I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
Dad has been writing about the weather out on the west coast as of late. I thought that I would give my two cents as to what is happening here in the great lakes at the same time. The big thing is teleconnections. This happens all the time in meteorology. As something happens in one part of the world something else happens in another. In this case, there is an area of low pressure in the jet stream over the Pac NW and there is now high pressure in the jet stream over the Great Lakes. To see this I have provided this morning’s 250mb upper air chart from the RAP UCAR site.
Note how the jet stream (the multicolored band) dips south of Oregon and then goes north in the Plains and is way north of the Great Lakes. While Mom and Dad, Amy and Brendon, are cool and damp, we here in the great north woods have bee sweltering today in 90+F heat. The jet stream is a divider of cold air and warm air. If you are south of the polar jet you are warm and if you are north of the jet then you are cold. So there you have it, as the low moves into the Pacific Northwest, we get high pressure in the Great Lakes. That’s a simple teleconnection. There are more out there.
Posted by Jeff, really.
I love the website called sitemeter. It allows you to add a bit of code to your website so that you can see in a general sense who has been there. I say general, because there are no names or addresses, just domain names and nearest towns. It is quite cool when you get an international “hit” on your page. What brought this on was a couple of hits that I received recently that piqued my curiousity. There were a couple of towns where I have had acquaintances from where some of these hits have originated. Of course, it could be anybody. One of the referring links was from a Google search for the name Jeff Lutz. If you have ever Googled my name there are literally just shy of 2,000,000 links for my name. So I always wonder is that from so and so who I knew 10 years ago or some such scenario or is it John or Jane Doe? Anyway, technology is cool.
One of my favorite things to do this time of year is to follow the Indy 500. With my schedule, however, I can’t quite listen in on everything. Well, now with people catching onto the podcasting revolution, I can listen to the qualifying runs when I’m not doing anything. Timeshifting from the time it originally occurred. I was thinking about the slavery to the world on my way into work earlier, and thought about how I can listen to stuff whenever I want with out being a slave to the “schedule” of when “they” say I have to listen or watch. To me, the paradigm of the media is about to shift. Instead of local TV and radio stations dictating when you will listen, they should produce programming and become a “disturbution node” for on demand programming, rather than the old system of me having to rework my schedule to see or listen to what I want.
A case in point, I wouldn’t mind listening to the local news from one of the TV or radio stations. Currently, I will listen to the NBC nightly news, NPR’s most emailed stories and Oregon Considered the following day so that I can catch the news summary. For something more up to date I have put the NPR hourly news summary in my Google News reader. Of course, I also listen to a few podcasts that are news analysis oriented as well. However, I can’t find anything of a local nature, yet.
Anyway, I have to say that I’m looking forward to when I can buy one of these.
Two weekends ago was kind of short as far as me getting to spend any time with my family. I not only had to work the weekend, but I had to cover a shift due to 3 people being out with some stomach virus. However, that Saturday, I got home, we played cards, and watched movies. One of the movies was Zathura, which is about two brothers and a sister who play a space adventure game that comes to life, much like Jumanjii.
Then Sunday as Betty Dipzinski was reading Genesis 37:1-11, I had a flashback to the movie. In Genesis, the Jacob/Israel’s kids blamed their problems on Joseph. In Zathura, the 10 year old blamed the 6 year old for all of his problems. If you know Joseph’s story, after a long time, he is reunited with his brothers and the wounds are healed. In Zathura, the 10 year old, finally comes to the realization that he loves his little brother and there is healing between them. A good movie to watch if you are looking for life lessons.
While at the Battlecry event in Detroit, last month, Ron Luce asked this question to everyone, “Are we asking the right question?” Before this moment, I had often thought that when people do recoginize their need for God and Christ, that they don’t often realize what that means. It’s more than accept him and be blessed. It means following Jesus and that means doing the Great Commandments (Matt 22:37) and the Great Commission(Matt 28:19), which means doing the messy things that this brings you into conflict with, like correcting sinful behavior in yourself, helping people when you may get persecuted, and standing up for what you believe in.
The question that often gets asked is, “Do you want to (receive/accept) Christ?” This is the wrong question, because it is passive. Asking someone if they want to follow Jesus is more active and requires an explanation into what that means. God wants us to be active with our faith, like it says in James 2:18b, I’ll show you my faith by my works.
So are you ready to follow? Do you know what Jesus wants you to do? What is your purpose here? Are you ready to radically follow a counter-cultural Messiah that has modelled for us helping the poor and oppressed, ticking off the religious folks by confronting them with their gods of tradition and culture like the pharisees (not that tradition is bad, but some refuse to change things just because we have always done it that way), and giving your life to do it?
Dad has a post on Rosie and her being laid to rest after ~13 years. She was a good dog. And as I liked to call her, “my temperorary” dog as she would stay with me when Mom and Dad would travel and couldn’t take her with them. I will miss her. I still remember the puppy years, when Mom and Dad were in Korea and I would play “puppy boxing” with her, or the time she began to drink somebody’s drink right out of the glass when our backs were turned. I remembered her prime, jumping hurdles and swimming in the pool. I remember endless games of criz in front of my house, how she would plow through snow chest deep and chasing the snow that I would throw from my deck. She was fun. She will be missed in Michigan…
Cross posted on Being Who God Created Me to Be blog
