Tidbits – August 2024
English is a funny language
Have you ever seen:
• a shoe box?
• a kitchen sink?
• a ball park?
• a home run?
• a hot dog stand?
• a picket fence?
• a square dance?
• a hole punch?
• a horse fly?
2 AM at the same time everywhere
Have you ever missed an online meeting because you’ve gotten confused about the time zones? Sure, the fellow in Ontario wants to meet at 3, but you’re in BC, so does he mean your 3 o’clock or his? And what about the guy in Australia – is his 3 your AM or PM?
Turns out there is a solution to this dilemma, a time-zone-free universal clock that results in everyone’s 1 PM happening at exactly the same time, no matter country or continent.
If that strikes you as odd, then consider the “universal time” we already have in place: months. Here in North America, December is a snowy month – it’s winter for us. But meanwhile in Australia, December is the middle of their summer. If we were to keep months the way we keep hours, then they should really be having a summer month like June when, halfway around the globe we are having our wintery December. That would allow us to both have wintery Decembers, which would make it a bit easier for Santa and his sleigh to land on their roofs without doing any damage to the shingles. But it would make it confusing to have to wonder what month it is in another country. So I like our universal months.
Now we just need to do the same thing for our 24-hour clock so that 2 AM here is happening at the exact moment as 2 AM in China, Australia, the Netherlands and everywhere else. There is already a “Coordinated Universal Time” (with the not quite in the right order abbreviation of UTC) that’s used by airplanes. Way simpler to know when you’ll arrive if you aren’t subtracting all the time zones. Everyone around the world should have the exact same time…at exactly the same time. Then when it came time to schedule a meeting it’d be easy for everyone to know when it’s actually happening.
But what about Daylight Savings Time (DST), you might ask? How would UTC work with DST? It doesn’t. But let’s all agree that Daylight Savings Time is annoying, so when we make the shift to UTC, we’ll also get rid of DST and be all the better for it.
So what say you?
Math that kids will like
Children’s picture book author Amy Krouse Rosenthal liked to make word equations. Here are a few of her funniest:
• somersaults + somersaults + somersaults = dizzy
• (patience + silence) + coffee = Poetry
• (patience + silence) + beer = Fishing
• blaming + eye rolling ≠ sincere apology
• chalk + sitting = school
• chalk + jumping = hopscotch
• chores ÷ everyone = family
If you plant corn…
I don’t know Dudley Hall, but I do like his common-sense take on Galatians 6:7:
“If you plant corn you’ve given up your options about what the fruit’s going to be. If you plant corn, you’re going to get up corn. And Scripture says, ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap.’
“If you sow to the flesh, if you sow to your selfish desires, that’s the fruit. You go I don’t want that fruit; I want a better fruit. Well, you’ve gotta go backwards. You can’t just change the fruit. You have to go back and decide, what do I have to plant to get that?”
There is no neutrality in education
The Organization of American Historians proclaims itself as the “largest professional society dedicated to United States history.” But what sort of history does it teach?
• Getting the Story Straight: Queering Regional Identities
• Supporting Pregnant-Capable Students in Abortion-Ban States
• Teaching K–12 History in an Educational Culture War: What Scholars Can Do to Strengthen Antiracist Education
• Queering Work: LGBT Labor Histories
Notable quotables on favoritism
“The axiomatic error undermining much of Western Civilization is ‘weak makes right.’ If someone accepts, explicitly or implicitly, that the oppressed are always the good guys, then the natural conclusion is that the strong are the bad guys.” – Elon Musk
“Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit…. Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits…” – Exodus 23
“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” – a slogan journalist William Randolph Hearst, and many journalists after him, embraced. Noble sounding, and so much so that many a pastor has claimed it as a good slogan for the mission of the Church. But the pivot point here is on who you think the afflicted are. If you believe the weak, the poor, or the various sexual and ethnic minorities are always the afflicted, and if you’ve already decided Christians, or men, or the rich, are always the comfortable, then it isn’t such a good slogan after all.
How many?
With our long-lasting LED lightbulbs I wonder if the “how many ____s does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” jokes might go the way of all those old “how many _____s does it take to switch out a buggy wheel?” quips. You sure don’t hear those anymore! So, before they all go dim, here are some of the best bulb bits. How many…
• …babysitters does it take to change a lightbulb? None – they don’t make Pampers that small.
• Appliance sales men? Just one, but for this week and this week only.
• Folk musicians? One to screw it in, and one to complain that it’s electric.
• Evolutionists? None – they are sure that it’ll just happen if you give it enough time.
• Skateboarders? One, but it’ll take him 100 tries.
• Optimists? One, and he doesn’t need a lightbulb – he knows the old one is just screwed in too tightly.
• Pessimists? None – they won’t bother, because they’re sure the wiring’s shot too.
• How many real men? None. Real men aren’t scared of the dark.
Going all Philippians 4:8 on sports
In Dean Register’s Minister’s Manual he tells a story about a pastor, Leith Anderson, who grew up as an avid fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. One year his father took him to a World Series game where his beloved Dodgers were playing their hated cross-town rivals, the New York Yankees. Anderson was sure his Dodgers were going to win, but he was bitterly disappointed when they never even got on base and lost the game 2-0.
Years later Anderson had an opportunity to share his World Series experience with another avid baseball fan. “It was such a disappointment,” he told the man, “the Dodgers never even got to base.”
“You mean you were actually there?” the man asked in amazement. “You were there when the Yankees’ Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history? That must have been amazing!” Anderson had been so wrapped up in the rivalry that he missed out on appreciating the most dominating pressure-packed pitching performance ever displayed in the baseball finals!
Sportsmanship at its core is about remembering that the guys on the other team are our opponents, not our enemies – fellow human beings made in God’s image. Recognizing that won’t cut into our intensity, but should cut down on our cross-checks. While we’re always going to cheer on our hometown, if we eliminate the hate we’ll also be able to appreciate a brilliant performance by the other team’s guy.
Educational viewing?
“All television is educational television, the only question is, What is it teaching?” – Nicholas Johnson
Saying “I love you”
A woman in an adult creative-writing class didn’t quite know what to make of her homework assignment. She had to write different ways to say “I love you,” each of which had to be 25 words or less, and they couldn’t include the word “love.”
After she spent ten minutes scratching her head, the woman’s husband came up behind her and started massaging her shoulders. As he loosened up her shoulders and neck she was finally able to start writing. Here is what she submitted to her instructor:
• “I’ll get up and see what that noise was.”
• “It looks good on you, but you look even better in the red top.”
• “Cuddle up – I’ll get your feet warm.”
SOURCE: Adapted from joke in the February 1990 Reader’s Digest submitted by Charlotte Mortimer
Standing up for the unborn here, there, and everywhere!
“If we speak in church, we’re told it’s too political; if we speak in the political arena, we’re told it’s too religious. If we speak in the media we’re told it’s too disturbing; in the educational realm, it’s too disruptive. On the public streets, it’s too distressing for children; in the business world it’s too controversial, in the family, too divisive, and in a social setting it’s just impolite.
“So if abortion is wrong, where do we go to say so? The answer is that we have to stop looking for a risk-free place to fight abortion, and speak up in all those arenas. Let’s stop counting the cost for ourselves if we speak up, and start counting the cost for them if we are silent. The pro-life movement does not need a lot of people; it needs people who are willing to take a lot of risk.”
– Roman Catholic priest Frank Pavone speaking against those who say they are pro-life, but object to the issue of abortion being raised in a particular “arena.”...
