Poem: All the King’s Men

Each day you put it together

What entropy has undone

You brush and shower

You stretch and run

You wash dishes

And sweep floors

You run errands

And do chores

But in the end

And in the beginning

And everywhen in between

Entropy …

Entropy is winning

Winning everything you’ve seen

Though life be undone

Live the life you dream

And entropy will say you’ve won

You’ve won,

You’ve won everything you’ve seen.

Aquarium Light Lamp Hack

(Satirical)



I decided to redo the aquarium to remove the lid and grow plants on top ... the only problem was getting the lighting I needed.  I went through several ideas that I decided would not work for me before deciding to get a tall floor lamp.  This turned out to be an ordeal, and so I am writing this for anybody else who would like to benefit from my experience.




- Look online and find the cheapest lamp that might work and balk at the cost.

- Go to Walmart and see that they have a hooked floor lamp at 81" high for only $20 and buy it.

- While opening the lamp, notice it says "flexible" and get a sick feeling as you realize that the 81" is with the lamp pointing up, not bent over.  The lamp is too short.

- Realize you can avoid admitting you made a mistake, by buying a second lamp, taking some of the vertical pipes from it. and making a taller and a shorter lamp.

- Take a moment to think about how clever you are.

- Take apart lamps with bear hands, including pulling the electrical wires out of the bulb socket.

- Have conversation with wife to reassure her that you are being safe.

- Go to test the pipe fittings and realize that even though the packaging on the two lamps are identical, the fittings are in fact different.

- Count to 10 to avoid swearing in front of children.

- Sing counting songs with children.

- Go to hardware store to buy nuts to protect the threads on the pipe fittings as you remove them.

- Remove the first pipe fitting and realize that inside of the pipes are not threaded and it doesn't matter that the threads are different between the lamps.

- Count to 10 to avoid swearing in front of the children.

- Sing counting songs with children.

- Try to push wires though the pipes.

- Realize you should have tied a string on the wires before pulling them out of the pipes so that you could use the same string to pull the wires back through the pipes.

- Get needle and thread, using needle as weight to pull thread through pipes.

- Realize that pipes and inserts are magnetic and needle will not easily go through pipes.

- Reassure wife that you are not damaging the furniture while you beat the pipes against the sofa and rug to get the needle through.

- Give the children hugs and reassure them that you do love them and you are not angry with them.

- Connect pipes.

- Realize you don't know which wire is "hot" and which is "neutral" and that it does matter.

- Get electrical tester and determine that it is broken.

- Wait for wife to run errand so you can avoid explaining to her what you are doing next.

- Get ladder so you can steal nine volt battery out of smoke detector and test the wires by "sparking" them.

- Talk to children about ladder safety and staying off the ladder while you are on it.

- While taking apart smoke detector threaten children if they don't get off the ladder.

- Convincingly threaten to beat children.

- Console children and reassure them that you still love them.

- Explain to wife why children are crying when she gets home.

- Test wires and try to reattach them to the bulb socket.

- Realize that you have damaged the socket by ripping the wires out with your bare hands.

- Count to 20 to avoid swearing in front of children.

- Sing counting songs with children.

- Find super glue.

- Retest wires so you know which one is which.

- Glue wires and fingers to bulb socket.

- Count to 100 to avoid cursing in front of children while you rip your fingers off the socket.

- Realize that no amount of singing is going to make your children like numbers after that.

- Finish assembling lamps and admire how good they look.

- Test wiring with and without having them plugged in to verify that they work well and are safe.

- Admire your work and think of all the money you saved.

- Look up the other lamp online to figure out exactly how much money you saved, and see that the lamp is now on sale for the same amount you have spent.

- Swear in front of children.

UPDATE:
In hind sight, it would have been cheaper and easier to buy a stool to put the lamp on.  On the up side, I really like the shorter lamp on the table next to the recliner as a reading light.

Mahan Complex

This is a term that I take credit for coining.   This is not saying much since I have heard nobody else use it.

Basically, I use it to refer to somebody who feels a need to be master of a great secret. 

