Blinks

There was this story in the paper last week about a man that was portaging up near Wawa, Ontario. (Yep, my old hometown.) He was attacked by a black bear. The man's dog, a pitbull, started barking to alert the man when the bear first approached. The dog continued to bark and fight the bear while the man jumped on the bear's back and stabbed it repeatedly and killed it. The dog was injured when the bear took a bite out of his back but the dog is expected to recover nicely.

I remember that my mom used to go down to the local dump to video tape black bears scrounging. It was her hobby for a while and even though she can be a ferocious woman I doubt that she could have taken on a bear herself. Heh.

Speaking of hometowns, I usually refer to Wawa as my hometown. I moved there part way through Grade 8 and I left after my fifth year of high school. (OAC year, for all you young 'uns.) So I lived there for less than six years but I still refer to it as my hometown whenever somebody asks me where I'm from. Before that, I lived in Peterborough, Jordan Station, Welland and Fonthill. I've lived in London much longer now, about eight years, but I still consider Wawa to be the place that I grew up. Huh.

In other news, the matriarch of the elephant herd at the Toronto zoo died this past week. She had to be put town after her arthritis got to be too painful for her at the age of forty, which is a normal age for a pachyderm. It was interesting to read about how the social structures worked in this situation. For one thing, the zookeepers left the dead body where the other elephants could find it. The herd touched the body with their trunks and paid their respects, showing clear signs of mourning. I've long known about the complex social functions of elephants, even with some mysteries such as elephant graveyeards. The next step for the herd is to have another female take over leadership. The zookeepers expect "the bossy one" to take over soon.

Finally, Alvin Williams has been released by the Toronto Raptors. He has struggled through multiple knee surgeries in the past few years and has played very little, despite his famously intense desire to be on the basketball court as much as possible. He was a key starter during the Raptor's last major playoff run and he received a large contract at that point but he has been hobbled with physical problems since then. Even so, he still intends to join an NBA camp and try to play his way back onto a team.

To quote Alvin in this article, "This is the only thing, other than my family, that I have a passion for and I love. And I'd give my life for it." He's certainly giving his body for it, possibly at the risk of major physical problems once he retires. Such passion. I have similar emotional sentiments when it comes to ministering in worship. The difference for me is that I lack the discipline to improve certain related skills, such as playing the piano, while Alvin worked furiously over two years to try and get back into game shape. He's quite the example.

Personal Thought of the Day: Nice guys finish last.

Music & Books

This weekend at my church, the topic for the three services was "An Encounter with God," based on Isaiah 6. At the end of the service, we gave people a chance to stay and pray for a while, which is not too common for us due to time constraints between services. I got to play percussion to accompany the piano keyboard and I sang back up for the after service worship. I tells ya, doing something like that is a real highlight for my day. It's just various people praying for each other and a half hour of free flow, Spirit-led songs. I loved it back in the day at FCCC when I got to lead the after service music ministry and I still look for any chance I can get to do that.

Speaking of which, I have an opportunity coming up in August to visit a women's prison in Kitchener to do some worship ministry. Unfortunately, I missed the last trip that we did in April because I was helping my grandparents move but at least I can look forward to this next one. Did I mention that I love doing this kind of thing?

Since my service ended rather late today, I didn't get the chance to hook up with anyone at Open Door. Instead, I hit a few stores to do some necessary shopping. While I was at Chapters, I found a bunch of books that were on sale so I picked up a stack that interested me. Just for fun, here's the list of my new books:
1) Crack of Noon - A treasury-sized book of Zits comic strips to complete my collection.
2) Wizard - The latest issue of the comics magazine that I have been buying on a monthly basis for more than ten years now.
3) Serenity - Comic that fills in a missing story from the Firefly television series and the Serenity movie, written by Joss Whedon himself.
4) Manifold: Space by Stephen Baxter - Excellent sci-fi novel that I've already read but that I wanted to add to my permanent collection. I like most of the novels in this "Manifold" series.
5) The Preservationist by David Maine - Somewhat humerous look at what Noah's life might have been like as he built the ark. The twist on the Noah concept made me check it out and the humour of it made me buy it.
6) The Aerialist by Richard Schmitt - A fictional look into the daily life of a circus performer. Each chapter is like a self-contained mini-story.
7) Oscar Peterson by Alex Barris - Biography of the icon. I love to read bios of famous musicians, sports stars and Hollywood celebrities.
8) The Great Pulp Heroes by Don Hutchison - Non-fiction history of the characters from the old pulp magazines and novels. Comics are my hobby and pulp fiction shares a lot in common with them but I wanted to learn more about this era than the bits I already know.
9) Best Stories from the Indian Classics by V.S.Naravane - Short collection of old classics from "Sanskrit fiction" from ancient India. Fun to learn about another culture through story telling, plus the Blacks are Indian so I was curious.
10) Worlds by Joe Haldeman - Some sort of sci-novel with a concept I liked and some major author I've never heard of. Plus, it was a cheap sci-fi novel and I'm always on the look out for those.
11) Son of Man by Robert Silverberg - 'Nother sci-fi novel, picked for the same reasons as "Worlds" but the premise is cooler since it's about how mankind has evolved in the far-flung future.
12) Funnymen by Ted Heller - Fictional story about two social misfits that hit the big time as a comedy due back in the day. Obviously a play on famous pairs such as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
13) Max and the Cats by Moacyr Scliar - The novella that inspired the recent bestseller Life of Pi. Fanciful story about a kid that gets stranded on a boat in the middle of an ocean with just a tiger to keep him company.
14) Relational Enterprise by Kenneth Cooper Carlton - This is a book about managing business relationships and it's what I was actually looking for originally. Despite the fact that the internet said it was available in several locations in London, the book wasn't in the store so I still need to find this one.
15) Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd - I didn't buy this one today. It's actually a book that I picked up this weekend from the library so it's on my current reading list. It's a non-fiction book about quantum computers and quantum theory as it applies to some of the big questions about our universe. Quantum physics and computers are tough concepts that I like to toy with and they frequently show up in the sci-fi novels I read so often.

