Johnny and the meal prayer - joke

Everyone was seated around the table as the food was being served. When little Johnny received his plate, he started eating straight away. "Johnny, wait until we've said our prayer," his mother reminded him. "I don't have to," the little boy replied. "Of course you do," his mother insisted. "We say a prayer before eating at our house." "That's at our house," Johnny explained, "but this is Grandma's house and she knows how to cook."

Future Apple products?

- iGlass - Apple optician service
- iScream - Apple horror-movie, frozen-treat mixed franchise
- iDeere - an Apple-branded tractor
- iKnow - Apple encyclopedia
- iWant - Christmas gift planner app for kids
- iDunno - Apple teenager speech translator app
- iExpectso - Apple future-event predictor
- iCan - Motivational thoughts app
- iCan'tBelieveItsNotButter - buttermilk/margarine spread
(sorry, that last one is real)

An old apple limerick

There was a young lady from Rhyde,
Who ate loads of apples and died.
The apples fermented
Inside the lamented,
And made cider inside her inside.

The Talking Dog Joke

A man visits a theatrical agent, claiming he has a talking dog. "Show me!" says the agent.

The man turns to his dog and says, "Rex, what do you find on trees?" The dog responds, "Bark!"

"Do you like biscuits?" asks the man. The dog says "Yep!"

"What is on the top of a house?" the man next asks. "Roof!" replies the dog.

"That's terrible, get outta here!" shouts the agent.

As they leave, the dog looks up at his owner and says, "Should I have said chimney?"

Is the London 2012 Olympics countdown clock correct?

With a great fanfare on March 14th, the London 2012 Olympic Games organisers unveiled a clock counting down to the start of the games.  The clock was supplied by Omega, who have been official timekeepers at the Olympics for 25 years, so they know their stuff, or do they? As I watched the countdown, I noticed something strange. It went something like this:

Days - Hours:Mins:Secs
500 - 00:00:03
500 - 00:00:02
500 - 00:00:01
500 - 00:00:00
500 - 23:59:59
500 - 23:59:58
500 - 23:59:57

The clock counted down to midnight when it got to 500 - 00:0:00 and rolled round to the next day, 500 days to the Olympics!

Now, am I being dense here? Surely 500-days-and-one-second "to go" is less than 500-days-23-hours-59-minutes-59-seconds "to go".  500 days is 499 days and 24 hours, so anything LESS than 500 days isn't 500 days plus some hours. Shouldn't the number of days decremented when the hours, minutes and seconds went through zero?  I would have expected this:

Days - Hours:Mins:Secs

500 - 00:00:03
500 - 00:00:02
500 - 00:00:01
500 - 00:00:00
499 - 23:59:59
499 - 23:59:58
499 - 23:59:57

So how many days left should be shown on the clock now? The number on display, or one less than that?
What do you think?
Links:
London 2012 official news about the unveiling of the countdown clock

News report on the breakdown of the countdown clock the day after it was unveiled

Daily Telegraph's daily countdown to the London 2012 Olympics

Word of the Day - Archive 2

More "words of the day" that I've tweeted in 2011 so far.

WEEKEND - A very small kend (Scottish expression).

CONCENTRATE - A deceit that makes you think hard, e.g. "Pure fruit juice (made from concentrate and added water)".

BEARING - what Mr Grizzly gave to Mrs Grizzly when they got married.

ANTELOPE - What insects do when they run away to get married.

DIAMETRIC - A Welsh form of measuring length.

PEER - A member of the British House of Lords who likes to examine intently the wording of new laws.

PERIOD - It's a stretch of time that brings things to a full stop.

STOCK - Collective name for a Vulcan farmer's animals.

SMOCK - An item of clothing that farmers on Planet Vulcan like to wear.

EPOCH - One of those little furry characters from Star Wars, who has lived for a LONG time.

HA-HA - A Victorian garden feature for keeping out animals that always made people laugh when they first saw it.

MUMBLING - How a son speaks when giving jewelry to his mother.

HEXAGON - Got rid of a six-sided magical spell.

FLOWER - An engineer who's job it is to ensure there are no blockages in pipes taking water to people's houses

ANDROID - A roid you can 'old in your 'and. It's a bit cockney, you see.

COCKSURE - an overly confident company that insures restaurant kitchens against bug infestation.

EUROPE - A new French/German standard for how farmers should catch cows, based on US cowboys.

BATE - Something used by fishermen, who wait for a catch with bated breath.

CHOCOLATE - a deadly substance. "Did you hear Colin died from over-eating Mars Bars?" "Yeah, he's chocolate."

SYNOPSIS - A summary of how much sex and violence there is in the plot of a story.

REVOLT - to charge the battery in an electric car, e.g., "My G-Wiz is revolting." "I've often thought that."