We all can get lost in excitement about a new idea or insight.  I know I have.  But this is something different.  It is something about how the individual needs something to be true.  You often see it with conspiracy theorists.  They get wrapped up with UFOs or 9-11 as a US government sponsored bombing.  (I think everybody agrees it was the result of a conspiracy, the argument is about whose.)  But this is something different.  The person equates their personal value or status with their insights and knowledge of these theories.  Because of this, they become unhinged from the reality of the evidence and lack the ability to learn.  Often these are really smart people that you would expect to know better too.  They often jump from one theory to another over time, but will generally never disavow a theory.  You can also see this with health fads, MLMs, and religions.  Some individuals get mixed up in some or all of these.

As a sad example, take example X.  He was a professor of physics at BYU.  He got put on administrative leave shortly 9-11.  He was convinced that the Twin towers came tumbling down due to government planted implosive and or thermite devices.  The problem wasn't that he thought there was a consipracy.  The problem was that he was tarnishing the University by publishing papers and holding special lectures about it where-in he failed to present any real evidence or research.  Further, he did this in stead of some of other research etc. I watched one (that is to say I watched only one) online video of him in a BYU lecture hall filled with impressionable students.  He honestly seemed very enamored with the attention and took time to make a fair number of jokes at the expense of others.  He was always a jovial professor, so making jokes in and of themselves was not out of character.  However, after about 30 minutes of speaking, the only evidence he had given was time stamp on a video that looked like the tower fell faster than free fall.  This is intriguing, but he failed to address several key questions that needed to be addressed in the process such as,  was the time stamp accurate?  Would this be characteristic of all implosive demolitions and only of implosive demolitions?  Would this be characteristic of all demolitions of exo-load buildings?  (I made up the work exo-load.  I don't know what you call it.  But I do know that most sky-scrapers are designed so that the weight of the building is carried by a core structure, while the twin towers were designed so a large portion of the weight was carried by the external skin so it is possible that the middle of the building had fallen first and via rebar etc was pulling the outer skin down faster than gravity)  Those are just the first three questions that came to mind.  In 30 minutes, I don't remember any plans to investigate these or similar questions, nor do I remember any reporting on such investigations being done.  Perhaps it was intended as a charismatic lecture.

The Reasons Don't Matter

In spite of the title, this is not a universal truth.  However, it was a recurring statement in Sunday school this week.  The teacher asked a question that I was thinking about asking two weeks before, "Why are you here?"  Apparently it was part of the Bishop's Youth Council (BYC) recently too.  They collected the answers and told everybody they had great reasons for being there and that what really mattered was that they were where they were supposed to be. 

I kept my mouth shut.

The answer I was thinking of the week before was that I was there to learn something, but it is more than that.  The processes of learning and seeking truth cleans and focuses the lens through which we see the world.  The collective effort means that I can get answers from others that have already found them and also ... hopefully ... be kept from excessive false doctrine while getting peer reinforcement. 

The Lord works in mysterious ways.  We all know of the people who have gone to church for "the wrong reasons" and been converted by the spirit while there.  I know I have been touched by the spirit more than once when I was there just because I was supposed to be.  This happens.  However, when we are there for the right reasons, the Lord's ways need not be mysterious.  They can be direct and powerful.  We can get even more out of Sacrament meeting and all our other meetings if we know why we are there and are there for the right reasons. 

Will we always be there for the right reasons?  I know I am not.  I can say that having two little girls mostly keeps me out of my meetings when I don't have the right reasons.  It is such a struggle to get there, that I often don't make it if my heart is not already in the right place.  So, sometimes I forget to appreciate the individuals who did not make it for "the right reasons". 

It was a good lesson for me.


I would like to shift gears now and look at criminals.  The reasons don't matter why one person decided to kill a bunch of people.  Every so often we hear of some mass murder or serial killer.  Politicos, reporters and various busy bodies get to talking about why they did it.  The latest one was last Friday.  Some people are using it to advertise gun control.  Others want it to change women's rights or something... I really am not clear what they expect to get out of it but just that they are trying to take advantage of the tragedy.

