Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Mainstream Baptist: Dominionists at Work in Oklahoma

Below is a link to a posting found in the blog Mainstream Baptist.  Please read.

Mainstream Baptist: Dominionists at Work in Oklahoma

Monday, February 27, 2012

Fantastic Voyage

Last night I watched a DVD I checked out from the Tulsa Library titled Fantastic Voyage.  It is a science fiction story about a group of people who are trying to save a person with a brain injury.  Thanks to some medical technology, they are able to be miniaturized so that they can enter a person's blood stream and travel to the site of the injury.  The movie was made in 1966 and in some ways is very dated.  My interest in the movie springs from a book written by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman which has the same title.  I am making preparations for a talk I will give next Sunday at Church of the Restoration.

My talk will be on the subject of Human Life Extension.  According to Kurzweil, we are only about 20 to 30 years away from some remarkable medical technology which will give us the capability to halt and reverse aging.  Kurzweil envisions nanobots which we inject into our blood stream to repair our bodies.  Nanobots are blood cell sized robots which are programmed to achieve a task.  Much of Fantastic Voyage and their other book Transcend focus on being healthy enough to get to that point in time.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Nick returns from England

Today Nick returned from England, specifically London, where he worked with a client for a week.  We surrendered our grandchildren to Nick and his wife, Jennifer.  We kept them for nine days.  Some of the time we slept here, and some of the time we slept at Nick's house.  We enjoyed watching Nick's large screen TV.  It is about 3' by 5'.  We ate out most of the time.  I lost about four pounds during those nine days.

I went to church today.  It was the first activity that I attended while we kept the grandchildren.  I wanted to annnouce that next Sunday would be Humanist Sunday.  I have made a few notes, but I will try to write out the talk this week.  Normally I select the hymns from the hymnal, but Bill D. suggested we sing "Imagine" and "You'll Never Walk Alone" in place of the traditional hymns.  We had a good size crowd today, 15 or so.  In some churches that would be the size of a Sunday school class, but our Sunday school classs (there's just one) usually runs about four or five. 

Because we kept Luke and Ayla last week, I had to cancel piano duet practice.  Tomorrow will be our last chance to practice "Solace" by Scott Joplin, the special selection for Humanist Sunday.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

This past week

This past week has been a real adventure.  We have spent a lot of time with my grandchildren, Luke and Ayla.  Today we took them to a park nearby where they played for quite a while.  We ordered take-out pizza for lunch and for dinner we ate at Braum's.  Their parents should be back from a week in London tomorrow.

I will be speaking at Restoration on March 4.  J said I could go tomorrow to the main service to make the announcement about Humanist Sunday.  I will miss the Religious Education hour, as well as the congregational meeting following the service tomorrow.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Regenerative medicine

Below is a link to a video about the state of regenerative medicine.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ntd-organ-manufacturing

Friday, February 17, 2012

Universal Class

Thanks to Rosemary at church, I learned about an online series of courses provided by the library called Universal Class.  Rosemary works at the Tulsa Library.  I signed up and am now taking a course on building your vocabulary.  There are dozens of courses available.  The first course I tried to sign up for was filled.  You have six months to finish the course.  There is an instructor with whom you communicate by e-mail. You take tests periodically.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Back from Broken Arrow

We are back home from Broken Arrow.  We left Tuesday afternoon on the BA Expressway.  We soon reached the motel just off the BA where we spent the night.  The first thing we did was drive to the campus of Northeastern State University to see how long it would take.  It takes about a half hour.  We drove back to the motel (a Hampton) and checked in.  For our dinner that evening, we walked over to the Shiloh restaurant.  They were having a Valentine's Day special which we took advantage of.  J had steak; I had talapia.  We both had a dessert and a glass of wine.  J was given a long-stem rose.

For some reason, we both woke up around 3 to 4 in the morning.  It might have been because to AC/heating unit was constantly going on and off throughout the night.  The motel provided a breakfast of scrambled eggs, potatoes, waffles, cereal, and other breakfast items.  After breakfast, we drove over to the campus.  I let J out of the car and went back to the motel for more sleep.  I checked out of the motel around 10:40 and drove to a McAlister's Deli where I bought a couple of chicken sandwiches, chips and iced tea.  Then I drove on to the campus where I met up with J and we had lunch together in the car.

After lunch, J went back to her insurance class (continuing education), and I went to the library.  I sat in the library and read a portion of Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman's book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever on my Kindle.  I am reading this book in preparation for a talk which I will be giving at Restoration in March.  I earlier read a book by this pair titled Transcend.  Both books deal with life extension technologies.

We left the NEO campus around 3:30 and was home by 4 pm.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Walking club, poetry night, movie night

We attended the February meeting of the Tulsa Walking Club at the LaFortune Library on Wednesday.  There were about 25 members in attendance.  The main issue was whether to meet once a month or once every other month.  They decided to leave the frequency at once a month.  This was the first time in years there we attended a club meeting.

The poetry group met at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore on Friday night.  There were just four of us there: David, Suzi, Sandra and myself.  Gail was away on a trip.

Tonight (Saturday) was Movie Night at the Bradleys.   We picked up Barbara Frey at the retirement home where she lives now.  We saw the movie Examined Life.  It is a montage of vignettes in which philosophers speak for about 10 minutes each.

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Piano recital

Tonight we attended a piano recital in the new Lorton Performance Center at Tulsa University.  The facility open just last fall.  This was our first visit.  The concert tonight was free.  The pianist was Roger Price, who is on the faculty at TU.  The man played flawlessly by memory for the better part of two hours.  He played two Beethoven sonatas in the first part of the program.  After intermission, he played several pieces by Franz Liszt. 

I find it difficult to memorize just a single page of music.  Price played by memory for almost two hours.  The program climaxed with Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2."  He wowed the audience.

Monday, February 06, 2012

Pelican Rag went well

Last Sunday, Gail and I played "Pelican Rag" as the special music at Church of the Restoration.  The speaker was Clinton Wiles from Oklahoma City.  He spoke on "The War on Drugs."  Attendance was 16 or more.

Gail came over today around 12:30 for our weekly practice.  Next month was will be playing a piece by Scott Joplin titled "Solace."  Before Gail come over, I went to the fitness center and walked three miles.

In March, I will be the speaker once again at Restoration.  My topic will be "Human Life Extension."  Sanitation practices and modern medicine have made it possible to live into our 80s and 90s.  This is a big change from just 200 years ago.  I sometimes wonder what great music we lost when Mozart died at age 35.  Robert Schumann was but 46 when he died.  Chopin was 39; Mendelssohn was 46; and the great Beethoven was 56, when they checked out.  Think of the Romantic Poets of England, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.  They lived only until the ages of 36, 30, and 26 respectively.  There were exceptions.  Haydn lived to 77, and J.S.Bach lived to 65.  Rossini lived to be 76.  Verdi was a ripe 89 when he drew his last breath. 

At one time many children did not live to see their fifth birthday.  If you knew you were likely to lose several of your children before they reached maturity, you might be inclined to have a large family to insure that you had someone to take care of you in old age.  (This was before the days of Social Security.)