RECURSIVE - The urge to swear constantly when you find a program keeps calling itself in an endless loop.

EFFULGENT - A man who's eaten all his dinner. How brilliant is that!

PROCRASTINATE - I'll be giving the definition of this word later...

PRESTIDIGITATION - the technical name for a touch-screen smartphone. Some view them as magical finger toys.

REFUSE - Rubbish or trash that you refuse to keep any more.

BASQUE - A type of female undergarment that originates from north-eastern Spain. It borders on being French.

BARBIE - A plastic toy doll used to cook food in Australia. "Throw another prawn on the barbie."

PACIFIST - A Californian who keeps the peace by punching people who try to fight. Hang on, that's not quite right...

The tourists from Europe

There was a tragic story about a party of tourists from Europe on a hiking holiday in the US that encountered a family of grizzly bears.  All but one of the tourists managed to escape.  When the park rangers investigated the incident, one of them reported, "The Czech is in the male".

The poor ex-pirate parrot

There was this man who visited an animal shelter and decided to take home a parrot that he was told had once been owned by a foul-mouthed pirate.

When he got the parrot home, he found that it constantly uttered swear words and was very bossy. "Don't ###### do ##### that!" shouted the parrot all morning. "If you don't quieten down and stop swearing, there'll be trouble!" replied the man. "Oh #### ##### with bells on!" screamed back the parrot.

After a few days, the man had had enough. "If you don't shut up, I'm going to lock you in a dark place" he warned. "No you ######## ####### won't!" screamed the parrot. "Right! See how you like this!" the man replied.

He grabbed the parrot, tied it up, opened the chest freezer, put the squalking parrot in and shut the lid on it. There were furious shouting noises from the freezer for a few minutes and then it suddenly went quiet.

After 10 minutes of silence, the man cautiously opened the freezer lid. The parrot looked up at him. Not a word, not a sound. He lifted the parrot out, untied it and put it back on its perch. "Are you going to behave now?" "I sure am," replied the parrot, "I am truly sorry for being bad. But, please tell me, what did that poor chicken do?"

Is it important to use the name of God?

This is an observation about how "hiding" the name of God causes confusion of beliefs and appears to reduce God's role in our salvation.

In Romans 10:13, Paul says "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved," He was actually quoting a portion of the Hebrew scriptures, or Old Testament. Joel 2:32 says "And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered."

These quotations are taken from the King James version. In this translation, the Hebrew name for God (the Tetragrammaton YHWH) is shown as LORD in capital letters.

So, if someone reads Romans 10:13 in this translation, they will think that the Lord referred to is Jesus Christ. "Call on the name of Jesus and you will be saved" say many road-side pulpit signs. Er, no, actually. Paul meant for people to call upon the name of Jesus' father, Almighty God. That is why he quoted Joel 2:32. Jews knew that scripture meant the name of God, and Paul was a well-educated Jew and former Pharisee.

So, true Christians must call upon the name of Almighty God to be saved. Jesus Christ is vital for our salvation, but it is calling on the name of Almighty God that saves.

Notice how the New World Translation makes this clear:

Joel 2:32 "And it must occur that everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will get away safe."

Romans 10:13 "For 'everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved.'"

The name of Almighty God is JEHOVAH. The name of the son of God is JESUS. These two must never be confused in our understanding of the scriptures.

If you have to call upon the name of God to be saved, you have to use his name, not substitute the word God or Lord for his name.

Jesus said we should pray "Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name" (Matthew 6:9 King James version). He expected us to acknowledge his father's name in our prayers.

Jesus prayed (John 17:26) "I have made your name known to them and will make it known." If he publicised Jehovah God's name, SO SHOULD WE.

Compare the above with this:
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=60153

A joke about a JW who used to be in the Mafia

There once was a man called Franco, who lived in a small Italian city. He was in the Mafia, but found life very unhappy. After meeting some witnesses and having a study, he realised he'd found the Truth and he eventually got baptised, after changing his life of course.

Shortly after this, the Circuit Overseer visited his congregation. An elder encouraged the CO to work with Franco. "He's got an amazing record for placing literature!"

So on the Saturday, the CO asked to work with Franco. At the first house, Franco knocked and stood right on the doorstep. When the householder opened the door, Franco leaned over him (Franco was a BIG guy dressed in a dark suit) and said, "If you don't want to DIE, you will take these magazines and read them!" The householder took them, and hurriedly closed the door.

Aghast at this, the CO tried to think of some counsel as they walked to the next door. "Do you think it would be better to be more positive in your introduction?" he asked. Franco thought about this and said he'd try again.

Franco knocked at the next door and again stood right on the doorstep. When the householder opened the door, Franco leaned over him and said, "If you want to LIVE, you will take these magazines and read them!"