The truth is that it doesn't really matter why one person decided to become a mass murderer.  If your loved one got killed in the horrific event, I am certain that you would want to know why in order to gain some sort of closure.  However, reasons like revenge don't relieve remorse nor wrongs done.  To think otherwise is to lie to yourself.

When a car engine blows up, engineers ask why so that they can prevent future issues with more ... engineering.  People aren't like that.  A massive scientific and technological leap forward might require a deeper conversation, but I will leave that alone since we can't read minds or psychologically engineer people in spite of the efforts of various charismatic and military leaders.  

God can sort out the reasons.  For the rest of us it is left to deal with the results. 

I am not saying that justice should be blind to circumstance.  Self defense is far different than first degree murder, and mostly distinguished by the reasons.  I do not envy any judge or jury that has to wade into that murky water. 

However, no matter what this latest villan's reasons are ... it will not change the facts of what was done.  And all the people who are using it to satisfy their own twisted curiosity or advance their own agenda will not succeed in hindering nor changing the mind of the next person who is inclined to do something similar.

Yeah, kiss it!

I was busy in the kitchen cleaning or cooking or something and not paying that much attention to my wonderful little girls.  My littlest was trying to get my attention and I was trying to work around her when she slipped and knocked her head against the wall.  She didn't knock it hard so I wasn't worried, but it was very upsetting to her to bump her head on top of being ignored.  So, she softened my heart a little and I knelt down to ask her what happened.  Now, Faith can't talk well yet so it was good I already knew what had happened.  But I listened to her explanation and repeated back to her what I had seen.  Then I asked her where she had bonked her head, and she pointed to the spot on the wall.  And I kissed the wall.  It took her about a half second to process what had happened before she said, "Yeah, kiss it!"  And happily toddled off.

The universe could be finite

There is an old bit of philosophy that argues that the universe is infinite.  It goes something like this:

imagine that the universe if finite.  There must be an edge to the universe, a cliff or perhaps a wall.  Let's say it is a wall.  If you go to the top of the wall and look out, there is something on the other side of the wall.  The wall divides something.  So you go to the other side of the wall and explore only to eventually find another wall marking the edge of the universe.  You climb up that wall and see that it divides something ...  ad infinitum

It occurs to me that this is bad logic. There need not be anything on the other side of the wall.  It relies on our daily experience with land being divided by walls.  This need not apply to a universe.  Imagine that the matter and energy ratios are such that the universe will eventually collapse into a black hole.  You would then find that you have a very finite universe.  There need not be anything outside the event horizon.  There need not be space, matter, energy, light ... nothing can get out.  The universe would be a closed finite system. 

It appears that this is not the case in reality.  I am just saying that the logic was flawed.  My argument is flawed as well.  I was just trying to get the reader to the point where they could start to imagine an enclosed finite universe without creating a monstrous treatise. 

In reality, in the case of a big crunch, I believe that a vast amount of energy in the form of light from the initial bang would continue to expand out into space, or the void if I may.  I also think that void, due to quantum uncertainty is actually filled with virtual particles and that these must already exist in the regions into which our universe expands.  And that the void exists.  But as physics progresses, I suppose we may find that void is finite.  There is a lot that could be said on this topic.  But this is enough for now.

insight from a conversation with Dad / more evidence of photons

Last night I was driving home from a long field job.  I was exhausted and it was showing in my driving quality.  I needed help staying awake, so I called my Dad.  I had nothing to talk about, but just needed to keep talking to help me stay awake.  My Dad was kind enough to go over some things he had been thinking about.  And in the midst of this groggy conversation I had a new insight into light.  It may not seem like much, but here it is:

If light were a wave like sound waves or water waves that traveled on some medium (water or air), we wouldn't be able to see the stars.  The energy would diffuse over so much distance.  But because light is made up of discrete packets of energy, photons, that exist independent of everything else around them we get to see the stars at night.  There is an underlying assumption here that the medium is fundamentally granular.  Air and water are both made up of lots of little atoms.  Even sound traveling through a more rigid material like steel is made up of lots of little atoms.  This granular nature is what causes the wave energy to disperse over a distance.  But light being made up of its own little particles can only disperse down to single photons.  After that it cannot get more dispersed.