Silly voice mail habits

You do not need to tell people what time it is when you're leaving a voice mail for someone's mobile phone. Voice mail has a time stamp; we've got it if we want it. And why are you leaving a message anyway? If it's anything more than "call me back" and if we've got your number programmed in our mobile phones (or we've got caller ID boxes on a landline), then we know you called. Maybe you should leave a message if you don't want to be called back. And mention the time if you're like in a different time zone.

Pencil technicians

It seems like back in middle school we were pencil technicians. I was geeky, so my friends and I used mechanical pencils. We could basically field strip them and did so often when we were bored. I knew about different lead sizes (0.5, 0.7, 1.0 mm) and different models from popular brands. When shopping for school supplies I had to match up the right eraser refills, the right lead, etc. At three or four dollars each, a pencil seemed like an investment, so you just didn't “borrow” my pencil. I had loaner pencils on hand.

The Pentel Quicker Clicker was the workhorse. It was durable enough to be useful and complicated enough to keep me entertained during boring classes. It had an eraser seated in a metal clamp and a cap over the eraser, so there were all kinds of pieces to take apart. I think I remember a sort of needle in the bottom of the eraser for cleaning out lead, but I'm not sure.

A school supply tinkerer in probably fifth grade developed an entertaining activity with a normal wooden pencil. He discovered that you can take the end of a notebook spiral, bend it in parts so you had something like a hand-operated drill, and literally drill a hole through the pencil with the blunt broken end of the wire.

Exact temperature of heaven

The temperature of heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, ''Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.'' Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4=50, where E is the absolute temperature of the Earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However] Revelation 21:8 says ''But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.'' A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.

Applied Optics, Vol. 11, A14, 1972

Less blogging

I haven't blogged much in a blog like this one for two reasons:

1. I can update my status on Facebook and Twitter. This microblogging relieves my blogging needs most of the time.
2. I have been putting photos on Flickr every day. This gives me the opportunity to write something about my day.

I'm going to start copying some old blog material over here, though. Can you distinguish between the old and new?

On the hash, plus two more thoughts

The symbol "#" has too many names, including octothorpe, pound, hash, number, square, and splat. It seems like the English-speaking world hasn't really decided what to call it. That's kind of like the kitten we have in our house that is usually called "kitten" because we've tried so many names but not decided on any.

Are the ways of humans wicked and warped against the way of nature? Or have the idealists among us misunderstood nature?

Here is a new philosophical consideration: Some people believe that it is best to give an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, but others just don't like eating cat food!