This series is titled (obviously), what you might miss by taking the freeway through life. The freeway is the easier way, but there is a richness in God’s country just like what you miss by jetting through God’s life in the fast lane.

We went to a church event down in Calhoun county two weeks ago on a Sunday evening (when I started this behemoth). Instead of taking the freeway–which was all of one minute faster–we took a parallel road (Old US 27).

On the way, I was looking around at all the scenery and noticing the evidences of creation. And not only that, but the results of the curse–and what I can do about it.

It was worth going cross-country. As Charles Kuralt said, “The interstate highway system is a wonderful thing. It makes it possible to go from coast to coast without seeing anything or meeting anybody.”

Ruminations from watching leaves blow in the wind

Allow me to begin with an interesting example of God’s ingenuity. Place two green objects outside in the sun and rain (not both elements simultaneously, of course [although the resulting apparition is quite pleasing if you mix them at the correct angle {think Noah and ark}]): a piece of cloth and a small maple tree. Now, after setting in the sun for a sufficient period of time (it varies depending on how hot the sun is) the cloth will have turned a light, bleached green. However, the tree will be a darker green. Flip one of the maple leaves over, and it’s a lighter color. Being in the sun increased the vibrancy of the leaf.

Consider the technological implications: what if clothes could be made that got brighter in the sun, instead of bleached? What if fabric became stronger as well as cleaner when subjected to water? What if a tear could repair itself? I can hear most of you, at least, saying that’s never going to happen until Christ returns.

But, that’s what the maple tree does! It gets stronger when it gets dirty and wet, and the summer sun makes its color brighter. What an amazing designer God is!

Look at the green color in plants–most of it is from Chlorophyll (some of us drink that stuff because it’s so good for the body). Chlorophyll is what plants use to produce energy from the sun in the process called photosynthesis. So, more of the green stuff is needed where the energy is at than on the underside of the leaf, where there isn’t as much sun. And, look at the design: the underside of the leaf isn’t as green! The plant can recognize where it needs the chlorophyll and concentrate it there!

From an aspiring AI [artificial intelligence] coder’s perspective, plants are extremely complicated. From the same perspective, even the simplest animal is nearly impossible to duplicate electronically. You can imagine my point by trying to predict where that annoying fly that’s buzzing around your head is going to land next. You’re right, it’s basically impossible, as the still annoying fly can attest to. Then, consider your pet dog or cat or rabbit or hamster or ferret: try to imagine what decisions they are making right now (or the last time they were awake, in the case of our aging 18 year old cat who sleeps 16 hours a day and meows the remaining 8). It is nearly impossible for our brains to comprehend the millions of electrical signals that are received, processed, cataloged and sent in an animal’s brain in just a few seconds.

Take it up another level. To the next kingdom. To those created in the image of God. Look at humans. Can you imagine a computer just managing all your sensory inputs? Let’s start with graphics: a nice $200 point & shoot digital camera takes pictures at about 10 MPs. A $600 video camera can take 30 two MPs pictures in a second. That’s pretty much what high-end computers display. One Megapixel (Mp) is 1,000,000 pixels, which are dots of color. Each dot of color has 256 bits (a zero or one) of information in it. So, a 10 MP digital image has 256,000,000 0’s or 1’s describing it.

The human eye has a resolution of approximately 600 MP ( http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html ). Adding color and assuming 30 frames per second, our hypothetical computer would need to process 4,608,000,000,000 bits of data [a 0 or 1] every second. That works out to 576 Gigabytes of data every second (8 bits in a Byte). In 2 seconds, you would have run out of space on one of the biggest hard drive available (1 Terabyte). To record one minute of what your eyes see, you’d need 17 hard drives, which would run you about $3,400. It would take about 15 days (you couldn’t even record in real time!) to transfer that data to the hard drives on a modern system. And that’s going to be the cheapest part of our computer.

That’s solely to process what our eyes see. Then you have to process millions and billions of touch sensors (think a swimming pool filled with tablet PC’s, all wired to our hypothetical mainframe), audio, taste, and smell (taste and smell can’t be captured to current computer systems, you’d have to design something specifically). Then, figure out a system to make this thing self sustaining and self replicating.

Even after you get a computer that is up to thinking like a human (forget all the other stuff, and I still can’t see this happening in the next two centuries [Moore’s Law–it’s a computer chip speed prediction], and that’s banking on the world continuing in its current semi-peaceful state), you’ve got to program it. Now if you gave me unlimited funds and our super-computer to work with, I’d still need about 4,000-8,000 experienced software engineers and about 40 years to get the thinking processes ready for this behemoth. In all of this, I’m neglecting the spirit of a human, because I don’t have enough information to even consider how it is created–and I doubt if we could mess with that kind of stuff even if we did understand it. Ever get one of those 401 ‘Authentication Required’ errors, where you need permission to access a web page? It’s like that.

And after all that, consider that God designed his creation to run off plentiful resources. Consider that a woman (with a little jump start from her husband) can create a new one of these machines in 9 months.

And here’s the kicker: evolutionists believe that this incredibly complex machine that we’re replicating exists because of some mistakes in the programming. Which wasn’t really programmed by anybody. And nobody designed and programed this thing without a pattern, like we had. It all just happened when nobody blew nothing up. It kind of begins to sound like the universe wasn’t really made that way, doesn’t it? :-)

Part 2: Ruminations from examining housing architecture coming Monday@ 2:30 p.m.!

Dear Visitors, Readers and Fellow Bloggers,

Thank you for your support and encouragement through this time of my graduation and birthday. I appreciate all of you immensely. I know that God will richly bless me in the coming months and years.