Why I'd never use a Star Trek transporter

Every fan of Star Trek is familiar with the transporter, which 'beams' people into a new adventure every week.

Gene Rodenberry invented the transporter as a plot device to get the 'away' team down to a planet's surface before the prop makers had delivered any shuttles for filming. He was also concerned at the time needed to show, each week, the crew embarking on a shuttle, traveling, landing and disembarking, before moving the story on.

Gene never intended to explain how the transporter works, in the same way that the warp engines are just so much technobabble. However, program episodes have included enough detail to give some idea of how the technology is supposed to work.

And I, for one, will NEVER step into a transporter. Why?

Well, the machine scans every molecule in your body and uses advanced computer tech to map their 3D locations. It then destroys your body and converts the atoms into an energy beam ("Beam me up, Scotty"). Now, hold on a second... you die when that happens. I know it sends your energy/atoms and instructions to another location to reconstruct your body, BUT YOU HAVE ALREADY DIED. That's enough for me. And Doctor McCoy speculated on exactly this point on more than one occasion. He said he'd died the first time he used a transporter, and only a copy of him had been around ever since.

So what happens at 'your' destination? The energy and instructions reconstruct an exact duplicate of your body with all the molecules, brain synapses, a complete consciousness, etc, all working fine. So you've arrived? Well to my thinking, a COPY of you has arrived. An incredibly detailed copy, but still a copy. It thinks like you did, everyone thinks it's you, but it's a copy.  Do you remember the episode of ST:TNG when they discovered a duplicate Riker? He'd been copied in a transporter malfunction. So there were two of him, both thinking he was the original.

Supposing you had a laser photocopier which produced exact duplicates of any page put in it, but which destroyed the original during the process. To create a copy of, say, a letter, you would actually need two copies as the original is destroyed. Now, would you refer to one of those copies as the original letter, the original piece of paper you started with? Of course not.

It's the same with the transporter. The original object (or person) is destroyed, and a copy produced elsewhere.

You won't get ME using one of these machines!

By the way, I still love Star Trek, even if the tech is impossible.

Some thoughts on the new Vauxhall Ampera

Update - 11 Feb 2010:
This post has been updated as I misquoted the UK price of a Vauxhall Ampera. The list price is £33,995, and the government's subsidy of £5,000 means the customer pays £28,995.

From the Vauxhall website (http://www.vauxhall-ampera.co.uk)
We estimate that an extended range electric car will save about 1,700 litres of petrol per year based on 40 miles of daily driving (15,000 miles per year).

Or if you drive 60 miles per day (21,900 miles per year) you could save about 1,900 litres of petrol annually (compared to a vehicle that averages 36.2 mpg).

The Ampera can be plugged into a standard 240-volt/13 A household outlet for charging. We estimate that it will cost less than £0.85 at night for a full charge that will deliver up to 50 miles of electric driving.*

* Based on UK average prices for fuel and electricity. Those may vary by market.

From the Vauxhall Ampera Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/VauxhallAmpera)

The Ampera is always powered by the electric motors that drive the front wheels of the vehicle and can travel up to 50 miles - dependant upon the way it is driven - on a single battery charge. When the battery charge has been depleted, the vehicle switches into Extended Range mode whereby the 1.4 litre engine kicks in to generate electricity to continue to drive the wheels for up to another 310 miles on a full tank of fuel - a tank takes 35 litres of petrol. When the Ampera is in Extended Range mode the engine will run at a series of constant RPM depending upon the amount of electricity determined by the vehicle's requirements, e.g. at 30 mph the engine will run at a lower constant RPM to when the car is driven at 70mph.

The generator does not recharge the battery. The way to recharge the battery is to plug the car it into a 13A socket and fully recharge it in less than four hours.


Some of my thoughts

1) Running costs

The fuel tank takes 35 litres and the car can do up to 310 miles on a tank. That is... about 40mpg. On a 350-mile journey, the first 40 or so miles are on the battery charge, then the remainder on 35 litres of petrol. At £1.30 a litre, that is £45.50. There is also the cost of the battery recharge, £0.85 approximately. Total is £46.35.

My Skoda Octavia diesel can do 55mpg. So on a 350 miles journey it uses 29 litres, which at £1.33 a litre is £38.57. And no battery recharge cost. 

£46.35 v £38.57 for the same journey, hmmm.

The cost of a new Ampera is to be £33,995 including VAT after before the Government's subsidy of £5,000. After subsidy the price is £28,995.

A new Skoda Octavia L&K 2.0 litre diesel estate would cost me today £23,590 including VAT. For that, you get a car with a much higher spec than the Ampera.

