Wanderings

Yearly Archive: 2008

Too Quick…

That's what reading Second John was like. Flew by in almost no time. But the words from John were almost the same as in First John.

Interesting that he writes to the "chosen lady." Could have been a lady, or the church at large – who knows (another question when I get to heaven). The amazing part is that his message is consistent. You have to know the truth to follow it. You have to live the truth ("love one another") if you say you are a believer. You have to slam the door on those who teach a lie.

Once again, without saying it, John's emphasis is on what we "know" or need to know. How can we know someone is a false teacher if we don't know the truth? How can we know the truth if we never take time to study it? At this stage in my life, I could not refute a false teacher of algebra, because that's not my specialty. But, if I had kept up with algebra and worked out several resolutions (answers) every day, I could probably point out a few bad algebra teachers.

So it is that John says again that the "church" (that's the body of believers or followers) need to beware of false teachers. To the point that we shouldn't even let them in our "house"!

There's more…stay tuned.

Forget Global Warming – I’m Cold!

The weather outside is chilly! Actually, to me it is flat out cold. There may be people who go skiing and snowboarding in shorts and tank tops, but that's not my cup of cold. Can't beleive that during my tenure in Iowa, I did not freeze to death. Even that one year when it got down to 20 below!

Now they are trying to tell me that we are in a global warming cycle, and we are all going to have to stop breating. "What" you say? They say it's the carbon dioxide that is causing the problem. Easy fix, is to stop breating, that way we would not create any more of the toxic stuff. Don't stop breathing just yet!

Actually it got me to doing some research, and I discovered that maybe there's a little flawed science at work. Remember when you slept in a tent and wished you had a bunk in a cabin? Then when you got the bunk in a cabin, you wished for a bed in a mountain house. The difference between each of the sleeping places was, as you progressed, it got warmer.

Well, there is a project to survey all the US Weather Stations to make sure that they are still taking temperatures the way they did 25-100 or more years ago. What they have found is that many of the National Weather Service Stations are not out in the open like they were some years back.

They are being surrounded by buildings, air conditioner vents or other structures that actually make the temperature they are recording higher. One of the sites that is involved is surfacestations.org. While checking out their information, I got pointed to a story about an NWS at a southern California site. It did not take a degree in physics to see what they are talking about.

Is that scary or what? Here "someone" is telling me that it's getting warmer, and they are using data from that station? I know that the air blowing out from under my refrigerator feels like – well, a lot warmer that the air in the room!

Okay, then let's investigate some more. Why are we asking scientists that deal in other areas about why the weather is changing. I don't think that I would ask a dentist to give me the latest information on knee replacement surgery. He may be a doctor, but a knee specialist he/she ain't.

You might want to check out what Brian Sussman – emmy award winning meteorologist has to say. Brian is in the process of writing a book about Global Warming. Check out his comments. Even the Pittsburg Tribune-Review got into the fray.

I gotta do some more research. If it's true that the ice in Alaska grew thicker this year, it doesn't sound like the polar caps are melting just yet.

Different Kind of Present

Before Christmas, finally decided to install my Bible software on my Blackjack. Well, even though it said it worked with Windows Mobile, it would not load on my phone. Like every phone is a little different, and takes some special software.

The Bible Reader with 11 or 12 Bible translations was a Christmas gift a few years back, and had worked well on my Palm Pilot, Palm E and a couple of Treo phones. I was really missing the ability to look up a Bible verse wherever I happened to be.

Needless to say, I contacted Olive Tree, the creators of the software and asked if there was a way to get my Bible versions to work on my Blackjack. Got super fast response from their Support people, and after giving them my original serial number and list of Bibles on the old software, they updated my account on their website and had me download everything.

What a wonderful surprise to find helpful people like that! My thanks to Olive Tree for putting the Word back on my phone. This is fantastic stuff – you can switch versions of the Bible, do a search for words or phrases, even compare different versions on a split screen. Really great! Take a look for yourself.

There are some free Bible translations and books, and some that cost, but they are well worth the investment.

Now, what was that verse you mentioned?