Jamie123

I've started two new habits. The first is to spend an hour or so every evening in the churchyard amongst the graves, reading the Bible on my smartphone. My wife asked me the last two nights if anyone (meaning dead people) came and talked to me. I told her no, but one thing that did come to me how poor my prayer life is. People say praying should be just like talking to anyone else, but do you sometimes feel like your words are just going out into the air unheard? The thought makes me weary and (strangely) a bit tongue- tied and my prayers often peter out rather pathetically.
But there is another thing I have seen at my wife's "Julian" group (Lady Julian of Norwich, in case you didn't know, was a medieval mystic. "And all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". [Yes I know T.S. Eliot wrote that, but Julian wrote it first].) They sit for half an hour or so in silence trying to empty their minds and wait for God to speak to them.  So I tried it this evening for just 15 minutes. God didn't speak to me in words exactly, but I did get a kind of peace from it that I've missed for a long time.
By the way, my wife is in hospital now having her surgery. I have tried contacting the hospital for news but the phone just rings and rings. I'm sure they would have contacted me a next of kin if anything had gone wrong but still... I hope I can get through tomorrow. All prayers welcome and much appreciated.
Jamie

I've started two new habits. The first is to spend an hour or so every evening in the churchyard amongst the graves, reading the Bible on my smartphone. My wife asked me the last two nights if anyone (meaning dead people) came and talked to me. I told her no, but one thing that did come to me how poor my prayer life is. People say praying should be just like talking to anyone else, but do you sometimes feel like your words are just going out into the air unheard? The thought makes me weary and (strangely) a bit tongue- tied and my prayers often peter out rather pathetically.
But there is another thing I have seen at my wife's "Julian" group (Lady Julian of Norwich, in case you didn't know, was a medieval mystic. "And all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". [Yes I know T.S. Eliot wrote that, but Julian wrote it first].) They sit for half an hour or so in silence trying to empty their minds and wait for God to speak to them.  So I tried it this evening for just 15 minutes. God didn't speak to me in words exactly, but I did get a kind of peace from it that I've missed for a long time.
By the way, my wife is in hospital now having her surgery. I have tried contacting the hospital for news but the phone just rings and rings. I'm sure they would have contacted me a next of kin if anything had gone wrong but still... I hope I can get through tomorrow. All prayers welcome and much appreciated.
Jamie

It's a Vauxhall Meriva, but it's not the fault of the car or the engine. It's the fact that I left the cap off the coolant reservoir when topping it up that morning that made it overheat. One of those stupid things you forget when you're in a hurry that comes back and bites you hard.
But not as hard as (for example) if I'd pulled out of a junction without looking both ways, and put my family (and possibly a lot of other people too) in hospital - or worse still the morgue. Need to keep these things in perspective.

Thanks Traveler - after much deliberation we asked the garage to go ahead with the repair. They will contact us if there are any complications. We shall just have to wait and see. But whatever happens I'd rather have my problems than those of someone in Ukraine.
As Maude Royden said, "Learn to hold loosely all that is not eternal."

I'm very happy to hear it.

Yep they have found a low milage replacement, but it's going to be off the road a week minimum. Meanwhile my wife has surgery coming up. We're having to rely on a lot of friends for rides. Luckily we're blessed with some good friends.

Well they had a look at it and now they're saying the engine is beyond repair. Oh well...
P.s. I'm not excusing my stupidity in leaving the cap off, but with all the engine management sensors on cars these days, you'd think someone would have thought to make some kind of warning buzzer go off if the coolant pressure was low.

Thanks Traveler - after much deliberation we asked the garage to go ahead with the repair. They will contact us if there are any complications. We shall just have to wait and see. But whatever happens I'd rather have my problems than those of someone in Ukraine.
As Maude Royden said, "Learn to hold loosely all that is not eternal."

Thanks Traveler - after much deliberation we asked the garage to go ahead with the repair. They will contact us if there are any complications. We shall just have to wait and see. But whatever happens I'd rather have my problems than those of someone in Ukraine.
As Maude Royden said, "Learn to hold loosely all that is not eternal."

