example, alongside the "this is a rocket nozzle from a Saturn V" they had a second poster with a line drawing of the nozzle with important parts labeled, that would satisfy the “general interest” people, but also give more explanation for those who are curious how the thing actually worked. (They often has a provenance explanation.)

Come to think of it, a display of how a rocket motor works is something I didn’t see there. It would best be shown with an animation–several stations for the different kinds of rocket. Maybe I just missed that section–it’s a large place. "How a simple rocket works" could be another display–like a water rocket. It might be too mechanically complex to be a reliable exhibit, though. But…

You’d need a clear plastic rocket (replaced regularly thanks to fatigue), captive to a guide rod. (Or maybe inside a clear pipe? Wear would make the pipe less than transparent after a while). At the bottom something presses it down (a hold-down) onto a plug that corks the bottom of the rocket. Through the plug run two tubes, one long and reaching almost to the top of the inside of the rocket (for air), and the other just inside the bottom (for water). Open the air valve to let air escape, and force water in at the bottom. Then shut the water valve, and force air in until the rocket is pressurized. Release the hold-down, and the air forces the water out and the rocket flies up to the top of the exhibit.

The constraining device would wear (or the rocket plastic distort), and eventually the rocket wouldn’t fall exactly back down where it ought to–so you’d need some guides at the bottom of the system to encourage the rocket to land properly. And some sensors so you don’t have to rely on timing to bring the hold-down into action (suppose wear on the constraining tube makes the rocket fall too slowly). And if this can be cycled once a minute, that’s about 600 launches a day–which is likely beyond the endurance of the toy models. NASA has bunches of engineers–or used to, anyway--so this should be solvable.

Another thing that cried out for explanation was why the instrument panel control switches had guards around them. Adults can guess, if they didn’t know already, but a sentence to explain it to the kids would be nice.

Also, a cartoon of what banks of instrument switches were for what would be nice for adults too. When you can’t read the labels it looks like this.

The atmosphere was upbeat–no mentions of why things failed when they failed, unless it was accompanied by a description of how they managed to fix it (e.g. the solar panel on Skylab, or the CO2 scrubber on Apollo 13.

I’m glad we went.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

They that make them will become like them

Kristor at Orthosphere has a series of posts on “Anselmian Skeleton Key”, in which he attempts to demonstrate the existence or at least plausibility of a god along the lines of the Christian understanding of God.

His problem is that a demonstration is not convincing, since to be convinced requires assent by the “convincee”.

If the “convincee” thinks the price of changing gods is too high (it might include admitting that he was wrong!), or the risk too great, his “most important”/”greatest thing in the universe” won’t change.

What does it mean to me if I believe that something is the most important thing in the universe? On reflection, it needn’t mean anything unless it is also the most important thing in “my universe.”

I could claim, for instance, that the most important/greatest thing in the universe is Cygnus X-3. It’s the center of the universe (so is anywhere else, of course) and a thing of immense power–nothing in our galaxy comes close. Yet I cannot even see it; nothing it is doing has any bearing on me (yet!), nor does anything I do have any bearing on it. It makes no demands of me, offers no benefits. It is King Log–or perhaps I should say “God Log.” In “my universe” the Earth and Sun are more important–I rely on them every day–as are other things like my wife and home and even my library.

I could claim that the deist god is the ultimate. The Watchmaker non-interventionist god makes no more demands on my life than does Cygnus X-3, though it does help my mind understand the world better, and begin to understand understanding.

In a purely materialist universe I have no reason to claim I truly know anything–I react in certain ways, and that’s all one can say. A deist can point to an origin in order and reason, and to some degree share in that. A deist has a different (I would say higher) conception of himself because he has a different (higher) conception of his god.

Unfortunately the term “Greatest” or “Most important” is a bit ambiguous in “my universe.” Theory and practice diverge. I may say that (e.g.) my wife is the most important thing in “my universe”, and even be willing in a pinch to give up my life for her (giving up everything else in the process), but have little reflection of this value in day to day decisions or attitudes.

Alternatively, I might say that I valued God more than anything, and am committed to my religious duties–unless there’s a game on. Or that all fellow believers/worshippers are my brothers and sisters unless one expresses a political view I don’t like.

In both sets of examples my nominal values conflict with my values as expressed in action. The inconsistency might be due to indiscipline, or there might be an unacknowledged greater value. One, or perhaps both, of those values is an idol for me. (You can easily devise other examples–a good Volk-worshiper who believed the Nazi party was its prophet who nevertheless out of compassion fed strangers without asking if the fugitive was Jewish.)

One can make a test out of this: “By their fruits you will know them.” Do I get more riled when somebody insults my favorite candidate or when someone insults my God? (I can make the excuse that God can take care of Himself but I have to look out for the reputation of my fellow-human. It would even likely be true for insults to family.) Does that tell something about what the real god of “my universe” is?

It might. We have it on good authority that it can be a useful way to find out what somebody else’s real god is too. But it might be merely the result of a sloppy life, or not having worked through the details yet. We’re good at giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt–except for those of us who are skilled at looking for worst cases in ourselves.

Take it a bit further. The work I do demands concentration on the thing more often than the purpose. That doesn’t necessarily mean I value the thing more than the purpose–though that is a risk–but how much should the purpose be part of my mind as I work? Am I working as if for the Lord if I’m thinking entirely about how to get this next leg attached to the chair?

I think the answer might be yes. Obviously that would make the test even less clear-cut that it already is. I suspect we need to be careful judging others, and also be careful judging ourselves. But not complacent. There are plenty of idols around, and plenty of people who are unquestionably idolaters. Greed amounts to idolatry, and we’re a-swamp in that–as usual. I could go on listing other idolatries to which I am not greatly tempted, but I think I’ll stop here.

But what my god is shapes what I choose, and shapes me.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

OKC, OK

A resident tells me that there appears to be an unwritten rule that any vacant building must be turned into either a marijuana dispensary or a "prompt care" medical center (not necessarily with equipment like X-ray machines).

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Important things

Years ago I ran across Murphy's Laws, and a little afterwards found a collection called "Murphy's Laws of Combat." ("Friendly fire isn't", etc)

Three of them jumped out at me as good descriptions of Christian life.

  1. The important things are always simple.
  2. The simple things are always hard.
  3. The easy way is always mined.

It is a good thing to know the nature of prayer. The important thing is to do it, and the knowledge of it (connaitre) will rise from that.

Yes, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." Eventually.