People my age have a love/hate relationship with computers and the Internet and perhaps with technology in general. I work at keeping an open mind to new apps, new websites, new ways to do things, but initially I always resist.
I am on FB, I have joined Pinterest, You Version and Goodreads, I have an IPhone and a Kindle, I’ve played Farm Town, angry birds, and Words with Friends! I do not Tweet.
I appreciate so many things about technology especially the quick access to so much diverse information. I Google everything that sparks my curiosity. Which brings me to my topic: while having fast access to information seems wonderful it often IS NOT. And by that I mean it, not only IS NOT wonderful it often IS NOT even FAST.
Teaching a concept always involves facts. I was making a bulletin board for third graders illustrating the concepts that we all have fear and God can help us with our fears. I vaguely remembered hearing that the phrase “Fear not” or “Do not fear” appeared in the Bible some extraordinary number of times. I decided to Google it. One source stated that in a movie called “Facing the Giants” a claim is made that “fear not” appears in the Bible 365 times. I had never heard of “Facing the Giants” so I Googled it. Wikipedia says that “Facing the Giants” is an “American Christian drama film” but it did not say anything about how many times “fear not” appears in the bible. I also learned that a Casting Crowns song that I like, “Voice of Truth” appears to be part of the soundtrack of the movie. I like that song and was tempted to Google it to see why Casting Crowns chose to be apart of the not very successful film, if the song was commissioned for the film or just added later, etc…but this would have been going way off down the rabbit trail.
Back to the story…someone on one of those sites where you ask a question and everyone gives an answer, (most often an answer not supported by anything) reported they had just heard in a sermon that it appeared 365 times. The problem with this is that the pastor who delivered that sermon could have gotten his information from the movie (American Christian drama film).
Another posting person said that in the KJV “fear not” appears 74 times, “be not afraid” appears 29 times; in the NASB there are 4 “fear not’s”, 57 “do not fears” and 46 “do not be afraid's”, these do not add up to 365.
Someone used Bible Gateway to find over 100 references using NAB, these included “Do not fear” and “Do not be afraid”.
The Gateway Life Group Blog says it appears 365 times. No explanation.
Whole Person Counseling listed 40 verses but referred to them as "a sampling”.
Let’s move on, new area of interest. Ant strength. I read in a book that ants can lift objects that weigh several times their weight because of their special body structure called an exoskeleton. Again, I planned to mention this to the ever inquisitive third-graders so I Googled 'ant exoskeletons and strength'.
This search, which I worded several different ways, yielded these results: ants can lift 10 times their weight, ants can lift 20 times their weight, ants can lift 50 times their weight. ScienceIQ.com and About.com said this is due to their size and not to the exoskeleton. There were several sites that seemed angry that anyone would think an ant was proportionally stronger than a human being. We are a sensitive people. They point out that if you make things bigger the muscles do not get proportionally stronger. If an ant were the size of a human then you would essentially have a big giant blob of an ant that could not even move much less lift anything. There were illustrations of cubes and tubes and there were math equations that were beyond me but basically bigger isn’t better with regard to strength and we should not feel badly that the ant has a clear advantage due to his tiny size. Hmmm, ant might disagree, there was also something about the ant having a proportionally larger brain than most animals but again I resisted that rabbit trail.
Gary T on the Straight Dope message board supported the info in the book, “The main factor in an ant’s strength is that it has an exoskeleton". After reading many opinions and some derogatory remarks about Gary T’s opinion, I noticed that in a later post Gary T was kind enough to provide some websites to support his claim.
This is a common occurrence on message boards. Several people will state unsubstantiated opinions. For reason unknown, one person is chosen and everyone else piles on with how wrong they are. At least one of these people will provide some kind of documentation for their rebuttal. The person who has been challenged must then search the internet for proof of his or her opinion. They almost never just let it go.
Unfortunately, in the case of Gary T’s evidential proofs, two of the websites were tied to universities and could not be accessed via the links he provided. One was a faculty page and would probably have been fascinating had it been available. The other two sites he provided were descriptive of the exoskeleton and said that the exoskeleton was strong but did not directly attribute the exoskeleton to the ants ability to lift objects that are many times heavier than it’s own body.
I think the point of this lengthy description of my journey through the web is that the Internet is often not a time saver. There are reasons why I am slow to become involved with a new app, a new technology and for that matter new people…it’s all very time consuming and may not ever lead to a satisfying conclusion.
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