Just a note concerning your scientist friend.  If the equipment was not his then I understand.  A very important lesson I have learned is that it is seldom beneficial to "work" harder for others than they are willing to "work" for themselves.  There are other options for the equipment.  Your circumstance sounds to be most difficult for you.  Hopefully, not too difficult.
 
The Traveler

Thanks for the advice but I think a project of this magnitude is beyond me right now. Maybe if I had plenty of free time coming up and a second car I would give it a go, but as it is I fear I would be like the guy who started building the tower he couldn't finish. I have 2 contracts for grading school examination papers coming up which will take up most of my free time.  My wife is about to go in for major surgery. We need the car running again asap and I can't risk everything on my own (questionable) automotive skills. But thanks for the advice I really appreciate it.

If you can comfortably afford it, buy the rebuilt engine. Otherwise, getting your valves ground and the head resurfaced should be good enough when you replace the head gasket, unless there is serious scoring in the cylinders or other engine problems.
Gator's advice sounds about right. Trying to weld shut a cracked engine block is dodgy. Better to replace the engine, especially when it costs less than twice as much to replace as to repair.

Thanks - I'll have another chat with them tomorrow and lay all the cards out. My big fear is that they replace the gasket and then have to replace the whole engine anyway. (In which case the repair bill would be something approaching the value of the car!)
 

That's a pretty new car.  It looks like you took the right steps.  But I see a red flag:
Your pump broke (you didn't say, but I'm guessing it overheated?).  Then it overheated again when there was a coolant leak.  Where was the leak?  Was it just the gasket?  or was the block cracked.  That's the difference.
If it is cracked, then yes, you have to replace it.  If not, just do the gasket and save yourself some money.
Apart from that, I don't see any other reason to replace the engine.

The only reason you'd need to change the engine out is if the engine itself is damaged in any way.  If the only thing wrong is the gasket, just replace the gasket. 
Did they give you any description of what condition the engine itself is in?  How old is the vehicle?  How many miles?
The damaged head gasket does not *automatically* mean you need a new engine block.  Sometimes, if you've driven with a leaking gasket for a long time, it can damage parts of the engine.  The longer you did so, the more likely the damage is irreversible.
One thing you may want to consider is that when the gasket leaks, it can allow mixing of engine oil and coolant.  That's not a good thing.  So, you have to drain teh oil and the coolant and replace it with uncontaminated stuff.  You may want to ask the repair shop if they have an easy way of telling whether either fluid is contaminated with the other.
The fact that they wanted to jump straight to the engine replacement tells me that they may not be a reputable shop.  But when they told you that the gasket replacement would be cheaper, that makes me think they might be ok.  But did they only bring it up when you asked them about it?  Or did they offer that to you on their own?
EDIT:  I just saw your post in the other thread.  It seems like you got one guy there that was jumping to sell you a new engine.  The other guy was offering the cheaper alternative.  £1700 is a big difference.
If you feel like they are trustworthy, just ask yourself if you can afford the £1700 (additional).  If so, you get a new engine.*  If you have an older vehicle, it could be worth it if the rest of the vehicle is in good shape.
If you have a fairly new car, I'd consider what condition the engine itself is in.  It may not require replacement.
* Make sure they're talking about a completely new engine, not just a portion of it.

We set out to Bath today to check out the university for my daughter. We only got a few miles down the road before the car conked out. We had to huddle behind the crash barrier waiting for the recovery truck. The breakdown man said the head gasket had blown and it would cost at least £1000 to fix. I phoned the garage that he'd towed it to later and the garage man said it would need a new engine. But... we all got home safely with no accidents so there's something to thank God for!

I signed off my marks last night (I'm a teacher) and immediately worried I'd got them wrong and would have to the them changed by chair's action.
Spent the whole evening worrying - especially while I was out shopping. Woke up several times in the night CONVINCED they were wrong. Mentally ran through all the scenarios of how I would explain myself to "the man". Told myself that I didn't care. Realised that I did care. Got to work early an hour and a half early dared not look at the marks. Got the Bible out and read the book of Joel instead. (Remember the locusts?) Finally bit the bullet and got the marks spreadsheet up... The marks were fine. 

