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Why does someone else’s spot seem warmer than your spot? Like sitting on a couch or whatever, if someone leaves and you move into that spot, it feels warmer.

I propose that we can get free energy that way. If you trade seats with someone, you’ll each feel warmer. Then trade again, it’ll feel warmer again. Keep going back and forth, and the seats will keep heating up.

The only problem is how to harness that energy before the couch catches on fire.

People use the term “curse words” to denote foul language, but that’s misleading. When the Bible says not to curse someone, it doesn’t mean to not use foul language. Side note: why one should refrain from foul language is a separate topic that will not be covered here.

Cursing is simply wishing something bad upon someone. That can be done without any “bad words”. I put “bad words” in quotes because what makes the words bad is the thought or meaning behind them. You can take any socially-acceptable word and use it in a curse and then it becomes bad. I prefer the term “rude words” or “vulgarities”.

The Bible gives the concept that cursing is the opposite of blessing. Most of the curses I’ve seen start with “may” (such as “may you have such-and-such happen to you”, or “may your situation/relative/health be something bad”), which to me makes “may” a curse word.

Honorable mention goes to the phrase “why don’t you” if it implies the recipient should do something harmful.

But most of the blessings also start with “may”, so “may” is also a blessing word. Everyone is familiar with the term “curse word” but I had not considered the concept of a “blessing word” until I just wrote that previous sentence.

Note that many people say “bless you” in response to a sneeze. I don’t consider that a blessing, although it is polite at least, because a curse implies ill-will toward someone and a blessing implies goodwill toward someone, and in general saying something in response to a sneeze is jut a habit with no real meaning. And if one does not respond to a sneeze, it is amusing to me how significant the lack of response is – the quiet just hanging there. For any other bodily noises, the instigator is expected to apologize or otherwise acknowledge his act, but for a sneeze it is the beholder who is expected to speak up. I’m doing my part to break that expectation, by not responding.

Another side note: the musical Fiddler on the Roof has a song in it called “The Prayer”. But I consider it misnamed. It should be called “The Blessings” because it is full of well-wishing for people. It is not a prayer because it is addressed to the people (“May God bless you, and grant you long lives”). A prayer should be addressed to God, not people.

I was going to look into if vulgarities followed the same path as euphemisms on the euphemism treadmill (or carousel of euphemisms, depending if you heard it from Pinker or Keyes first). But it seems for us Americans the set of words that are bad/rude/vulgar is fairly consistent, unlike euphemisms that have been both invented and then gone out of fashion within my lifetime.

Having recently driven through Virginia, I saw a bunch of signs that said “Speed Limit Enforced by Aircraft”. And that got me thinking.

I doubt the speed limit is actually enforced by the aircraft. It should say “Vehicle Speed Measured by Aircraft”, or something like that. Because there’s no way the airplane is pulling you over.

Plus, “enforced” sounds a little strict, like they have some way of making you go the speed limit whether you want to or not. I suppose that’s on purpose, as they want you to obey. The sign gave me the mental picture of the aircraft being a military VTOL that would descend and hover right in front of you, with guns very visible to let you know they mean business. That would be enforcement.

Our pastor had a topic with the kids in youth group – since some of them don’t have much church background – on Jesus’ name.

One of the things he made sure to tell them is that “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name. Christ is His title – Jesus the Christ, which means the Mesiah or The Promised One.

So far none of the kids have asked what Jesus’ last name actually was. Pastor did bring it up in a separate discussion and I joked that Jesus’ last name was Carpenter, because that was the family business.

Here in America, and I assume we brought the habit over from Europe and didn’t just make it up ourselves, people got their last names from what they did. Back in the old days at least, before machines came along. Now it seems that no one gets assigned last names anymore – we just keep inheriting them.

Anyway, it used to work like this:

You needed some horseshoes or a plow, you went to see John the Smith.
You needed some grain turned into flour, you went to see John the Miller.
You needed some barrels to hold the grain, you went to see John the Cooper.
And so on.

People’s trades became their last names because everyone kept referring to them by that. That’s why Americans would think of Jesus’ last name as Carpenter.

But it wouldn’t have been that.

In the Middle East they did (and still do) things differently. You are not known by what you do, rather you are known by your family.
Your last name is who your father is, such as John son of John (or John Johnson, which is a thing Americans are also familiar with from some other parts of Europe, and also Wisconsin).
And, as I learned from someone who spent time in Iraq just over a decade ago, once you as a male have a son, your last name changes from whose son you are to whose father you are. First-born son only.

Since Jesus was from the Middle East, I expect the custom would have been for Him to be called by His father’s name. Earthly father, since that’s how the people who would be talking to Him would know Him.
And that is what we see in the Bible, although we non-Middle-Easterners don’t recognize it as a last name. Let’s look at John 6:42a:

And they were saying, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”

Right there, you see the people give Jesus’ first and last name. First name: Jesus. Last name: Son of Joseph, or Barjoseph as they would have said.