Let's say I DO save 1,700 litres of fuel a year using an Ampera compared to my Octavia. At £1.33 a litre for diesel, that is the equivalent of £2,261. Just on that alone, I'd only recoup the extra purchase cost over four two+ years. If fuel costs go up, which they will, the break-even point comes down well below four two years. When I say "just on that alone", I mean I have no figures on comparisons of servicing costs and tax/insurance between the two. I expect these costs to be less for the Ampera than the Octavia.

2) Emissions

Something else to consider. During that four year period, the Ampera will generate much less greenhouse gases than the Octavia.

Vauxhall claim:

Preliminary Fuel Consumption / CO2 emissions according to regulation EC 715/2007 and regulation EC 692/2008 (weighted, combined): 175mpg / 40 g CO2/km

(This is on a journey that includes solely electric running and also running in ER mode.)

Skoda claim:

2.0 Litre TDI 140ps diesel = 129 g CO2/km


So for a 350 mile journey (563 km), the Ampera emits 22,520g CO2 and the Octavia 72,627g CO2, or over three times as much. 

I think I would prefer to have NO emissions!

The circle of the earth

In our public talk today, at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, the speaker read out Job 26:7-10 while holding up a photograph of the earth taken from space by Apollo astronauts. The scripture describes the earth as seen by Jehovah God.

"7 He [Jehovah] is stretching out the north over the empty place, hanging the earth upon nothing; 8 wrapping up the waters in his clouds, so that the cloud mass is not split under them; 9 enclosing the face of the throne, spreading out over it his cloud. 10 He has described a circle upon the face of the waters, to where light ends in darkness."

From space:

o- The earth hangs upon nothing.

o- Clouds envelope the earth like white blankets covering the blue seas.

o- The earth is a circle, or globe, of light surrounded by the darkness of space.

The only way Moses could have written these words is under inspiration by God. There was no concept amongst most of mankind 3,500 years ago of any of these ideas.

Although the Bible does not set out to be a scientific textbook, when it touches upon science what is says IS accurate.

The bucket and stones

The teacher held up a large transparent bucket of big stones. He asked his class of college students, "Is this bucket full?"

"Yes, sir!" most replied.

So, he reached down by his desk, took out a jar of small pebbles and poured them into the bucket. "Is it full now?" he asked.

"Yes, sir!" some replied.

So, he reached down, picked up a jar of sand and carefully poured the sand into the bucket. "NOW it's full," he said.

A student stood up with a bottle of beer. He walked up to the bucket, popped the top off the bottle, and poured the beer into the bucket.

"It's full NOW, sir!" he said.

The moral of the story? No matter how full your life is, there's always room for some beer.

Extending the range of EVs

One of the big issues with the use of electric vehicles (EVs) is how far they can go between charges. This is known as their range. The Nissan Leaf can go about 100 miles on one charge, as will the new Ford Focus EV. The Chevy Volt (Vauxhall Ampera) will have an on-board petrol motor to recharge the batteries if they run down before the car can be plugged in. (The Toyota Prius isn't an EV, it's actually a hybrid electric/petrol-drive car.)

What is needed is a radical solution to permit vehicles to go further on electric power alone. It ought to be implemented before too many EVs are around. It could also take advantage of some of the existing refuelling infrastructure.

My idea is to standardise on quick-change batteries.

New EVs would be designed around a standard battery format which would be located under what is now the hood or bonnet of a car. (The electric motors will be at each wheel, as most EVs already have.) The battery would probably have a range of 100 miles or so. Being under the hood/bonnet, it would be designed with fittings for quick removal and replacement.

When the battery charge gets low, you would drive the EV into what are now gas/petrol stations. Instead of fuel, you would pay a fee to have your depleted battery replaced with a fully-charged one. There would be some form of robotic crane at this battery station to swap batteries in a few minutes. It would then be the responsibilty of the fuel station staff to recharge depleted batteries.

The electric companies would wire up the battery stations with high-voltage power lines and quick-charge (4 hours) points in ranks to handle lots of batteries simultaneously. There would be a national pool of batteries distributed to fuel stations by battery manufacturers.

EV owners would never actually own vehicle batteries, just pay a fee for each use, which would include a full charge. Vehicles could travel unlimited distances with battery stations located within about 100 miles of each other, drivers just pausing to exchange batteries as needed.

I realise there are a number of issues with this concept, but it MUST be worth considering.

Some ideas to investigate:

- battery design standardisation;
- the cost of batteries;
- how the supply of batteries would work;
- standardising battery location in EVs;
- devising an automated method for swapping batteries;
- how to ensure battery stations get adequate electricity supplies;
- rolling out battery replacement technology to existing fuel stations;
- the payment model and unit cost for EV battery usage.

Well, that's the bare bones of the idea. What do you think?