Lift Up Your Hearts!

No, not our granddaughter.  :(  But something her siblings would probably like.  It brightened my day, and might do so for you while you're waiting for the next Hawaii post.

John Rutter's  Look at the World.  (H/T SouthForte Farms)

At last, an explanation of what Janet did in Basel before Joseph was born:

Early Music (H/T Andy B.),

and Barefoot Running (H/T Patti W.).  (Preview without grandkid viewers.)

This is the best thing to do with a soda bottle since Diet Coke and Mentos.  The insructions are clear, and the cost of materials low.  I know some grandchildren who would love it.  (H/T Conversion Diary.)

Look what we discovered!

In the following scene, T is Stephan's friend who is in Japan helping D, the pastor whose work I mentioned in Helping Japan, a Local Option.  I have to give some credit to Facebook, as I only knew about this because FB showed me M as one of the (not so random) short list friends on D's Facebook page when I was checking it out.  Stephan put the pieces together from there.

Janet, who travelled to Switzerland, and there met and married

Stephan, who had lived in Japan, where he had became friends with

T, who was in Japan for a few years and worked with

D, pastor of a church there, who has a son

J, who met (in Orlando?) and married

M, a good friend of Janet's from childhood!

Here's a Volkswagen plant in Germany that makes me think of the (former) World of Motion ride at EPCOT.  (H/T MMG.)

I'd imagine the cars from such a factory cost a pretty penny cent, but it's still cool.  If I were a worker, however, I'd at least be asking questions about what the side effects might be of all the magnets under the floor.

If you give up pie for lent, can you still eat Boston cream pie?  The only thing that luscious concoction of cake, pudding, and chocolate icing has in common with pie is that both are round.

Then there’s the kind that is a different shape altogether—at least when I was in school we were taught that it was square.  Personally, I think this video proves that it isn’t square at all, but a very cool dude indeed.

Happy Pi Day, everyone!^*

I'm still struggling with the book review I'd hoped to post today, so instead you get Jennifer Fulwiler's dry humor.  You can read the whole 7 Quick Takes Friday post at her Conversion Diary blog for other tidbits, like one man's Lenten beer fast (it's not what you think), but here's the section that set me laughing—and thinking—this morning:

Here’s what [Lenten disciplines] I decided on: a decade of the Rosary first thing each morning, and no adding sugar to my morning tea (a small but surprisingly noticeable sacrifice for me). And…well, umm…there’s one other thing that I couldn’t decide if I would admit or not…but I guess I’ll go ahead and say it:

I’m giving up cursing for Lent.

Now, before you form an image of me yelling at my kids to stop jumping on the $%^! couch or asking my husband to pass the $%&*!# salt at dinner, let me say that it’s not that bad. I don’t use bad words in front of the kids, and it’s not like I walk around spewing profanity when I’m around adults. It’s just that I’ve noticed lately that, well, sometimes I just can’t seem to express myself without pulling out a word from my pre-conversion lexicon. So I’m really working on that during Lent, hopefully adopting habits that will last for the long-term.

Giving up adding sugar to drinks was actually a last-minute addition to my Lenten plans. I’d always heard that you should give up something good, but I didn’t really get why, so I just went with giving up cursing for Lent. But then I heard people who had given up something good talking about their plans for Easter, and it all clicked.

For example, someone I know who gave up cheese talked about how she’s going to get a huge, lavish cheese tray for brunch on Easter. When I imagined her going that long 40 days with nary [a] bite of one of her favorite foods, I could see how the ecstatic joy of the Resurrection would hit her at an even deeper, visceral level as she bit into savory chunks of Camembert and felt the luscious Brie melt in her mouth after the long fast.

Then I pictured myself rising on Easter morn’, taking a deep breath, and shouting the f-word. Umm, yeah. That’s why giving up something that’s bad anyway doesn’t quite have the same effect. So no sugar in my tea for Lent.

Ha!  Engish is cool, too.  German has its Eszett (ß) and Spanish its eñe (ñ); the world is full of accents and umlauts and other characters that make life interesting and typing difficult.  By contrast, English is plain and boring.

But it wasn't always so.  We had - ta da! - The Thorn.

From Michael Leclerc of the New England Historic Genealogical Society:

One of the most abused of all letters (and former letters) in the English language is the Thorn. In Latin, the letter was written as Þ (capital) or þ (lowercase). In English, however, the thorn looks like the modern letter “y.” The thorn is no longer used in everyday English. The Thorn was pronounced the same way as the digraph “th” in modern English. In proper usage it is NEVER pronounced as the letter “y.”

It is often found on old gravestones, usually in its y-shape followed by a superscript letter ("Here lies y^e body of"), and in the names of stores attempting to appear quaint (Ye Olde Coffee Shop).

Lest you think this is all ancient history, the thorn can also be found in Unicode, on Icelandic keyboards, and in html (þ = þ).

I think that's cool.

With an enthusiastic tip of the hat to PD, I present Hillsborough, New Hampshire's own Bible Hill Boys in this awesome Christmas video, (I Do All My) Christmas Shopping at the Dump.

This is in tribute to our very own UJ, who is the undefeated champion of dump shopping in Connecticut.  In Florida, as in many places, dumps are dirty, smelly, nasty, dangerous things.  But in thrifty New England residents can separate out potentially reusable trash and "dump" it in special locations (at the transfer stations), where others can find treasure.  Sometimes literally:  our UJ once found a diamond ring!  Unable to find the original owner, he presented it to his wife.  Needless to say, she does not consider her husband a chump.  He's a champ!  "UJ's Store" is a great place for shopping, whatever the season.

Enjoy the song!

