The Random Thoughts Review

When I went to the EAA AirVenture 2005 in Oshkosh (Pictures Here) Richard Branson (pic) and the Virgin Galactic crew announced that they were going to start flying people into space in a few years. Now, they’ve announced that they are going to build a $225 million spaceport in New Mexico. The spaceport is going to 25 miles south of the town named Truth or Consequences. I wonder what real estate is selling for around there. A quick check of realtor.com reveals that, right now, land is cheap. Houses starting at $30k. 3 bedroom, 1 bath houses for $66k. It would be nice to get several acres of land on the road south of there, leading towards the space port. Put in an airport or something. New Mexico might become everyone’s favorite earth destination in a few years. Time will tell.

News Article Here.

I just want to mention a couple of things that I’ve come up with.

The first is the quote:

Reality isn’t important. The perception of reality is the only thing that matters.

I’ve been using this phrase for a couple of years now. It’s really a great sentiment, if I do say so myself. It covers practically all of life as we know it. Think about any human event that involves a misunderstanding. Generally speaking, reality isn’t important. How a person perceives reality is all that matters to that person. Every once and a while, said individual can actually be convinced otherwise, but generally not.

This quote really hits home when you apply it to “the press”. It often applies to them as well. In theory (as far as I’m concerned), the press should be mindless automatons that do nothing more than convey reality, and all of reality, to the masses. As we all know, though, it doesn’t work that way. They get to perceive whatever portion of reality they wish, however they wish, and then convey that perception to the masses. The masses then take that perception as actually being reality. Tsk tsk tsk.

For my second item of the day.. It’s an abbreviation that I’ve come up with. I actually came up with this particular definition when I was teaching programming back at the University of Missouri – Rolla. It wasn’t a term that I used around the students. Rather, I used it to describe certain student conditions. The term, or abbreviation:

fluc, or FLUC. I pronounce it “fluke”. I can’t control how others might pronounce it.

A “fluke” is generally defined as an accidental positive event that has occurred. But, that’s not what I’m talking about here. fluc stands for a Fundamental Lack of Understanding of the Concepts. Back in my teaching days, I used it when a student had a question about a programming assignment that clearly showed that they didn’t really understand what was actually going on. Programming is (painfully) logical. Everything really makes sense, as long as you have a firm understanding of the underlying concepts. But, many students didn’t have this understanding. Hence, the fluc’s. I still use the term. It continues to apply to various things in life. Good stuff.

Feel free to use either or both of the above concepts. Just remember.. You heard it here first.

And, the third quote that I want to put out there..

We all grow old together. Some of us just have a head start.

This one doesn’t need much explanation. I usually invoke it when people are talking about their age. Whether they are commenting on how young they are, how old they are, how young I am, or how old I am.. It still just works. It’s a nice little phrase. I’m glad I thought it up.

CNN.com – Iran leader: Move Israel to Europe – Dec 8, 2005

So, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now said that the state of Israel needs to be moved to somewhere in Europe. He says that if the Europeans want to say that Hitler killed millions of Jews that they should provide some land to “the Zionists”.

This isn’t the first time that Ahmadinejad has made inflammatory statements…. Back in October he said Israel needed to be wiped off the map” and that Israel is a disgraceful blot. Iranian liberals said at the time that it harmed the country’s international standing. (Granted, this is similar to Democrats calling Bush a moron.) There are, without a doubt, many in Iran that wouldn’t agree with the Iranian liberals.

Ahmadinejad was elected this past summer and took office on August 3rd. So, he’s not been president very long, but he’s definitely making his position known. And, since he’s the president, it is therefore the position of Iran as a country (since that’s the way that presidencies work).

So, one has wonder how many times that he can threaten other countries before people decide that he might actually act upon his convictions. Stay tuned. May we live in interesting times.

iWon News

So, Ohio State University folks seem to have discovered that people who are hostile heal at 60% of the rate that others heal at.

The article seems to focus on married people, but the data is surely extensible enough to apply to anyone. So, can’t we all just get along?

Have someone in your life that is hurt in some way? Think about how you treat them? You could be slowing down the healing process for them.

Today I want to pay homage to something that we often don’t think much about. A person goes about their daily business and they use this particular thing without any thought as to just how cool it is…. Assuming, of course, that the person actually has one of them to use.

This morning the radio was happy enough to tell me that it was a whole five degrees F outside. Here we are, on December 5, and it’s already getting down well into the single digits. That’s not just a little bit cold. That’s real cold. I can imagine Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning, Siberia doing an entire monologue on just how cold it is. But, I digress… Over the weekend we added another half inch of snow on top of the half inch or so that we have had lying around since early last week. So, we’ve got snow cover. And we’ve got insanely cold temperatures. (In another month I might feel differently about how insanely cold that five above actually is, but for now it is insanely cold)

Now, to the beloved item that I’m devoting time to discussing. On mornings like this, it truly is worth its weight in gold, and that’s saying a lot. What am I talking about that can bring such wonderful joy to a Monday morning? The garage, of course. Specifically, the attached garage.

