HoodedHawk

The Maryland Renaissance Festival opened this weekend, and the boys and I spent the day enjoying the festivities. Brandon and Dylan got to participate in the Human Chess Game (Brandon as Black Rook and Dylan as the Red King); they got a kick out of that.

Note that clicking on any of the thumbnails in this post will start a slideshow – you can go to the next/previous picture by clicking on the left/right of current picture.

From an essay in “Intelligent Thought”:

theistic evolution – the view that God got the ball rolling with the Big Bang (or even earlier) and has kept his hands off the universe ever since. In this view, evolution occured as part of God’s plan but also according to the laws of physics and biology and without supernatural intervention. Theistic evolution is simply neo-Darwinism with the addendum “God started it.”

Have you ever wondered exactly what the “light, sweet crude” was referring to when you hear a commodity price quote? Well, it refers to partially refined crude oil. Crude oil (out of the ground) is made up of various components, which can be separated by boiling point (related to the density of a component) – “fractionated”. Lighter fractions are more desireable (such as gasoline and diesel), while heavier fractions contain more sulfur (“sour”). For use, this sulfur needs to be removed, i.e., the oil needs to be made “sweet”). The goal is to go from a “heavy, sour” crude oil to a “light, sweet” crude – i.e. partially fractionated with a higher percent of light components, like diesel, with most of the sulfur gone.