Necessity is the mother of invention. MacGyver is the father.

I think this is a very cool clock. I suppose you start with the motor and just make the chain the appropriate length so that one revolution is 12 hours, and then divide the chain accordingly. So, where can I get a motor like that?

No, she doesn't live in Sun City. We don't have anyone nearly that interesting here.

Brian Williams was in town late last week to receive an award from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at ASU. A line from his acceptance speech showed up in an article I read today. Speaking about knowledge in our information age, fed by technology, he said, "People confuse tonage with knowledge."

Having more information is not the same as having more knowledge.

Which reminded me of a sentence I heard years ago and had occasion to use today when talking to a guy about cabinet hinges (which turns out to be a very complicated issue with an almost endless list of variables).
"I know a lot more than I understand."

Are my quads sore because I've been on my feet more the last couple of days, or because my head is tense about Thursday's race?
In either case, I've had spaghetti for dinner the last two nights. Carbo loading.

Because it's a short week - I don't expect to do anything else Thursday - I picked music and studied for my sermon today. One of the things I enjoy about Bible study is that even the most familiar passages have more in them than I saw last time I was there.
Have you ever read the story of Agassiz and the fish? True dat.

I'm listening to my Nora Jones channel on Pandora as I type this. Just heard "You Belong to Me" done in a very unique way so I went over to that tab to see who it was. Carla Bruni, as in the wife of French President Sarkozy.
She can also sing!

Good Morning America, on ABC, canceled tomorrow's scheduled appearance by Adam Lambert because of his obscene performance on the American Music Association awards show. The Early Show on CBS, which runs across from GMA (and The Today Show) jumped in and scheduled him. Another case of ratings trumping all else. Props to ABC, although they said they made the decision based on what they thought viewers of that particular program at that particular hour would want to see, not any principled objection.
And if you live on the west coast and are wondering what all the fuss is about, the AMA awards show was shown on a time-delay basis there and the network edited out the offensive material.

As I was driving Gerta into town yesterday I saw a guy driving a classic Vette convertible. I thought to myself that if somebody gave me a choice between a classic Vette and a classic VW like Gerta I'd choose Gerta. If (since) cars chosen for other than pragmatic reasons make a statement about the owner, i.e. if (since) a person says something about himself by choosing that particular car, I don't want to say what I think a Vette says. But I like being the driver of a '67 Beetle. It fits at least my self-perception. I want people to infer things about me that a Bug says instead of what a Vette says.
Of course nobody has ever offered me a classic Vette convertible, so we haven't really put that to an empirical test.

And that mental rabbit trail reminded me of something a college lit teacher asked us before we read Kafka's "Metamorphosis."
"If you could be any animal, what would you choose to be?"
I answered that I'd want to be a frog.

What car would you choose to drive if you were picking it to make a statement about yourself?
What animal would you choose to be?