It’s such a joy getting ready for work in the morning when I know that I’m not going to have to get out into the five degree weather just to force my poor little truck into starting. It’s literally sublime to think about how nice it is going to be stepping into the attached garage, opening the truck door, lightly turning the key, and having my truck instantly roar to life. Ahh.. The sheer pleasure. The pure joy of knowing that I’m not going to have to get outside in this weather and scrape the windows, just so I can see to drive! This is, of course, to say nothing of the kindness that I show to my truck by keeping it near the house at a reasonable temperature. My little truck almost purrs out to me in the morning, “Kirby. Thanks for the heat!”. When in the closed garage, the poor little starter doesn’t have to turn over, and over, and over just to get things going.

Yes, my dear readers, a garage certainly is a wonderful thing. If you haven’t yet joined the ranks of homeowners, mark my words. Get a house with a garage. It’s a decision you won’t soon regret.

How close do you think we are to the end of time? Do you even believe in such a thing?

Matthew 24 from the Bible:

verse3: And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

verse7:For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

While there are many events discussed in Matthew 24, I’m only going to look at verse 7 today. Some feel that the Bible is metaphorical, and this thought line is often used when discussing how the world began. (ie., it didn’t really start in 7 days, that’s just a story). Regardless of how you feel about that, surely most people wouldn’t use the same argument on this verse. (maybe i’m wrong!)

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom”… Well, we can certainly come up with cases of this in recent history, but we can come up with cases of this almost throughout time. So, I’m not really counting on this as being a valid indicator, by itself.

“and there shall be famines”.. Again, there are people that are hungry today, and we had Ethiopia, etc., but it could be argued that there have been famine-like events going on for some time.

“and pestilences”. “A pestilence is an epidemic or even a pandemic of a virulent and highly contagious disease.”, according to wikipedia. Well, we have had some rather freaky outbreaks lately. SARS, mad cow, AIDS, and, most recently, bird flu seems to be “all the rage”.

But, the thing that has really been on my mind for the past year or so, is the ending of that verse:

“and earthquakes, in divers places.”

• Last year, around Christmas time, an earthquake way out in the Indian Ocean occurred and caused “The Tsunami”[link]. Approximately 275,000 people were killed, most within a few hours.
• March 28, 2005 earthquake and tsunami left an estimated 300,000 people dead or missing.
• Pakistan, Kashmir October 8, 2005 killed an estimated 100,000 people.
• Iran February 8, 2005
• December 2 earthquake in Japan. Japan has had several significant earthquakes this past year.
• Kenya Quake – December 5
• December 12: 6.7 Magnitude Quake Hits Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush Region

So, have earthquakes really been increasing? According to the USGS, not in raw numbers. So, you can take the info on that statistics page and go to sleep tonight and not worry about a thing if you wish. It is, I fully believe, a nice scientific piece on earthquakes. No reason at all to think that it isn’t completely true.

Let’s add some more background to this verse in the Bible, though. When the Bible was written the entire “world” was a few hundred miles across. There could have been 50,000 earthquakes a day occuring in the United States, and the existing audience for the Bible wouldn’t have known about it. Times have changed. Now, we hear about bad news even if it occurs in some obscure province in New Guinea. So, even though the technical scientific number hasn’t increased, our knowledge of earthquake events certainly has. One of my favorite quotes ( this might be a Kirby-original quote.. ) “Reality doesn’t matter. The perception of reality is the only thing that matters” applies here.

Also, I don’t have anything to back this up, but it really feels to me like the intensity, damage, and death from these earthquakes has been increasing. I don’t remember ever hearing about deadly earthquakes like I have over the past year or so.

So, what’s all of this mean? It depends on you. You can draw your own conclusions based on your feelings.

• If you don’t believe that the Bible is the divine word of a God that is in control, this post clearly doesn’t affect you at all.
• If you don’t want to believe that the Bible is the divine world of a God that is in control, assume that all of these earthquakes are normal occurrences and go about your daily business.
• If you believe that the Bible is the divine word of a God that is in control, you can decide for yourself whether or not the recent earthquakes constitute what is written in Matthew 24:7. That will let you decide if we are in the end times.

Regardless of your thoughts on the Bible….
how much does it matter to you that we are in the end times? You should be acting as though you are in “end times” mode every day of your life, because you never know how many more days on Earth that you have. Every day might be your last. None of the hundreds of thousands of people killed by earthquakes in the last year expected that fateful day to be their final one on earth.

Socks made from corn

I wonder what happens for people with particularly smelly feet? Do the socks just disintegrate on the spot?

From the article:
The corn-based socks will cost about 20 percent more than socks now available in Japan, he said. In Japan, a pair of socks made from cotton, wool or petroleum-based fibers such as nylon or polyester costs about 300 yen.

As of right now, 300 yen is about $2.56, so the price will be about 50 cents higher that it currently is.

eBay Motors: Project Truck Camper – small slide in – pop up (item 8013394621 end time Nov-15-05 10:33:25 PST)

Before I read the description, I thought that ‘Project’ was maybe a brand name.

It’s obvious to me that this would fit on my toyota truck, but the description is more than scary….

The camper needs lots of work and is a project camper or for parts. The roof got snowed on and caved in. The roof is made of fiberglass or plastic of some sort and just bowed downward and broke the rafters. The top is not broken through as far as i can tell. I know it still holds water a foot deep in the center. This camper has sat this way for several years. The water has since rotten the celling on the inside and the cloth canvas should be replaced

So, when he says “Project”, he means that it is going to be a serious project for someone to work on.

I hope, for his sake, that he gets his one dollar.