httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nEoW-P81-0
All posts by redhatrob
Update from Ice Station Laguardo
According to the weatherman, sometime between 9am and noon tomorrow, the temperature will reach 32 degrees and by 3pm will climb all the way up to 38. It will be the first time since the evening of January 2nd that the temperature here in middle Tennessee has gotten above freezing. According to the National Weather Service the last time that we had nine consecutive days of below-freezing temperatures was in 1899. That was 111 years ago.
It was warmer at McMurdo Station, Antarctica yesterday than it was in Nashville, TN.
As someone else has observed, when it’s hot it’s global warming; when it’s cold it’s just weather.
I think the percentage of folks in Middle Tennessee who believe in global warming has fallen with the thermometer.
Teaching Genesis to Children
For the past several years, Cyndy has been preparing the Sunday School lessons for our church. There are about two dozen children, ages 6 to 12, all in one class. Needless to say, this has been a challenge. Cyndy has been committed to preparing lessons that teach children the stories from scripture, systematically, both Old and New Testament. I think she’s done a marvelous, creative, inventive job. And of course, I’m completely unbiased!
Today’s lesson was from the book of Genesis. During the next 8 week segment, the kids will be going over both the Tower of Babel and the Flood sections, but today was the introductory material. You might not think there would be much for kids in the passages from Genesis 4 & 5 that cover the genealogy of the Patriarchs – but there is! There are ten figures named starting with Adam and ending with Noah. For each one the text gives their age when their son was born and how long they lived. From these figures, it is possible to construct a timeline showing how much time elapsed from Adam to Noah and the Flood.
If we take the year of Adam’s birth as 0 and then add the ages of each Patriarch to the age of their father in the year of their birth we come up with a total of 1,656 years from Adam’s birth to the Flood. But there’s more to think about here than just how much time passed. It’s also intriguing to look at how much the lives of the Patriarch’s overlapped each other. There’s also the fascinating story of Enoch, who did not die, but was taken by God directly into heaven.
To help kids see these relationships, Cyndy planned and laid out a “living timeline” for the kids on the floor of our fellowship hall.
At the start of the lesson, ten children sat in ten chairs and picked up the name of a randomly assigned Patriarch. The teacher called the first name, “Adam.” The student started walking the taped timeline at Adam’s birth, paused when Seth was born, and then continued to walk the rest of the years of their life. Then Seth was called, and so on.
There were two lines drawn across the lifelines of the Patriarchs. A blue ribbon marked the year of Adam’s death. At the conclusion of the class the students were asked, “How many of the other nine Patriarchs could have talked to Adam?” The answer is eight. The tenth Patriarch, Noah, is the first one born after Adam’s death.
When we got to Enoch, by the way, rather than walking to the end of their lifeline, we had one of the teachers wheel the student out in a chair to show that the end of Enoch’s life was different.
The second line drawn across the lifelines was red crepe paper marking the year of the flood. A very concrete illustration of the meaning of Methuselah’s name which is “after me it comes.”
The kids had a good time and the visuals really drove the point home. I was in the sanctuary doing communion at the end of our morning worship service, so I challenged the adults to go find a child from Sunday School and find out how many of the Patriarchs could have talked to Adam.
Here’s what Cyndy wrote the teachers in the teachers’ guide to the lesson:
What we want the kids to take away from all this:
An appreciation for the historicity of Scripture.
Understanding that ALL Scripture, even the “begats” are profitable.
That the genealogies show us that there an eyewitness to Eden was alive for 900 years. This means that Noah could not have talked to Adam about what it was like before the fall, but Noah’s father could have.
New TSA Regs & Procedures
photo captioning by Pansy
Fix or replace?
A few weeks ago, my trusty Lenovo laptap snapped first the left and then the right hinge which connects the LCD screen to the keyboard/cpu unit. I’ve had it for several years (and been quite satisfied with it), but my immediate response was to go online and start shopping for a replacement.
And then I thought again.
Today, the $35 replacement hinges that I ordered arrived. This evening I spent about 20 minutes opening the case, removing the old hinges, and installing new ones. I’m quite happy with the laptop once again.
The larger implications of this for the economy are actually much more significant that one might suspect. The US economy has been built on consumer spending, both big ticket items (houses & cars) and on intermediate “white goods” (appliances & electronic gadgets). When times are difficult or uncertain (or both) many consumers have the option of postponing purchases of new or replacement items and stretching the life of the things they already have.
This appears to a significant part of what has happened in the US over the past 12 months.
See charts below:
Poet-Laureate of the Headline Stack
Vanderleun of American Digest coined a phrase last week in describing the daily work of Matt Drudge – “poet-laureate of the headline stack.” Althouse has referred to the encoded meanings in Drudge’s juxtapositions, especially his use of iconic images to accompany single headlines.
But I think the headline stack IS a new literary form – almost poetic. Certainly expressive and evocative by its selection of order and juxtaposition. A bit like a haiku. This is what has been up for most of today. The sum is greater than the parts. Seeing the links stacked together gives much more meaning sometimes than even reading the individual linked articles:
Winter Could Be Worst in 25 Years for USA...
CHILL MAP...
Britain braced for heaviest snowfall in 50-years...
GAS SUPPLIES RUNNING OUT IN UK...
Elderly burn books for warmth?
Vermont sets 'all-time record for one snowstorm'...
Iowa temps 'a solid 30 degrees below normal'...
Seoul buried in heaviest snowfall in 70 years...
3 die in fire at Detroit home; power was cut...
Midwest Sees Near-Record Lows, Snow By The Foot...
Miami shivers from coldest weather in decade...
Would anything be added to this by analysis or commentary on Global Warming? Is any further commentary necessary?
The risks of ill-informed meddling
The 1929 crash exposed the naivety and ignorance of bankers, businessmen, Wall Street experts and academic economists high and low; it showed they did not understand the system they had been so confidently manipulating. They had tried to substitute their own well-meaning policies for what Adam Smith called ‘ the invisible hand’ of the market and they had wrought disaster. Far from demonstrating, as Keynes and his school later argued – at the time Keynes failed to predict either the crash or the extent and duration of the Depression – the dangers of a self-regulating economy, the degringolade indicated the opposite: the risks of ill-informed meddling.
– Paul Johnson, Modern Times, p. 240
I teach the chapter entitled Degringolade to my students tomorrow. In context, the chapter title is a trilingual pun. The students’ first assignment was to research the meaning of the title.
Central planning vs. free markets
The free market would never produce this – an entire city, built for one million people, to which no one has yet moved. All because some central planners thought the existing city should be replaced.
And of course, no one has ever lost money investing in real estate in China!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h7V3Twb-Qk
h/t to John Derbyshire at NRO.
Nashville is frozen – for how long?
Baby, it’s cold outside.
Friday, January 1st, the high temperature in Nashville was 37 degrees. It fell below freezing the night of 1/1/2010 and over the past three days, the high temp has never gotten back to 32. The long-range, five-day forecast says our warmest day of the coming week will get up to only 31 degrees (on Wednesday). We may be able to ice-skate on the ponds by the end of the week. It may get up to 34 on Sunday, January 10th. We’re looking at 10+ consecutive days of below freezing temperatures.
Friends, this is unusual for Nashville. In 2009, the January temps got above freezing on 28 out of 31 days. In 2008, the high temp was above freezing on 29 of 31 days. In 2007, it was above freezing on 30 out of 31 days. In 2006, it was above freezing on 31 out of 31 days.
Last year (and most years), we’ve actually had a balmy week of January temps in the 50s & 60s.
Button up. Stay warm. Take care of your pets. It could be awhile before the spring thaw.