In my dotage I have decided I should
read the Psalms at least once in my
lifetime. I am of course familiar with
the bits of them that occur in the mass
and prayers like the De Profundis, etc.
but I have never read them from one end
to the other. Since they are fairly
inscrutable I thought I would limit
myself to one a day. 8-)
Today it was Psalm 107 which reads,
=====================================
107:10. Moab the pot of my hope.
Over Edom I will stretch out my shoe:
the aliens are become my friends.
=====================================
I'm afraid I had to laugh at my reaction
to the last line for immediately on
reading the word "aliens" it triggered
a vision of flying saucers and little
green men from other planets.
It just shows how in one's own lifetime
a word can change its primary meaning.
As a boy in WW2 the word "aliens" would
have conjoured up quite a different
vision; one of swarthy potential spies.
Whilst on the subject of little green
men and their transport, last night there
was the following program on Channel 5
======================
Stranger Than Fiction
----------------------
Documentary following
men who secretly
designed, built and
piloted real flying
saucers. The programme
goes in search of
those craft that still
exist around the world,
hears from the people
who designed and flew
them and looks into
the modern-day flying
saucer designs.
======================
No doubt most Vorts are familiar with
this or similar programmes. One bit
I found particularly interesting.
An designer took a coil of quite loosely
wound copper wire, laid it on a table and
plugged the long trailing bare ends of the
coil into a wall mains socket.
The coil was about one foot in diameter
with a circular cross section of one and a
half inches. I estimated the diameter of
the varnished? wire to be about 1 mm and
the number of turns to be 20 to 30, say.
Switching on the electricity caused the
coil to rise and hover about 3 inches
above the table.
I feel sure some group member can
enlighten me as to what was going on here.
Cheers
Frank Grimer