Love,

Jonathan

(The above is a modified transcript of my thank-you cards that some of you may or may not have recieved, and I believe the current record holder for the most formal language on this blog. :-)_)

And now, for what I’ve been doing all these months away from the blogosphere:

I’ve graduated. But you knew that. I had an 18th birthday, but you knew that too. Those are the major life events that have happened.

At the end of June, I went on tour with our band/orchestra/choir, and had a marvelous time. We played at some really neat places, stayed and a family’s house (all 53 of us, in their old high school) for two nights, had a van (pulling our trailer of stuff) break down, had some very generous people fix it, made some new friends, learned a few new musical tricks, and encouraged a bunch of people who listened to us. Some of our contacts beforehand were quite worried that we wouldn’t play very well, but by the end they were completely blown away and requested that we come back next year. Which would be a ton of fun. :-) On the bus ride, we were entertained at the microphone with various re-arrangements of songs, tales of valor and of stupor in various events from the last half hour (the time since the teller was last speaking) from all attendees, and my personal favorite, stories written by the entire bus. Once we got home, I typed them up (which was fun)(all 11 of them that I had, two more came through cyberspace later, and one is still at large). Here’s a quick sample:

“Once upon a time, a DXS (Department of External Services) agent was flying an F-16 fighter jet through the starlit skies of Pakistan. Then Timothy was released from the plane to attack. He landed in a coma. When he woke up, he went to save Joseph (of the shattering violin) from Ruth, but she hit Timothy with the pillow, sending him into another coma.” (names changed to protect privacy, but if you were on tour you know the real names!)

In other news, my businesses have been doing quite nicely since their inception at my graduation. Of course, printed literature is a must for a graduation, as well as for business. Thus, making friends with you local do anything printer (Carrie at Allegra Printing in Charlotte, MI) is a good idea. However, I was caught completely off guard when she offered to put an 11×17 advertisement for me on her wall. For free. All I need to do is design the flier, which means I need a logo. I have some ideas, and may use y’all as a sounding board. :-)

For anyone who is wondering what I do at PotterVilla Applied Technology and PotterVilla Accoustics, let me elaborate.

PotterVilla Technology specializes in helping you “get” technology. We can repair, replace, program, upgrade, basically whatever you need done on your computer. Websites are a specialty–check out aingerbible.org for an example. Soon, we hope to offer data archival services, like converting VHS, VHS-C, Hi-8, Cassette Tapes, LP’s and other records, Slide film and printed pictures to digital files.

PotterVilla Acoustics is here to help with all your musical needs. We can rearrange a song to fit your specific group, play for your special event (including Taps at veteran’s services, funerals and weddings), or sooth and encourage with recorded music.

Sometimes, both businesses work together, like in a musical slideshow. :-)

I have started taking piano lessons from a guy who actually knows how to play the piano. He’s got me working on some really cool arraingements, like Jesu, Joy of Mans Desiring with ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus, and Jesus Loves Me with Clair De Lune. Hopefully, I’ll be playing real Gosple style hymns soon. :-)

This morning, Mom and I went to a technology sale down to one of the local public school districts, where I purchased: 3 Computers (running Windows XP Pro, and including free 17″ monitors, keyboards and mice), 2 VCR’s, 2 Cassette Decks, 3 Wireless access cards, 1 Wireless access point, 1 Overhead projector, and 1 automatic boundary mic, all for only $128, about the price of a new copy of Windows XP Professional Edition. Most of that will be used for my business, with some for the church.

Why this school district had the capital to purchase ~400 computers to use then sell at $25 each is a topic for another day. As is the current economic system, and why college shouldn’t be necessary. As is the KJV and NIV Bible issue. As is decentralization (which I’m in favor of, by the way, just call me a independent agrarian anti-federalist). And on and on–you get my picture. Subjects abound, time does not.

The other main thing I’ve been doing over the past two weeks is writing a blog post. A really long one (for me). It’s about 4500 words, 8 pages. It all started when we took an alternate route along the back roads (which Matthew tells me is really a main drag [It’s not as main as the freeway, which we didn’t take {it still used to be a major US transit, though}])…

Stay tuned: the first post in this four part series is set to publish at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow!

So it’s not much of a title but at least it’s a triple :-) (kinda an inside IEW writing joke, sorry)

Our “regular” Sunday School teacher is busy being the Swine Superintendent at the Fair this week so our Pastor filled in for him this morning. Then for the morning message he preached on Christian Baptism–appropriate since there’s a baptism scheduled for this afternoon at Five. It might be in the rain, (it’s raining now) since the forecast calls for a 75% chance of rain at 6pm. Although the official (constitutional) church belief is in immersion, it appears that the candidates may also be sprinkled! [One thing Pastor emphasized is that we should have a spirit of humility in presenting our beliefs, since not only are we commanded to love one another, but also that ultimately, there is only one faith and one baptism (Eph 4:5).]

I would also like to share a snippet from one of the songs:
Tho my heart grows weary,
I never will despair
which I thought was a good reminder to ‘keep on keeping on.’ For after all He Lives!

On another note: A few of my chickens have turned broody. And at least one downright mean. She tried to destroy my flashlight–pecked it so hard I’m surprised it didn’t break the lens. Before I could reach right under no problem–seems she’s a might protective now though…. So any how we’ve decided to let the hens be and see what happens, all we’ll be out is a few eggs, and we might get some chicks. We’ll have to see how it turns out.

Well in keeping with the promise of “Short” I’ll sign off now,
Matthew

P.S. Jonathan’s 18th birthday is tomorrow, so drown him in birthday comments!