Missions Fest

I went to Missions Fest again this year. Thanks Bill and Louise for a place to stay! Chris, Tobias, Vu, Benz, it was a blast!

I like to see what's happening in the world of missions, and to be challenged in my faith. Truth be known, that is not the only reason I go. Part of it is to run into people that I haven't seen in a while, and in some cases, a LONG time.

Sometimes I go past the booths and wish that I was a missionary type person. I wish that I had a desire to tell everyone I met about Jesus. But I "test drove" the missionary life (see Jan-May 2006 blog entries) and I know that I am not cut from the same cloth as those that I met in the mission field. So my calling is a little less exciting. It is to be a "light" in Canada. But I will always support those who are in full time ministry. Those who have committed their life to going into the world to tell those who have never heard about the life that can only be found in Jesus Christ. (And if you are one of those people and would like to know more about my faith in Jesus Christ, please send me an email.)

If I could change conventions

In order to represent concepts in math and science, we use definitions and conventions that just "are". Nobody questions them because it's all we have come up with. But there are a couple of things that I was taught where I said "wait a minute, this is not a good convention!"

Take for example pi, aka 3.14159. It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle vs. the diameter. And we give it the unit of radians. But it takes 2pi radians to make one circle. Why didn't they make pi = 6.28?? That way, one pi would represent one circle (or pie if you will). So pi should really be 2pi. Wouldn't that make a lot more sense?

My other pet peeve is the fact that it was arbitrarily decided that protons would be "positive" and electrons would be "negative". This has caused all sorts of confusion, particularly when we talk about electrical current flow. Electrical current is the flow of electrons from one point to another, more specifically from a negative point to a positive point. So you would assume that the electrical conventions would be set up to support this. But everything is the opposite! Conventional current flow is positive to negative. So what exactly is flowing positive to negative? It's not electrons, but rather the absence of them! Now, if we said that electrons had a positive charge then everything would make sense. Electrons would flow from positive to negative (as we would expect) and a collection of electrons would mean a greater positive charge which would in turn produce a greater positive voltage. Electronics would make a lot more sense and this engineer would be happy.