Hm.  I'm dumber than most, but what if the experiment involved a billion particles and Alice making a billion measurements?  Bob places his double-slit plate thingy in the path of his billion particles, and does nothing else to observe his stuff, besides look at the pattern.  One would think at some point, the pattern would change, right when Alice starts observing, right?

The difficult to understand answer is --- Yes!.  Now, I will try to make some sense with the example of the subatomic fermion particle we call a neutrino.  Initially the neutrino was theorized because observable nuclear reactions ended with the sum of it parts being less than the initial whole of all parts.  It was determined that the only way that such a thing could happen is if something was lost (that we never knew about in the first place).   Since the initial theory of the neutrino we have discovered a way to detect neutrinos - which is in essence to set up a reverse reaction minus the needed neutrino.  
In short a great deal has been added to our understanding since I studied particle physics some 55 years ago.  For example we have discovered that there are types or stages of neutrinos that change in time - but neutrinos are fermions that travel at the speed of light - but at the speed of light time is suppose to stop.  This means that there is a property of time that we have yet to discover.  Now, the theory of the day with neutrinos is that they are a "Dark Matter" element.  And yet no one has ever seen a neutrino (or even its trace in a bubble chamber). 
The point is this - if an angel or angels can dance on a pinhead the truth of it will eventually be discovered - thought you are correct the theory and argument over theory does little to reality.  What is truth can be discovered once we understand how to test for it.  It has always been my personal belief that there is no random event - just an event that has occurred outside our understanding --- Yet!  I am quite sure there are things about time and space (which we think we understand far more than sub atomic particles) that seem impossible at our understanding that are possible - when we understand reality beyond our current understanding.  As a retired scientist and engineer - the trick is knowing how to "test" what it is we think we know. 
 
The Traveler

We set out to Bath today to check out the university for my daughter. We only got a few miles down the road before the car conked out. We had to huddle behind the crash barrier waiting for the recovery truck. The breakdown man said the head gasket had blown and it would cost at least £1000 to fix. I phoned the garage that he'd towed it to later and the garage man said it would need a new engine. But... we all got home safely with no accidents so there's something to thank God for!

I signed off my marks last night (I'm a teacher) and immediately worried I'd got them wrong and would have to the them changed by chair's action.
Spent the whole evening worrying - especially while I was out shopping. Woke up several times in the night CONVINCED they were wrong. Mentally ran through all the scenarios of how I would explain myself to "the man". Told myself that I didn't care. Realised that I did care. Got to work early an hour and a half early dared not look at the marks. Got the Bible out and read the book of Joel instead. (Remember the locusts?) Finally bit the bullet and got the marks spreadsheet up... The marks were fine. 

Here's what I don't get...
(I'm not an expert on quantum mechanics by the way. Maybe one day I'll find time to study it "properly" and put to bed these issues, but for right now please accept my observations as the witterings of a rank amateur.
OK here's the scenario: Alice and Bob, together at X, create a pair particles, each in a "coherent" state, with 50% chance of collapsing (if observed) into an up state or a down spin state. The two particles are entangled, so if Alice's collapses into an up state, then Bob's instantly collapses into the down state.
Alice and Bob then move to A and B, which might be several light-years apart. They still do not observe their particles, so they are still in 50/50 superposition and still entangled. Then at a point A' (in the future of A) Alice looks at her particle and collapses it into the up state. At that same instant, Bob's particle (at B') must collapse into the down state. However, that means that a "message" (of sorts) must have travelled instantly from A' to B', which defies the "rule" that information cannot travel faster than light.
Most YouTube videos at this point say "Weird, huh? Maybe faster-than-light communication is possible! Wouldn't that be cool?" before moving on to something else.
However if Bob does not also observe his particle, he will not know anything about its spin state. Also, even if he did look at his particle and find it in the down state, he would not know whether he caused it to collapse himself, or whether it had already collapsed due to what Alice had done. The effect would be the same either way.
Or to put it another way, Alice's action would have changed Bob's uncertainty from "aleatory" (uncertainty of chance) to "epistemic" (uncertainty of knowledge).

