Archive for December, 2021

Maternity Ward Quiz

Dec

29

2021

This is a quiz to test your knowledge of both the Bible and the maternity ward.

What do those two things have in common? A lot of Greek/Latin/Roman names.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the maternity ward section of a hospital, but having been there a few times I picked up on some common terms.

This quiz is in a simple multiple choice format. I’ll present 4 choices – A through D – and you pick the term that is not from the Bible but rather is from the maternity ward.

On your marks.

Get set.

Go.

Set 1:
A. Galatians
B. Ephesians
C. Philippians
D. Colustrum

Set 2:
A. Macedonia
B. Pergamum
C. Lycaonia
D. Meconium

Set 3:
A. plains of Shinar
B. isle of Patmos
C. medium of Endor
D. score of Apgar

Set 4:
A. 1st and 2nd Corinthians
B. 1st and 2nd Thessalonians
C. 1st and 2nd Chronicles
D. 1st and 2nd Episiotomies

And… pencils down. That’s it for the quiz. Please exchange papers with the classmate next to you and we’ll grade them now.

The answers are: 1 D, 2 D, 3 D, and 4 D.

I hope you all did well. A passing score of at least 60% can qualify for Continuing Education Credits, please grab a form for that on the way out if you need it.

And after they had preached the gospel to that city and had made a good number of disciples, they returned to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch

Acts 14:21

Posted in Humor | 1 Comment »

Amazon Christmas Albums

Dec

22

2021

I’m calling these things albums, but Amazon calls them playlists. Close enough. Amazon also has things they call stations, which are just playlists but you can’t see the list of songs in it.

First up: Christmas Hymns

image of Amazon's playlist of Christmas Hymns

Good stuff. The songs were sung in a manner that was faithful to the way they were written, and the way everyone expects them to be. It was also a good length for an album, just over an hour.

Second up: Christian Christmas Favorites

image of Amazon's playlist of Christian Christmas Favorites

Some good stuff, some not-so-good stuff. I suppose it depends on what you’re looking for, but the title of this album was not quite representative. It starts off with a mix of classic Christmas carols and newer songs about Christmas. I wouldn’t classify some of those newer songs as “favorites”, but they were about Christmas and they were from a Christian perspective, so I did appreciate them.

What I didn’t appreciate was some of the songs mixed in: Winter Wonderland, All I Want for Christmas is You, and some others that I think were included because they were performed by Christian artists. But that doesn’t make them Christian Favorites. Plus, this album clocked in at 3 hours and 14 minutes, so they certainly could have done without those songs. And I didn’t need 3 different versions of Breath of Heaven. The curators could have picked their favorite version, or maybe they couldn’t agree on the best version and so they each put their favorite version in and hoped no one would notice the redundancy.

I had to mark this one down also due to Jordan Smith’s song “O Come (Let Us Adore)” because it took a standard Christmas carol and added a new section.

Last up: Caroling at Christmas

image of Amazon's playlist of Caroling at Christmas

This one was okay. It had Christmas carols, plus some other popular Christmas songs such as Feliz Navidad that I wouldn’t classify as carols. Can you picture a group of people walking up to a house and serenading them with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”? No. Therefore, it is not a Christmas carol, and it should not be in this collection.

Anyway, this album has most of the staples, and they’re the type you’d catch on a radio station this time of year – Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, etc.

Fine background music.

And that’s about it for Christmas albums that interested me. I then switched to Handel’s Messiah and listened to that while I finished our Christmas card layout.

And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five.

1 Kings 4:32

Posted in Life | 1 Comment »

All-Haiku Bowl Predictions, 2021

Dec

15

2021

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
(more…)

Posted in Sports | 2 Comments »

SCL Old Guest Post – Songs with Motions

Dec

8

2021

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

The number one biggest fear that people have is public speaking. That’s not mine though.

Mine is that I’ll e called up to the front of the church to demonstrate the motions to a song, mainly because I don’t like doing the motions but also because I probably don’t know them very well.

This is not so much of a problem now, as grown-up hymns don’t have motions like the kids’ songs do. But you never know when they might break out “Deep and Wide” on a Sunday morning.

And if they did, anyone up front will be immortalized, as the services are streamed and recorded, so the whole world can watch your motions on the internet for as long as the internet exists, in theory.

It’s not a comforting thought.

In case you’re wondering, “Deep and Wide” is a perennial favorite of the leaders of the kids’ program. Because then, the third time around, after people have started to develop muscle memory, they change the words to “Wide and Deep” and try to catch people off guard.

And I haven’t sung this song in decades, but it stuck with me: “Father Abraham”. Even as a kid, this seemed a rather worthless song as far as lyrics went. It was obvious the point of this song was to make kids exercise.

Anyway, I did my time. Now I’m old enough I think I don’t need to worry about it – I get to take my kids to the kids’ program and watch them have fun with the motions. Carry on the tradition.

Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand said, “Men of Israel, and you who fear God, listen

Acts 13:16

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On Heating

Dec

1

2021

Today is going to be a discussion of heating and heat transfer, in the context of what heating systems make sense for buildings

First off, let’s start with some basics.  Things, in general, are either good conductors of heat or bad conductors of heat.  Bad conductors are good insulators.  What are some good insulators?  People normally think of fiberglass insulation.  A nice thick sweater is also a good insulator.  There’s also that expanding foam stuff.  They all have in common that they hold air.  All the fluffiness is there to have a bunch of air pockets.  Ideally, the best insulator would a vacuum (no air), but since that’s impractical for most things, we go with the next best thing which is air.  

So air is a good insulator and therefore bad conductor of heat.  

Next, let’s go with air movement.  

What is windchill?  I’m hoping you all know the answer already, but just for completeness I’ll say here that is it the feeling that moving air imparts to people.  The faster the air moves, the lower the temperature feels.  So blowing air brings a cooling effect.  Nothing new there, I hope.  

Now let’s combine those two principles.  Let’s say, in theory, we wanted to design the worst possible system for heating a place where people are.  What would we do?  First, we’d start by using a bad conductor of heat as our heat-delivery medium.  Right?  Let’s heat up something that doesn’t hold heat well, and send that around to distribute heat.  Next, we’d use something that would make things feel cooler, rather than warmer – make sure windchill is involved.  

Put it all together, and you get standard forced-air systems that are in just about every house built these days.  

For those of you familiar with thermodynamics, please tell me how you could make a worse system for delivering heat to make people feel warm.  From both an efficiency standpoint and comfort standpoint.  

The only reason it’s popular is that it is cheap to install and maintain.  It can be done shoddily and people won’t notice if there’s a small leak in the ductwork.  

The other thing that’s bad about it is the vents are annoying.  We have one in the kitchen floor right where a chair is and I can’t always scoot the chair where I want because the leg catches on the lip of the vent.  

In case you’re wondering, I’m a proponent of radiant heating.  It uses water, something that conducts heat well, and it doesn’t blow on you.  And it’s quiet.  And you can put furniture anywhere you want, without worrying about blocking anything.  

On the other hand, it does make sense to use air for cooling.  You want windchill, to help you feel cooler.  

But whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be thrown into the middle of a furnace of blazing fire.

Daniel 3:6

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