Seasonal dad joke
When a hotel sponsored a chess tournament they held it in their main lobby. That was a mistake, as it turned out the players did a lot of loud trash-talking, and no one really likes “chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.”
– adapted from a joke winding its way around the Internet
I guess fossils do bleed
There once was a man who was convinced he was dead. His doctor tried everything to convince him otherwise, but the man remained sure that he was dead. Then the doctor had an idea. He asked, “Do dead men bleed?” The man pondered the question for a few moments. “Well doctor, dead men haven’t got any circulation so they could hardly bleed now, could they?” The doctor then pulled out a pin and pricked the man’s finger. “You’re bleeding – what do you have to say about that?” The astonished man looked down at his finger and exclaimed: “Well what do you know? I guess dead men do bleed!”
It’s an old joke, breathed new life when, in 1997, scientist Mary Schweitzer discovered what seemed to be red blood cells in inside a fossilized T. Rex leg bone that had been dated as 68 million years old. Creationists celebrated the find and evolutionary paleontologists tried to discredit it, both, for the same reason. The two sides agreed that 68 million year old dinosaur bones simply don’t “bleed” – all such soft tissue would have been long ago degraded if the bones were really that old. Creationists knew this was evidence that dinosaurs roamed the Earth mere thousands of years ago, not millions, and that’s why these red cells had survived. Evolutionists, trying to discredit the find, speculated that the cells were from a recent contamination of the fossil, that they were part of a biofilm that had grown on it recently. But further research by Schweitzer, published in 2012, has made it harder and harder to deny that traces of soft tissue can be found in dinosaur fossils.
So are evolutionists ready to concede the fossils aren’t as old as they claim? Not at all. Instead, Mary Schweitzer has many of her critics now saying, “Well what do you know? I guess 68 million-year-old dino bones do bleed!”
The Apostle Paul on pretty
Blogger Wil Ramsey on the shallowness of us menfolk:
“Sometimes when people tell me how pretty their girlfriends are, I think I kinda know what Paul felt like when he was talking about tongues. I’m like, ‘Dude, not only is pretty the lowest of gifts a girl can have, and not only is she not as pretty as she is kind and compassionate and selfless and other things that are important, but my girlfriend is still better looking than yours.’”
On using words
“Telepathy in marriage doesn’t work any better than it does anywhere else”
– Douglas Wilson in For a Glory and a Covering
…and that’s theistic evolution
Three geologists were standing at the foot of Mount Rushmore staring upwards. “The faces we see here of these four US Presidents certainly must be the work of a Master Sculptor!” said the first.
To this, the second geologist sneered: “You call yourself a geologist? We investigate how natural causes form mountains and rocks – causes like volcanoes, plate movement, and erosion from water and wind. That’s science. So let’s get to work and figure out how these faces were formed through the forces of geophysics.”
The third geologist nodded in agreement. “Of course, you’re right. That’s the only way to do good science.” Then he turned to the first geologist and added, “Clearly no Master Sculptor carved these faces, but I’m sure He enjoyed watching what the wind and water could do.”
– adapted from a joke winding its way around the Internet.
Dat is Dutch?
A Canadian lass who married a Dutchman and is now living in the Netherlands has had some fun getting acquainted with Dutch culture. She is using her blog to both celebrate and mock “Stuff Dutch People Like.” Of the 60+ items she lists some are predictable – bicycles, hagelslag, the color orange – but there was also a handful of items that don’t seem particularly Dutch…except upon reflection.
- #4 Directness – Apparently in some cultures they don’t like being told when they “couldn’t be wronger.”
- #10 Birthday congratulations – Is it really only the Dutch who congratulate the birthday boy’s brother, or the birthday girl’s aunt?
- #18 Bringing your own cake – We’re accused of being cheap, but no one else brings treats to work for their birthday.
- #24 Dairy + #41 Being tall – The Dutch are among the tallest people on earth, and among the most avid consumers of dairy. Coincidence?
- #25: Going camping – There’s a reason everyone you know loves camping.
- #34: “Dat kan niet” – This is negative, opinionated and popular phrase is used to end discussions in the Netherlands. There is no equivalent phrase in North America, but the attitude behind it does seem familiar.
- #37: The Birthday Calendar – A handy little device that is unknown in other cultures, but now been co-opted by Facebook.
Stranger danger
“My family has an unwritten rule: if you wouldn’t spend time with someone in real life, then don’t let them into your living room via the television set either. It seems simple, but these days we’re not just letting these people into our living rooms, we’re letting them right into our kids’ bedrooms.”
– Glenn Beck
Good point
G.K. Chesteton once wrote: “The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his mother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
Pop is pretty important
Randy Patten believes you can’t overstate the importance of the father’s role in raising good kids. At an Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC) conference some years ago, the pastor illustrated this point by telling his audience about an initiative a greeting card company tried at a prison near their printing plant. They offered inmates a choice of cards to send to their mothers for Mother’s Day. The cards would be free and the greeting card company would even pay the postage. The response from the inmates was so enthusiastic the company representative had to go back to the plant to get more cards.
This success prompted the company to make the same offer for Father’s Day. But this time they didn’t get even a single response – no one took them up on the offer. Almost to a man these inmates loved their mothers but none of them seemed to have any sort of positive relationship with their fathers.
