Daily Inspiration 4-18-16

"Is it partly cloudy

or partly sunny today?"

-- Inquiring minds need to know 

I've always enjoyed looking at basic weather forecasts. Sometimes it might say that it will be partly sunny, or it will be partly cloudy today. I always laughed at that because it seems like the same thing said in a different way. But, it never peaked my interest enough to determine if there is a difference and what it is.

Since we now live in a world of finding virtually any answer, and more often many answers to almost any question by typing the question into a browser window, I typed: What is the difference between partly cloudy and partly sunny? At the top of the search results on Google was a short paragraph from chicagoweathercenter.com:

"Technically partly sunny means more clouds than sun and partly cloudy means more sun than clouds, but for all intents and purposes the terms are interchangeable (except that partly sunny is strictly a daytime term)."

See, I just learned something I didn't know. I think we can type pretty much any question into Google or Bing or other search engine and find lots of answers. What an amazing time to be alive.

I was thinking what we used to do to find out things like this. I used to own a leather-bound set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I think I paid $3800 for it, along with a couple other sets of books in a "deal" at the county fair back in the late 1980's. Of course, I didn't really pay $3800. I paid about $105 per month.

Come to think of it, that's about what I pay for my iPhone each month today. And, my phone holds more information than all those volumes of that Encyclopedia Britannica--and it is easier to access information, including things like video, music, and other helpful things that were never in the encyclopedia. It would have been a challenge to look it up in the encyclopedia, I'm sure, if it was even in there. And it certainly would have taken more than the .62 of a second that my Google search took.

It's interesting that all of us get to see the way things were, and the way things are, and notice the difference. It could be said that an older person would notice a larger difference, but I'm not so sure. It just depends on what changes one is paying attention to.


It's Not Just A Brave New World. It's A Constantly Evolving Brave New World. 

Spread Some Joy Today--by enjoying your place in your world. It's yours.