Ah, so much reading to do and so many worlds to explore. Hmm, I may need to tone down the geek factor here by a notch or three... Plus, I just spent forty-five minutes writing this blog post and providing links to each book, which probably doesn't help my persona much. Heh.

Time or Money

Which one is most important: Time or Money?

As a parent, which one is most important? Should you work overtime constantly in order to provide more money to your family? Or should you work a regular hours and spent more quality time with them?

As a friend, which one is most important? Do your friends care about whether or not you buy pizza or give them free rides in your car? Or do they care about hanging out with you?

As a church member, which one is most important? Does the church need your regular tithes and donations? Or is it more helpful to volunteer and work with the church and help people?

As a person that loves God, which one is most important? Does God care about your sacrifices and offerings? Or is He more interested in spending personal time with you?

I tend to think that time is the most important factor in each of these equations. That doesn't mean that I think that money is not important. Quite the opposite, I think that money is important and necessary. I just think that spending time with someone is more
beneficial to both us and the other people.

Granted, part of that assessment is that one of my love languages is time. (My other one is physical touch.) For those that have a love language of gifts, the meaning of gifts is much stronger to them and therefore money plays into that a bit more on an emotional side. Similarly, working overtime to provide for your family may be considered an act of service which holds a lot of significance as a love language.

Even so, I think that people in general want to know that others care about them as individuals. Donations are useful but have limited lasting value. Gifts are good but have little meaning from strangers. Money is good but it doesn't fix a broken friendship. Providing for your family is good but not at the expense of being there for your spouse and kids.

So my goal is people, not property. My goal is friendship, not fun. My goal is God, not goods. My goal is relationships, not riches.

Blinks & Pics

Guess who has a new blog? Welcome, Tara! Thanks to Lori for spending a bit of her free time helping Tara set it up.

"I pity the fool." Here's a great Mr. T story that happened this past year. Hilariously cool.

I've heard about doctors implanting computer chips into the skulls of paralyzed people as a means of signalling actions with their brains. This article talks about how they're taking that technology to a whole new level now. After the chip and wires are hooked up, the diagnostic system just takes a few minutes to figure out the person's thought processes. The person just has to imagine themselves doing something like opening their e-mail or moving a prosthetic hand and the linked computer can translate those repetitive neural pulses into action. Quite interesting, and who wouldn't want to be a cyborg?

There was an article last year describing how astronomers had found some massive black holes at the edge of visible space. Due to the expansion of the universe and the placement of these black holes, they must have been created around the time the universe was created - and yet, they couldn't have been created then because black holes take such a long time to develop. They were both too young and too old to exist. This article has a new theory that explains that these young black holes could have bent the laws of physics by swallowing their own radiation before the radiation could escape, creating an internal loop that quelled the required explosions of matter and allowed for continued growth. I love this kind of stuff, despite the fact that these kinds of astronomical studies tend to contradict themselves fairly often.

I'm off on another camping trip later this afternoon with the young adults from Open Door. This one will be much easier for me since I'm only driving and I don't have to organize it all like last weekend. Plus, we get to do some tubing down the river. I've done some white water rafting before and that kind of thing is always a great experience. I've been looking forward to this camping trip since Joel Terry told me that he went to it last summer. His high recommendations were the direct reason that I started going to Young Adults every Friday night there.

