Downsize for Christ's Sake

This article from The Gathering tells a story of a family that made an unusual, but very realistic decision to downsize their house, in order to give away 1/2 of their wealth.

I don't know this particular family, but I do know first hand more than one such family that has made the same decision. I'm compelled to consider it for myself.

By my rough calculation, if 1% of the population in America who made any charitable gift last year were to make this same decision to liquidate their main asset and give away half of their wealth, then the total* given by all US givers would increase by 2.5 X (250%) !

* Let me reiterate: Even if 99% of US givers kept their giving this year exactly the same as last year, the effect of the 1% going from normal giving to the "1/2 my wealth" standard would make the cumulative US giving go up by 2.5 times.

Okay, so you are thinking (and so am I) that it is just not going to happen that 3 million people (1% of our rounded US population) is going to follow suit...

But what about at a micro-level? What about your church family? Could 1% of the people you worship with take this step of faith? Could you? ... Could I?

Shed Dormer - Passive Solar Overhang for Summer Shade and Winter Sunlight

While working with an architect on the design of a home addition, we decided on a south-facing shed dormer for the second story. Given the shed style, I mentioned I wanted the overhang of the roof to let winter sun in, but shade out most of the summer sun.

Because I'm a fairly hands-on guy, and my architect (great guy) had not designed such a thing before, I went online and found the following helpful bits of info. But it took a lot longer to find it all, so I thought I would post it here for you, my loyal and devoted readers:

With the equation to the right, you should have most of what you need to calculate how much overhang you need. Two of the variables ("S" and "W") require you to know where you are going to build. If you don't know that, then you need more help than I can give.

Go here to calculate S and W. If I'm thinking correctly, the two dates you need to use are the Summer and Winter Solstices, June 21 and December 21, for S and W respectively.