Not sure how useful that bit of information was, but it may come in handy if you have a discussion about what Jesus’ last name was.

Also I find in interesting that Barabbas, whom you may recognize from Jesus’ trial, was known as Barabbas. “Bar” meaning “son of” and would have been the equivalent of his last name. I’m guessing he was an only (male) child so he could have been known as the “son of Abbas” and it would have been unique enough to identify him. Or maybe there were some complications in his family life and all he knew was his dads’ name but not his own, and that propelled him into a life of crime. It’s also interesting to consider his kids’ last name: would it be Barbarabbas?

Here are some things that are like magic to me, in that I can see them happening but they don’t make sense. You can explain and I can follow the explanation but it still is a mystery.

• How a knot makes a rope weaker. You have a rope. It can hold so much weight. You tie a knot in the rope. Now it can hold only half the weight. But the rope is still all there.
• How British people sound American when they sing. I have heard some new song by some new singer and not thought much about it. Sounded fine. Sounded normal. Then later I heard an interview with this person and realized at that point they were British or Australian or whatever. Only rarely (e.g. “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers) do singers have such thick accents that it comes through in their singing.
• Where dirt from a pothole goes. I have a dirt driveway. It gets potholes. I want to fill in the potholes. Ideally the dirt that came out of the pothole should go back in the pothole, but there is no pile of dirt anywhere. Matter has been destroyed.
• How a grain bag stitch holds. Grab a bushel bag of grain from a feed store. Pick it up and toss it in your car’s trunk (or pickup bed). Take it out and toss it in your wheelbarrow. Do just about anything normal with it and it stays together. Then pull the string and the whole end unravels and opens up and you can dump the grain out. It’s like the Prince Rupert’s Drop of bulk storage.
• How a baby starts to breathe. This one I’ve seen in person a few times. Baby is surrounded by fluid. Lungs not using air. Baby is born and then the lungs just start working. It’s even more amazing if you can see a video of an en caul birth.

The Refrigeration Cycle was going to be on this list, but I found an explanation that made sense to me. For those interested in that, here it is. Phase change is not affected by only temperature, but also pressure. If you have a fluid in a closed system, you can make the phase change by adding or removing heat. If you add or remove heat, you’re also affecting the pressure as the fluid expands or contracts. The Refrigeration Cycle is just that equation but from the other direction, like in math you can flip the equation around and it still works (because energy must be conserved). So the cycle works by adding or removing pressure to a fluid to change the phase and that has the result of adding or removing heat. Because if it didn’t add or remove heat then energy would not be conserved.

I was hanging streamers the other week for someone’s birthday and I wondered why we always twist streamers when stringing them up.

So I ran one straight, with no twist. And it looked very sad.

That got me thinking about other things that are generally known as bad if unvarying. I came up with three:

• Streamers (the crepe paper party things, not people online)
• Singing a music note
• Long hair

People seem to agree that in each of those, an overlaying frequency is good – a twisting or a vibrato or some curls or waves.

I thought of those three items, then I wondered if I could think of any more. I saw I got two from the sense of sight and one from the sense of hearing. Maybe there could be examples from the other senses?

Sense of smell? No, no examples of a varying scent being more interesting than a straightforward scent. Scents themselves are interesting enough, I suppose.

Sense of taste? Same thing as smell, for this exercise. Too much of one smell or taste would cause it to wane, but generally you switch scents or flavors not make them wavy. I don’t even know how you could make a flavor wavy.

Sense of touch? I do see this happening here. Some examples are a back massage or foot rub doesn’t just press in one place (queue video of Bugs Bunny head massage). Also it is not unusual for people to pat backs when hugging. Why do they do that? In the interesting of promoting this theory, I’d say the answer is because unvarying hugs are not as interesting.

I don’t know what else to do with this realization – sharing it here is about the extent of its usefulness.

Here are a couple thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• Here in Michigan, it is well info the fall season. We notice it mostly with the leaves changing, but also migrations. Specifically, I notice the migration of boxes of clothes. My wife has boxes that make their way from the basement up to our room, where they shed their winter clothes and gain their summer clothes instead. It’s backwards from how animals work, but such is the nature of the boxes of winter/summer clothes.
  And animals migrate themselves, but the boxes are immobile so I have to carry them for their migration.
• Here in Michigan, the weather has turned cool. It is the weather I like, in that I get to wear long-sleeve shirts but keep wearing shorts. Our one teenage son wears that style all year long – a hoodie and shorts. And now that it is appropriate for the weather, that reminds me of the old saying that even a stopped clock is right twice a day. In the same way, a teenage boy’s outfit is right twice a year: a hoodie and shorts are good to wear in the fall and the spring.