Finally, I'll post a few more pictures from my camping trip this past weekend, just because I can.

Celia & Candace:

Happy Birthday, Grace!

Abe's Grill:

Anyone from Wawa remember this shirt?

FCCC Camping

This past weekend seven of us went up to Tobermory. My main purpose in organizing this trip was to take my Little on his first camping trip and a bunch of old youth from the former FCCC came along. Great weekend, despite my sun-seared skin.

On Friday we set up camp and toasted hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire. My Little didn't even know that you could cook weiners over a fire so that was interesting. On Saturday, we packed lunchs and headed out for a five hour hike. We did a fairly lengthy trail, visited the grotto and swam in Georgian Bay. We got back to camp and immediately went to the pool for a nice cold swim.

On Saturday evening, I had arranged for a picture scavenger hunt. I created a list of 48 things for which we needed to take pictures. We split into three pairs and each pair had a digital camera, with me being the odd man out as the judge. We blanketed the camp looking for pictures and asking for help from strangers and the other people in camp really started to get into it once they realized that a competition was going on. We got some great action shots and some pretty funny pictures.

I downloaded the pictures to my laptop afterwards and tabulated the scores while everyone went and did some archery with Richard's archery kit. Abe owes Richard one lost arrow and my Little was, shall we say, a little too anxious to shoot at one point. And for the record, Abe & Grace formed a nigh-invincible duo and took the top prize, Celia and Candace took second place and Joel and my Little took the bronze.

I have a ton of pictures but I'll only show a few of the highlights here. As always, I can't show pics of my Little for the sake of privacy. First up, we have a nice black and white picture taken by Celia as we walked around the camp site.

Joel the Carnivore:

Abe rocks! Out on our hike on the Bruce Trail:

Swimming in the Georgian Bay:

Oh, so that's what a grotto is!

Water & Motion: How refreshing!

One of Charlie's Angels and her two friends. Who wears short shorts?

Links & Blinks

A few years ago, a security firm in Britain was trying to figure how to discourage teens from loitering around convenience stores. Eventually, they discovered a very high-pitched sound that ably drove the kids away, similar to nails on a chalk board but with a higher tone. Granted, such a noise is not useful if it also bothers the employees in the store as well but that was the major advantage - the old employees could not hear the tone.

Apparently, the average adult over the age of thirty has had minor hearing loss and can no longer discriminate extremely high pitched tones. Ah, but youth these days are more clever, eh? While these kinds of sounds were originally intended to drive teens away from places, teens have turned it to their advantage. (Or marketers to teens, whatever...) Now you can download these sounds as ring tones for your cell phone. Teens can leave their cell phones on during class at high school and when it rings, the teacher doesn't hear it but the rest of the class does.

Curious to see if you can hear it?

Test Tone #1

If you only hear background noise with people chatting and laughing, then you're old. :)

Test Tone #2

This one is much more obvious and much louder then the first version.

In other news, did you hear that the world's oldest living creature died recently? (Link) It was a 176 year old turtle owned by the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. It was supposedly one of the three tortoises that Charles Darwin brought back from the Galapagos Islands in 1835 while he was developing his theory of evolution. For the record, the oldest known creature ever was another turtle that died at the age of 188 that Captain James Cook gave as a gift to the royal family of Tonga.

Since I'm in the aviation industry, at least in terms of related software, I loved reading about this new invention. In the case of a crash landing for a plane, a patent was submitted in the USA to trigger explosives along one the edge of one wing. That would blow one wing off of the plane and the force would send the plane into a spin just before it hits the ground. The one remaining wing would act like a helicopter blade and slow the aircraft's descent. Sure, there are potential problems of having a line of explosives sitting there and the centrifugal force might kill the people on board, but those are just details.

I found this article about the advantages that homeless people have in using e-mail as their primary means of contact. The article also mentions a few homeless people that have made names for themselves with their own blogs. I was aware of the necessity of e-mail as the main form of communication for many people, homeless or otherwise, but it's an interesting article.

Finally, I have an interesting coincidence to share. I was chatting with retired neighbours by Andrea's house last month and the wife mentioned in passing that her husband was a veteran. I asked her a few more questions about it since I assumed that he had been stationed here in London at our army base. He was indeed based here in London, had fought in the Korean war, had gone with the army to Germany in the fifties and had been part of the official procession for the Queen's Coronation. What do you know, my grandfather was stationed here at the same time and did those very same things! In fact, I was looking at my grandfather's old medals and memorabilia when I was helping them move to B.C. a few months ago. He received one medal for being at the Coronation celebration. What a small world...