Go Ask Your Father: Purples, Depths, A Weight, and TVs

You don’t need a calendar to know that Christmas is approaching. There are Christmas decorations and Christmas baking. There are Christmas concerts, Christmas parties, Christmas shopping, Christmas songs, Christmas sweaters and Christmas socks. There are also kids (and dads) around the world bouncing off the walls, quite literally, with excitement. There are also Christmas questions…

1. Why is everything purple?

Once upon a time purple was Bang favorite color. He had purple shorts and purple shoes. He loved to color with the purple crayon. We could have named him Harold (bonus points if you know Harold and his purple crayon). The answer to everything being purple isn’t because of a crayon, though. Thank God. Purple is color of everything churchy these days. It is the color of advent (and lent). In the Catholic church purple is the sign of penance, sacrifice and preparation. Purple is also the color of royalty and wealth as it was once very expensive to produce. In the story of Jesus a purple cloak was draped over his bleeding shoulders to mock him as a king.

2. How do ships know how deep the water is?

Did you hear about the paddle sale at the boat store? I heard it was quite an oar deal! Boats know the depth using sound waves (a lot like ocean waves except smaller, invisible and made of sound). Since we know the speed of sound through water (roughly the same speed Christmas morning will be over), we can determine how far it travelled before being bounced back. There’s a lot of science involved, but all you need to know is the material’s density, compressibility and temperature. We know all this about the ocean, so a ship’s sonar bounces sound waves off the bottom of the ocean and measures how long it took the echo to return and presto bango, you know the depth.

3. How much does the Earth weigh?

Nevermind the Earth for a minute. A butcher is 6 feet tall with blue eyes. What does he weigh? Meat. He weighs meat! Now imagine if you had a scale big enough to set the Earth on, how much would the Earth weigh? Nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch. It’s weightless in the near vacuum of space. However, using math, science, the laws of gravity, fancy formulas and figuring the densities of the various materials we know the Earth weighs 1.31668×10²⁵ lbs. For those of you who aren’t quite sure what that means, its 13,166,800,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds. Say it with me: 13 septillion 166 sextillion 800 quintillion pounds. It also happens to be the same weight of all the junk food I plan on eating over the next two weeks…

4. You had TV when you were a kid?

First, the backstory. The boys are into this cartoon called “Teen Titans, Go!”. Apparently it’s based on a 2003 show that is based on an ’80’s comic book. In this show, Robin, Raven, Starfire, Beastboy, and Cyborg battle numerous “bad guys”. In one of the episodes they revisited the old ’80’s Robin cartoon and children we’re witness to watch TV animation used to be. This question arose when I informed the boys that that was what my cartoons looked like when I was their age. Yes, heathen, I had TV in the 80’s. TV was actually available in crude, experimental form in the late 1920. It became widely popular after improved black and white broadcasting became available after WWII and during the 1950’s. The first televised sitcom (according to Wikipedia) was Mary Kay and Johnny in 1948. The first televised football game occurred 9 years prior in 1939 by NBC. It was a college game Waynesburg vs. Fordham and it’s estimated that it reach about a thousand television sets (scientifically that’s 1×10^3). That’s how many M&M’s I can fit in my belly. In case you were wondering, the Fordham Rams won 34-7.

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I get to hold the remote. DW says what show to put on.

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Community Clean Up

I’ve written about Earth before. Several times, actually. I shared a video last June narrated by Julia Roberts. I have since learned there are a slew of these video narrated by various celebrities and cover all facets of our Mother Earth. Oceans. Rainforests. The Sky.

Today, Team Wood did our small part. Every spring our community organizes a town clean-up. Today was the fourth annual clean up. According to organizers there were about 30 volunteers who showed up. She guessed the numbers were low because today was the first full day of sunshine in over a week. We knew where we wanted to clean, so, upon registration, we just informed them where we were going. We were handed 8 very large garbage bags and 1 clear bag for refundables, then set off. The sun was shining. The kids were excited. With gloves donned we were cleaning up a ditch along main street. 

That’s a glimpse of what it was like before we started. This gully was about 75 meters long and it looked like this the entire length. It was also parallel to a heavily trafficked road. This is what visitors to our town would see. So we cleaned it up. 

The boys were on a mission for an hour and half and DW and I were both impressed with their determination and attitudes. In past clean up they had been less than helpful. DW talked to them afterwards telling them to remember this when they are older and out with their friends. The Earth is not a garbage can. When people treat it like this we end up having to clean up their mess. So should they or their friends be tempted to just throw their garbage on the ground, remember this day, remember this is the only Earth we have. How difficult would be to just put it in a garbage can?

Here’s what it looked like after filling 4 very large garbage bags and a bag of refundables…

How do you help Mother Earth?If you’re looking for a clean place to go, find my exceptionally tidy place on Facebook and Twitter!
 

Go Ask Your Father: Earth, LED Bulbs, Antibiotics, and Graffiti

Fall’s first day has come and gone. The leaves haven’t started changing quite yet. They are, however, starting to fall off. On the road, piled against the curb are all the leaves that make autumn lovable. Light and crispy on top, moist underneath. Just like I like my brownies.

