Bits & Pieces: Some Things to Think About

By H. George Arsenault

Bits & Pieces: Some Things to Think About:
I always felt that there is so much to learn if we only would seek knowledge. When we are born, we begin to learn. Every day we learn something new about our surroundings and all the people that are in our milieu. In our youth, we spend 12 to 20 years in schools to learn. We never stop learning. The trick is to learn the good things and avoid learning the bad things. The computer adage; Garbage in… garbage out, is true. The day we stop learning is usually the day we die. My father in law, A. Z. Shmina, once told me, “When I meet someone, I think… that maybe I can learn something from him. If I find that I can’t, and then I think… well maybe I can teach him something.” That’s the spirit of this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491754672

H. George Arsenault

H. George Arsenault has three College Degrees: Bachelor of Commercial Science in Accounting from Detroit Business Institute, Bachelor of Science in Management from The Detroit College of Business, and a Master of Arts in Public Administration from the Political Science Department at The University of Detroit., He retired from General Motors in 1988 with 36 years’ service as a Senior Financial Analyst and Financial data base programmer and added seven more years’ service with a Chrysler subsidiary, VPSI, (Van Pool Services Incorporated) as a Systems Information Director retiring in 1996. He now lives at Harbor Place in St. Clair Shores, Michigan as a widower having lost his wife in January, 2014.

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Copyright © 2014 H. George Arsenault.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-5466-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5467-2 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 11/24/2020

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

PREFACE

This book, Bits & Pieces, is the result of many years of effort trying to become knowledgeable about this world and my surroundings.

When we are born, we begin to learn. Every day we learn something new. We spend 12 to 20 years in schools to learn. We never stop learning. I always felt that there is so much to learn if we only would continue to seek knowledge. The trick is to learn the good things and avoid learning the bad things. The computer adage; Garbage in… garbage out, is true. The day we stop learning should be the day we die. My father in law, A. Z. Shmina, once told me, "When I meet someone, I think… that maybe I can learn something from him. If I find that I can’t, and then I think… well maybe I can teach him something." That’s the spirit of this book.

The bits and pieces in this book are the accumulation from my many years of the bits and pieces I learned in my trying to learn new things. You may notice that some axioms are repeated in various items of these Bits and Pieces. Learning requires repetition in one way or another. We remember what we learned, by rote or memory. There are bits and pieces that come from the many poems that I know including one I wrote. There are bits and pieces that come from my autobiography book Seven Come Eleven. Some bits and pieces came from the Bible. Studying the Bible, I learned the history of the Prophets from the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament. In college, 101 Philosophy introduced me to Socrates and made a direct contribution. If you define Prophets as Messengers from God as I do, the Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle of three to four hundred years BC, could also be called Prophets from God as in the Old Testament. There’s a correlation between the Bible’s prophets and the Greek philosophers who taught many similar axioms.

I hope the following chapters on subjects that are of some value and interest to the reader, and that it can teach something new to those who are still learning as it has been for me.

ACKOWLEDGMENTS

AND DEDICATION

I have published three books before this one; I should be thanking everyone who has ever helped me. My family of seventeen children and my loving wife, Delores, have made my writing an easy task to report on paper all the learning that has contributed to our lives.

Thanks to my daughter, Margaret Roache, for the first proof reading of my manuscript and putting the various chapters in some logical order. I am deeply indebted to my son-in-law, James Albulov, Donald & Anne Berschback, and Mert Everett for their astute scrutiny in proof reading, guidance, and wisdom, in navigating the corrections of my manuscript for this 2nd revised edition and printing of this book.

My special thanks go to my original family of nineteen for their unending support in all my endeavors and especially my dear loving wife, Delores. My angelic Delores died a year ago on January 14, 2014 leaving us with tears in our eyes. I included her eulogy and two sons’ euloges for the sake of our family’s posterity. So, finally, this book is my special dedication to Delores, whose love and brilliance has steered me in the 48 years of our marriage that I now call the best years of my life.

She came from heaven, oh I know her worth. She made a heaven… for me… right here… on earth. --- My angel, Delores. Thank you.