So the only way Alice could signal Bob faster-than light would be to have Bob sit looking at the box containing his particle, and when he notices his uncertainty of the box's content changing from aleatory to epistemic, he knows that Alice has signalled.
But how would he tell the difference? It is only when Alice and Bob come back together (at Y) and sees Alice's particle that he receives any information at all.
One might say that the uncertainty was always epistemic: that the spin-states of both particles were decided at X, and it is only Alice and Bob's knowledge which is uncertain. But this (i) makes the whole thing even more boring and mundane, and (ii) requires the "local hidden variables" theory, which was (as I understand it) disproved by John Stewart Bell.
So can "action at a distance" really have any impact on reality? If so, then how? And if not, is it really any more important than the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead?

Here's what I don't get...
(I'm not an expert on quantum mechanics by the way. Maybe one day I'll find time to study it "properly" and put to bed these issues, but for right now please accept my observations as the witterings of a rank amateur.
OK here's the scenario: Alice and Bob, together at X, create a pair particles, each in a "coherent" state, with 50% chance of collapsing (if observed) into an up state or a down spin state. The two particles are entangled, so if Alice's collapses into an up state, then Bob's instantly collapses into the down state.
Alice and Bob then move to A and B, which might be several light-years apart. They still do not observe their particles, so they are still in 50/50 superposition and still entangled. Then at a point A' (in the future of A) Alice looks at her particle and collapses it into the up state. At that same instant, Bob's particle (at B') must collapse into the down state. However, that means that a "message" (of sorts) must have travelled instantly from A' to B', which defies the "rule" that information cannot travel faster than light.
Most YouTube videos at this point say "Weird, huh? Maybe faster-than-light communication is possible! Wouldn't that be cool?" before moving on to something else.
However if Bob does not also observe his particle, he will not know anything about its spin state. Also, even if he did look at his particle and find it in the down state, he would not know whether he caused it to collapse himself, or whether it had already collapsed due to what Alice had done. The effect would be the same either way.
Or to put it another way, Alice's action would have changed Bob's uncertainty from "aleatory" (uncertainty of chance) to "epistemic" (uncertainty of knowledge).

So the only way Alice could signal Bob faster-than light would be to have Bob sit looking at the box containing his particle, and when he notices his uncertainty of the box's content changing from aleatory to epistemic, he knows that Alice has signalled.
But how would he tell the difference? It is only when Alice and Bob come back together (at Y) and sees Alice's particle that he receives any information at all.
One might say that the uncertainty was always epistemic: that the spin-states of both particles were decided at X, and it is only Alice and Bob's knowledge which is uncertain. But this (i) makes the whole thing even more boring and mundane, and (ii) requires the "local hidden variables" theory, which was (as I understand it) disproved by John Stewart Bell.
So can "action at a distance" really have any impact on reality? If so, then how? And if not, is it really any more important than the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead?

I finished the entire Book of Isaiah for the first time a few days ago.  My eyes have now read through all sixty-six chapters for the first time.

I believe something similar may be
Pariah
Outcast
Abomination
Anathema
 I kind of like the advice you gave.  Here's what I've found in the four systems I've been involved in.
Most mainstream martial arts have something to them.  But people get this impression that they'll somehow get magically adept at fighting because of it.  No.  A large person will still beat a small person as long as both of them are at some minimum level of physical capacity.  A quick person will still beat a slow person.
A large fast yellow belt will still beat a small, slow black belt.
And within similar levels of training and natural ability, there will be some individual students who just get a feel for it better than others and are able to make maximum use out of the methods they've been trained in.  And you can tell the difference between a black belt who is really good and a black belt who just rose up because they put in enough time (and money) into the system.
All four of the systems I was in were like this.  It seemed no different than seeing a "College Degree" from someone who got straight C's vs someone with a 4.0.  They both got the diploma.  But one was obviously a lot better for the experience than the other.