Today is Veteran's Day, but you already knew that. What you may not have known is that it was also Learning Obscure Data Day, at least at our house. For example....
When I was in Tanzania I asked Corey what was in the big sacks that we saw along the roadside as we drove cross-country. Charcoal. It's one of the ways residents in small villages earn money; they make charcoal and sell it to travelers, often from the cities, who then use it for cooking. We'd see anywhere from one to four or five burlap bags about 4' tall and as far around as your arms could hug. But nobody standing nearby with whom to do the transaction if you wanted to buy a bag. "Don't worry. Almost as soon as you've come to a stop someone will appear to take your money."
I got to thinking about that this morning (can't explain why) and read up on charcoal - how it's made (fascinating), the different forms, and what each is used for. You've seen Kingsford Charcoal sold everywhere and probably used it at some point. That company was founded by Henry Ford who got into charcoal production as a way to use wood byproducts from his automobile business. But modern BBQ charcoal briquettes (from the French, Sue) aren't technically charcoal.
This morning after the coffee shop I made the hatch cover for the loft in Fred. I used the 1.25" piece of 4x8 rigid foam insulation I got at Lowe's yesterday. Now I need to get a space heater 'cause it's FREEZING in there! I've looked several places and see ceramic, quartz, and infrared heaters. Huh?
So today I read up on that, too. Ceramic and quartz heaters use electricity to heat a block of that material and then a fan to blow across it to heat the air. Either is much more efficient than heating a wire heater and then using the fan, like a hair dryer.
An infrared heater puts out "waves" of infrared...light?...that, in something similar to a microwave, heat up whatever solid object those waves hit.
Thus, a ceramic or quartz heater warms the air whereas an infrared heater only warms solid objects, including your body. So, I read, if multiple people will be in the room, or if you'll be moving around, get the former. If you'll be in one place, like me at my desk, get the latter and point it at you. Don't waste energy heating the air in the room.
OK, I get it. But I don't understand how an infrared heater's thermostat works. How does it know the temp of those objects?
I hadn't written anything about it, but our grandson Jason, who is almost 4 years old, had eye surgery this morning. He had a small red spot removed from the white of his eye, close to the iris. It had changed size slightly and also posed the problem for interference with the iris if it continued to grow. He's still pretty groggy from the anesthesia, but mom and dad report he was a champ before surgery, willingly going back to the prep area without mom and dad (per hospital regs) and taking everything in stride. Now we wait for biopsy results, but the dr. is optimistic that things will be OK, and that this is something similar to a freckle on his eye. The bigger concern was the potential for intrusion to the iris.
I have another article rattling around in my head.
I had a 45-minute phone conversation with one of my former students now in ministry. He wanted to talk to me about how I taught homiletics (the preparation and delivery of sermons) because he wants to teach it to an invitation-only class of guys in his church that he thinks should learn that skill. Then they could fill the pulpit in his absence.
We talked a bit about life in general at the end of that discussion and he asked how it was going out in the woods of western Oregon. He didn't realize we lived in a single wide of 840 square feet, or that our goal is to downsize to an even smaller tiny house.
"I've read that people who live in tiny houses still end up accumulating "stuff" and filling up a smaller space with the same amount of stuff."
Not true! We moved from a 1,360 sq. ft. home into MoHo and in the process got rid of over half our stuff. We moved up here with everything in the back of the smallest Ryder truck they rent.
I told him that for us it is, among other things, a matter of stewardship. Americans, including believers, have bought into the notion that more is better, that "things" increase the quality of life.
Nope.
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