So, this headline popped up in my news feed today:

US, Israel, PA fail to reach agreement on settlement freeze

and my immediate thought was, "Why is Pennsylvania negotiating directly with Israel?"

In case you haven't seen it, check out the 12 Composers of Christmas.  (H/T musician friend Sarah D.)

From a BBC News story of the latest Nissan recall (H/T Porter):

Nissan said there had been no accidents reported due to the fault, which can cause the engine to stall while running.

Just what I needed, something more to worry about.  The nighmare scenario had never occurred to me:  We're peacefully asleep in our beds, our car resting in the garage, apparently quite comfortable—but unbeknownst to us suffering an episode of stalling while the engine was not running.

Non Campus Mentis:  World History According to College Students, compiled by Anders Henriksson (Workman Publishing, New York, 2001) (Later retitled Ignorance Is Blitz)

This compilation of major historical events was pieced together from the essays and exams of students at a variety of colleges in the United States and Canada.  If you know a reasonable amount of world history and geography, you will find it hysterical, at least till you get to the quiz in the back of the book.

It would be a good book to read aloud at a party, although you would miss some pretty funny misspellings.  Reading it aloud in the car, however, as we did, would be unwise:  If you think texting puts the driver at a disadvantage, you should see what happens when he's doubled over with hysterical laughter.

Here are some excerpts, in roughly historical order, for your enjoyment.

Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro.  This was a duelist religion.

The history of the Jewish people begins with Abraham, Issac, and their twelve children.  Judyism was the first monolithic religion.  It had one big God named "Yahoo."

Moses was told by Jesus Christ to lead the people out of Egypt into the Sahaira Desert.  The Book of Exodus describes this trip and the amazing things that happened on it, including the Ten Commandments, various special effects, and the building of the Suez Canal.  Forty centuries later they arrived in Canada.  This was the promise land of milk and chocolate.

Pythagasaurus fathered the triangle.

Augustus (a.k.a.Octagenarian) founded the Roman Catholic Empire.

When they finally got to Italy, the Australian Goths were tired of plungering and needed to rest.  Italy was ruled by the Visible Goths, while France and Spain were ruled by the Invisible Goths.

During the Middle Ages everyone was middle aged. ... Power belonged to a patriarchy empowering all genders except the female.  Nuns, for example, were generally women.

In a Romanesque church the stone roof is held up by a system of peers.  The usual design was a long knave split by a crosshair.  Without the discovery of the flying buttock it would have been an impossible job to build the Gothic cathedral.

Finally, Europe caught the Black Death.  The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras.  It was spread from port to port by inflected rats.  ... Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. ... Death rates exceeded one hundred percent in some towns. ... The plague also helped the emergance of English as the national language of England, France, and Italy.

Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granola, a part of Spain now known as Mexico and the Gulf States.

Calvin was born a generation after Luther and is seen as one of Luther's greatest predecessors.  He accepted all Luther's ideas except that of birth.  Calvinists were the only ones who believeed in pre-detonation.  It is not surprising that their preaching consisted mainly of dogmatic explosions.

The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic.

Henvry VIII survived an assault from the Papal bull.

The Thirty Years War began with the Defecation of Prague. ... Prague was the capitol of Bulemia.

These good times ended when England suffered Civil War between the Musketeers and the Round Ones.  Oliver Cromwell solved this and other problems by removing prominent things from people who disagreed with him.

Next time you hear Porter shout, Queen of Hearts-like, "Off with their prominent things!" you will know why.

East of the back of the beyond were the Russians, who knew nothing at all during this period.  A factor in this was their use of the Kinetic alphabet. ... Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great.  Peter filled his cabinet with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. ... Catherine the Great rose to power only because her husband had been murdered by his clothiers for failure to incubate.

Americans, of course, wanted no involvement in the French and Indian War because they did not want to fight in India.  ...  The Boston Tea Party was held at Pearl Harbor.  The Quebec Act was an Intolerable Act becaude it would have required Americans to learn French in School. ...  Benjamin Franklin, already famous as inventor of the light bulb, persuaded French King George III to help the USA.

Another problem was that France was full of French people.  Dickens made this point in The Tail of Two Sisters, which he required us to read.

An example of the importance of women during the industrial revolution was the work of Spinning Jenny, a young girl forced to work more than 40 hours a day.

Another man to influence the state and others was Karl Marx, who advanced his theory of dialectical maternalism. ... According to Marx the stages of history are canabalism, slavery, fuedalism, capitalism, and back to canabalism.  These are the moods of production.

Nearly everybody breathed a sigh of relief when the Communists were able to restore chaos.

When the Davy Jones Index crashed in 929 many people were left to political incineration.  Some, like John Paul Sart, retreated into extraterrestrialism. ... The New Deal was an idea inspired by President Franklin Eleanor Roosavelt.

Stalin, Rosevelt, Churchill, and Truman were known as the "Big Three."

John F. Kennedy worked closely with the Russians to solve the Canadian Missile Crisis.

Mohammed Gandi...was the last British ruler of India.

[T]he fall of empires has been a good thing, because it gives more people a chance to exploit their own people without outside interference.

The Civil Rights movement in the USA turned around the corner with Martin Luther Junior's famous "If I Had a Hammer" speech.

East and West made mends with each other. The Berlin Mall was removed. 

For friends and family who prefer to ignore Facebook:

Jonathan:  Dad, the spaceship book gave me an idea, and I'm going to be working on a project. It requires liquid oxygen....

Anyone have some spare LOX for an ambitious six-year-old?

For reasons obscure (who needs a reason, anyway?) I was looking up mathematician/musician Tom Lehrer and came upon this.  Enjoy!