CONTENTS

I .The Impossible

II . Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity

III . Nanotechnology and Atomic Engineering

IV . Cryptography and Secrecy

V . Dow Theory and Technical Approach

VI . Benjamin Franklin’s Philosophy

VII . Aristotle and Friendship

VIII . Cicero’s Essay on Old Age

IX . Faith Matters

X . The Bible and the Word of God

XI . My Autobiography Books

XII . A Man Who Is Not Average

XIII . Analysis of Jesus’s Prayer

XIV . Analysis of the Psalm 23

XV . One Plus One Equals Nineteen

XVI . Poems That Taught Me Something

XVII . Ken MacKool

XVIII . Donald Robert McMillan

XIX . My Angel

XX . My Pilgrimage to Czech Republic & Poland

CHAPTER I

THE IMPOSSIBLE

Impossible! That is not good French – Napoleon (1769-1821)

"Where we cannot invent, we may at least

improve" C. C. Colton (1780-1832)

Henry Ford Sr. is quoted as saying: The improbable we do immediately. The Impossible takes a little longer. During World War II, The Navy Sea Bees in the Pacific had the same axiom.

Just what is IMPOSSIBLE?

The word impossible can be used for many things. Webster Dictionary says: Impossible: Incapable of being or of occurring; felt to be incapable of being done, attained, or fulfilled. Notice the word felt. Even the Dictionary is cautious in stating the impossible. The first law of the impossible is the first law of physics: "Never underestimate the possibility of Natures Laws of Physics." Whenever we find that something is really impossible, there is a great principle of physics at work. When the laws of Physics change, then the impossible becomes possible.

The impossible can be broken down three ways:

One - Totally impossible: traveling at the speed of light or attaining absolute zero or even traveling back in time is totally impossible because they violate the laws of physics.

Two – Excepted impossible: what was once thought to be impossible but has become possible through development and inventions such as electric lights, telephones, television, and the many advances of today. These modern advancements did not violate the laws of physics.

Three – Not impossible but highly unlikely possible, such as lightning striking you a hundred times or flipping a coin and landing heads a hundred times in a row.

Three events, thought to be impossible, occurred in 1903 that changed the world: the Wright brother’s heavier than air flight; Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity; and Henry Ford’s first model T that put the world in motorized automobiles. We are now only scratching the surface of possibilities. If the impossible does not contradict the laws of physics, then it is possible (even if we do not now know how to do it.)

Before 1903, when Orville and Wilbur Wright flew their first heavier than air plane, it was accepted that heavier than air flying machines were impossible. But what we didn’t know was the science of aerodynamics. The trick was that the weight of the plane and passenger is not pushed into the air by the wind; it is sucked up into the air by the wind flowing faster over the wing’s top then below the wing in order to meet at the end and thus sucks the plane up into the air. On December 17, 1903, the Orville Wright flew the first heavier than air machine on a beach in North Carolina proving the new concept of aerodynamics.

Since Einstein’s 1903 theory of Relativity and 1905 E=MC², we now know that all material matter is energy. Matter is not only made up of atoms but has sub-atomic proteins and DNA with billions of proteins floating around a nucleus at the speed of light. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change in form or move from place to place. We have electrical energy, nuclear energy, potential energy, kinetic energy and mechanical energy. All matter has various kinds of energy but we do not yet know the many ways we can use it. Lifting is potential energy. Falling is kinetic energy. Energy changes form. When lifting, I used potential energy of my arm that I received from my body mass, thus losing a small fraction of my body weight maintaining Einstein’s equation E=MC² formula.

Today, we know that nuclear energy is the most powerful kind of energy in the world. It produces the sun’s tremendous heat and light that we get every day. It is the result of changes in the nucleus of combining atoms. This nuclear reaction is fusion energy. Unlike fusion energy, we have developed fission energy. The splitting of atoms is fission nuclear energy. Engineers have found many uses for this energy from the production of electricity to the destructive power of nuclear weapons.

When an atomic bomb detonates, a nuclear fission reaction occurs which actually transforms a very small amount of mass into various kinds of energy. The vast majority of the mass goes up