Speaking about brownies, I found this recipe for some that look and sound amazing. They’re called Peanut Butter Cup Crack Brownies. You can find the recipe at CookiesAndCups.com. I checked the recipe. Crack isn’t an ingredient. With all that yumminess crack isn’t necessary.

photo courtesy: Cookies and Cups

Now that you’re done drooling all over your keyboard, lets answer some questions.

How does the earth move?

In simple terms, gravity. Gravity makes everything fall, though it’s not responsible for people falling in love (thanks, Einstein). The sun is huge, mammoth, massive, gargantuan. The easiest way to imagine it is that it creates a bowl in space fabric around it. The planets then roll around the rim in their orbits.

I once read a book on antigravity. I couldn’t put it down!

You have to remember that while the Earth is orbiting around the sun, the sun is also moving through space as our galaxy travels. So we’re not going in circles so much as a downward spiral. It’ll be more a plummet than spiral should Trump get elected.

 

How does an LED light work?

We just replaced our poisonous, mercury ridden, twisty light bulbs with LED light bulbs. I explained TIE fighters and ion engines the other day. In my “research” (does Googling it count as research?) on how LEDs work I discovered that it’s over my head. Way over. Like, it’s up there where the overseas jumbo sail in the jet stream. Here’s how I have come to understand it. LEDs are completely different from incandescent bulbs in that they use a different technology. An LED uses a semiconductor (a solid material that conducuts electricity like rush hour on a Friday – slowly). It’s usually made with aluminum-gallium-arsenide (aka metals, I just wanted to say arsenide). This semiconductor has a positive side and a negative side. The positive side has “holes” while the negative side has electrons. When electricity passes through, the electrons on the negative side rush over and fill in the “holes” on the positive side (like that idiot on the motorcycle squeezing in between you and that truck your tailing). When the “hole” gets filled energy is released (road rage, probably) as photons. Photons = light. There’s more to than that, but that’s as much as I can understand it. My monkey brain can’t comprehend it beyond that.

What is an antibiotic?

Our bodies are in constant warfare. Fortunately, they’re equipped with a military that is armed and ready for the battle. Gorilla warfare. Black Ops style. These white blood cells attack bacteria without mercy. But sometimes the bacteria attack in such force that the white blood cells become overwhelmed. That’s when we get sick. Our white blood cells need reinforcements. Antibiotics. Bactericidals, like penicillin, kills the bacteria by interfering with the bacterium’s cell wall formation or its cell contents. Bacteriostatics stop the bacterium’s growth. There is no debate that they cause autism or if they really work. However, there is serious debate about too much antibiotic causing bacterium to become immune to it. Once that happens the antibiotic is no longer effective. Like listening to Let It Go too many times, we don’t even hear it. Also, antibiotics are as useless as screen doors on a submarine against viruses – colds, sore throats, the flu, chicken pox and measles.

What is graffiti?

There’s American Graffiti – George Lucas’s 1973 film about some high school grads cruising town before they leave for college. We’re not talking about that Graffiti, though. We’re talking about the art work. In general, graffiti can be described as writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place. This is what some local graffiti looks like (I left out the foul language and drug references)

Public Works Shed

Under an overpass

However, some graffiti is much more elaborate. Some work on public surfaces like Picasso worked in blues.

Graffiti artist Odeith “Welcome to Baton Rouge”

This is yesterday’s post. Yesterday’s Taboo word was “of”. To read more posts without the Taboo Word (of) or to join the challenge just click the blue frog…

To add the blue frog to your post get the InLinkz code.

 

 

Mother Earth

This video came across my Facebook newsfeed a week or so ago. I couldn’t let it go without passing it on to you.

It’s only two minutes of your day. The views are majestic and the message is timeless.

By now you have figured out that I care about Earth as Earth cares about me. And it does care. It gives me water to drink, food to eat and forests to hike and run through. It gives me the company of animals, though some of them would rather eat me than keep me company. Nature provides. It gives us all we need to survive. It’s been preparing for us for a long time. It’s been here for four and half billion years – 22,500 times longer than us. I’m guessing it’ll be here that much longer after us as well.

And I wonder what kind of world are we leaving our children, our children’s children?

We are the ancestors of the future.

I’m all for looking for other planets. I’m all for looking for life beyond our own Earth. I’m all for colonizing other planets should we find one suitable and develop the technology needed to get there. I’m NOT for destroying the only planet habitable to us. I’m NOT for all the garbage and litter and waste and pollution.

Like the video said, Mother Earth has starved creatures greater than us. I have no doubt she’ll do just that should we stay on the wasteful path we’re currently on.

Rant over, thank for watching and listening 🙂

 

 

Your Life on Earth

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141016-your-life-on-earth

So I Stumbled on to this page this morning and I felt I had to share. It’s really cool. You plug in your birthday and gender and height and it tells SO much about what’s happened in your lifetime. There are drop down menus providing even more info.

My next birthday on Mercury is in 11 Earth Days.
I’ve travelled 309,495,913,000 km through the Milky Way.
A house fly my age would have a family 21,808 generations.
While I’ve grown a towering 1.67 meters, a Coast Redwood would have grown 15.32 meters.
Tectonic plates have moved 5.85 meters since I was born.

Check it out for yourself! How has life on Earth change in your lifetime?