Do you mean power or energy??

Now and then a person who can speak with authority should do it. This blog has entertained you(we hope) with chit-chat for more than half a year. It is time for the emeritus professor to say something worthwhile. It is also hoped that someone knowledgeable can clear one of his nagging doubts.

Setting the stage, consider the following: all night we leave on a CFE (compact fluorescent emitter) rated at 11 watts to help yours truly to find the bathroom without his glasses. Suppose he gets the recommended eight hours of rest; thus, the energy expenditure for the night light is 11 watts times 8 hours, or 88 watt-hours of electrical energy. It turns out that watt-hours are impractically small; we are charged for kilowatt hours, so we move the decimal point left three places and say we used 0.088 kwh. If we are billed 10 cents per kwh, our cost for the night light is less than a penny.

People who newly f ind out you are from California very quickly ask "What about all those earthquakes?" Okay, I have lived in Northern California for more than fifty years. In that time, I have felt about three shakes. About 1960, I was seated at my desk in the Hansen Labs and the floor felt like it was bucking up and down. I heard no more about it, so I guess it was not newsworthy. In the past year, I felt one jolt and the pendant hanging on the mirror was going click-click. I googled geological survey and they said it was near where my sister-in-law lives, 50 miles away. They had not felt anything. During the 1989 World Series, I was at my desk in Sacramento, preparing for my graduate lecture, and my tummy felt a little funny. It broke the Oakland Bay Bridge and postponed the A's humiliation of the Giants for a week. The quake epicenter was over 100 miles away but a number of my neighbors had tsunami's in their swimming pools that sloshed out half the water.

Now, a Cal Tech geophysicist named Richter invented "seismographs", which I understood to measure "intensity" of the quake. Newscasters try to speak of the "energy" using the Richter scale. If it is indeed "energy" that is quoted, there must be some way of factoring in the duration of the shaking. Somebody who knows, clue me in, that I may popularize it to my five readers.

Is God really jealous?

I remember that suggested in the Old Testament report of the gift of the Ten(15, if you are a Mel Brooks fan) Commandments. One result was the military campaign of Joshua, where the Israelites understood they were to slaughter every man,woman, child and cow in the "Promised Land". The result has been a thousands of years of bitterness we still see in the Mideast. Are we to believe that God does not love his whole creation and want us to live in his respect and peace our cocreatees? Maybe the idea of a Triune God, with the promise of the Holy Spirit, who communicates to all, including Buddhists, Muslims, common to many faiths, should be explored, respectfully of course. See, I am not being a deliberate heretic here, but if we loved all our neighbors, might there not be the new millenia of peasce on earth, good will to all? Anyway, this was not a revelation received on top of a mountain, but at about 15 feet abovote sea level on the wrong side of the San Andreas fault. Thus part of my faith is that I will not be aboard to fulfill Curt Gentry's prophecy that land to the west of the fault will slide into the Pacific. See, my love, not all Norwegian thoughts are dark!

cats are people too!!!?

So said the sign on a colleague's door. Now, maybe one of my 4 readers saw the story regarding the whale who was all tangled in a net for some days. Several divers cut off the ropes and freed the whale but he/she stuck around a while "trying to thank us". One has also heard of porpoises who seem very intelligent. This raises the ethical question,"Is a butcherable animal one you don't know personally? I previoualy mentioned my Guernsey cow could shake an apple tree for the enjoyment of her and her colleagues. She, fortunately for my sanity, entered the food chain out of my sight. Maybe the vegetarians occupy a higher moral plain than us "flesheaters". Well, in the words Yul Brynner delivered as king of Siam (now Thailand), "Is a puzzlement"

Constitutional Right to Keep Bare arms

Early this Easter Monday, I am struck that I have not yet seen any Easter Sunday pictures of the presidential family, nor for that matter, I don't remember seeing any last year. Early in the term, much was made of Mrs Obama's sleeveless tops. I. have always said, if they look good, let's see them. Surely the constitution guarantees Michelle's right to keep bare arms, but often we Californians forget that winter may be hanging on in some areas. In early 1975, I was on sabbatical leave and in Rhode Island on baseball opening day, lazy snowflakes were drifting down. For April 19, local radio was saying "Surely you should come to Concord, but don'ts expect to (1)Find parking (2)Find food or (3) see anything. However, Boston TV reenacted the redcoats marching in close formation, and the revolutionairies hiding behind the trees. I am not a real poetry fan, but Emerson's words choke me up a bit, "By the rude bridge arching the flood, their flag to April's breeze unfurled, here the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shots heard 'round the world." Vaya con Dios and God save the United States of America.