NHFFL regular season finale

Get ready to glaze your eyes with excitement, as this is the promised end of the regular season fantasy football post.  First, let me put up the final standings...


And now, a little bit about how we got here.

Last week, no fewer than five teams were still in the running for the two Purple division playoff spots that hadn't been claimed by the division winning Greenwoods.  The Aguas dropped out of that race with a season-ending 38-25 loss to the Greenwoods which dropped them to 5-7 and out of the picture.  The Fiery Beagles had a shot at claiming the second spot outright with a win over the out-of-the-picture Rangers.  But the Rangers forced the game into overtime, and won on bench points 17-11 to capture a 51-45 OT win.  That didn't knock them out, and an Angels win over the KCAs would have still given them a spot.  But the valiant KCAs, given up for dead 3 weeks ago, stunned the Angels to force a 3-way tie, 48-30.

Now the first tie breaker would be record of the three teams against each other.  But the KCAs swept the Beagles while being swept by the Angels, and the Angels and Beagles split, forcing us to the second tie breaker, overall score in those games.  Here the Angels were a +18 and took second place; the Beagles were -7 and got the remaining playoff spot; and the KCAs were -11 and 4 points shy of forcing the next tiebreaker.  So next week, it will be the Angels vs the Beagles, with the winner to face the Greenwoods.  The two games that they played earlier were a 41-35 Beagle win and a 49-26 Angel win.

In the Gold division, things were settled a long time ago.  The State Ducks started 7-0, lost a pair, and closed with three straight wins.  Their 570 points, 47.5 per game, were 54 more than anyone else.  The Elks looked to run roughshod over everyone else, but a pair of losses in the last two games dropped them to third- the killer was the season ending 50-31 loss to Buzz which pulled the Lightyears into second place.  These two teams, who opened the year with a 61-29 Elk rout, face off next week for the dubious privilege of playing the Ducks in the next round.

The Ducks closed with a 51-26 win over the Porkchops, which not only gave the Ducks a tie (with last year's Porkchops) for most wins in a 12-game season (AKA since 2005), it also gave the Porkchops the second-worst fall (from 10 wins to 3), only surpassed by the Clock BBQs who dropped from 11 games to 2 in the 14-game 1998 season.  Speaking of the BBQs, they capped off their 5-game losing strek that knocked them out of the playoffs with a 37-34 loss to the B2s.  However, their earlier 45-13 win over the B2s gave them 4th place.

So, next week its Elks vs Buzz and Angels vs Beagles- or to put it another way, three of Laurie's teams vs one of KC's, with one of mine and the last of Laurie's teams waiting in the wings.  Whose league is this anyway?

Thoughts on Thanksgiving and other matters

As I warmed up leftover Pizza Hut tonight, I considered, "What the world really needs is a delivery pizza box that can go in the microwave.  It's not right that you can eat right out of the box on the first meal, but subsequent warm-ups have to dirty a plate."  Perhaps a box whose top is coated in garlic butter, which could drip down and coat the remains.  Why not an edible box, you ask?  Because I wanna eat a slice of pizza, not a box.

Why wasn't there a Sunday Message this week?  You'll have to ask God; to me, this week I was given a task in confidence.  Perhaps you'll see the fruits of it later, perhaps not, we'll see.  That was the outreach.  The inreach is involving reading the same chapter every day this week;  perhaps next Sunday will explain that, perhaps not.  I am trying to leave things that are rightfully in God's hands in God's hands.  And that is hard for me, because Satan is constantly flaunting idiots he has made puppets of in front of me, egging me on.  And I'm trying to counter that by asking God to lift His blinding of their hearts this week, if only for a moment, so that they can figure out, in some small corner of their seared consciences, that they are being idiots.  Alas, most of them seem more in the hands of Forest Gump than Jesus Christ's.

Tomorrow, I will be inflicting you with the results of our fantasy football league's end of the regular season.  But Chris, you already have your NHFFL page at the top up there, and it has an amazing 36 pageviews over its 11 weeks of existence! (Isn't it funny that "pageviews" is a word on your blogger dashboard, but the spell check gives it a red squiggle?)  I know, but the last week of the season means the start of the playoffs!

And today, I'm letting you know that as half of my Time Machine workday is Thursdays, and Thursday is Thanksgiving, I won't be planning a Time Machine this week.  I know someone will start the ugly rumour that I did it because Imagine goes to #1 this week; that, I assure you, is just a fortuitous side-effect.

However, in the spirit of the weekly journey, I thought I would share with you some "music of the season.  To remind us to be thankful for who we love...




...for who loves us...



...and for what we have.





Take a little time to take to heart.  I'll talk to y'all tomorrow.


Sha-na-na-na-na, It'll be all right....

50 Years Gone

I remember it like yesterday... even though I was a toddler watching soaps while my mom napped, sitting on the training pot.  Walter Cronkite's baritone made the announcement.  And I didn't TRULY comprehend what it meant, except that someone important was dead.  But I learned.

I grew up in a catholic Democrat family.  My sister had a portrait of Jack and Bobby on her bedroom wall.  I leafed through The Torch Is Passed many times.  We had a set of Colliers' yearbooks to go with our encyclopedia, and I read and re-read Jack's career as president in its day-by-day format.

Years passed, and I learned about his past, his family, his service.  Though in many households such as ours he attained almost a saint status (before you think that's silly, I remind you of the National Enquirers' campaign of sorts to get Grace Kelly named a saint after her death), I got to know him as he was- an imperfect man.  Like the rest of us, only richer.  And braver.

He reminds me of Ronald Reagan in many ways.  Beyond their similar policies, they brought a similar love for the people they served.  They brought a similar hope for their nation.  They had a shared, deep, and abiding hatred for the grey walls of communism- and not so surprising that one stood before the grey monolith of the Berlin Wall and said, "I am a Berliner", and the other stood side by side with young people sick of the grey and shouted, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Their world was a world with all the colors of freedom and opportunity- a rainbow over the promise of a new world- a Camelot.  And those who love the grey walls hated them both, and one of them died because of it.  And with Jack's death, and Bobby's soon later, the grey walls won for a time.

Years later, Reagan tore down the grey walls again... but it seems that there were even more of those who love the grey walls in his day than in Jack's.  It took two deaths to end Jack's dream... only one retirement to end Reagan's.

A lot of people take the opportunity the anniversary gives to go over all the conspiracies tied to JFK's assassination, and that's okay.  It needs to be discussed even now, so that the lovers of the grey walls know that there yet live men who won't submit to the grey.  But for me, the whole thing is moot.  When I think of who shot Jack Kennedy, who shot Bobby, MLK, or Lincoln, I have only one thought about them.


YOU MAKE ME SICK.  I hope that your eternal fate includes the grey walls you loved so much.

And on the hill, four men who will yet say, "I forgive you.  You didn't know what you were doing."

Time Machine week 95

It's November, 22, 1971.  Yesterday, the Indian Air Force inflicted a defeat on their Pakistani counterparts as the two nations edged closer towards confrontation in Pakistan's civil war, in the tiny river neck of Boyra.  One of the Pakistani pilots shot down and captured would eventually (in 1996) become Pakistan's Chief of Air Staff; the pilot who shot him down sent him a nice congratulatory letter, thinking that he'd never hear back- but the CoAS sent back a letter, thanking him for the wishes and commending him on his skill in the air.

Today, Idaho's Supreme Court threw out an old law that said that in the presence of multiple applicants to the estate of a dead child, the male applicants take precedence.  In the case at hand, the father was a little more than indirectly involved in the death, and the lower judge was trying to award power over the estate to him.

In two days, a man known to legend as DB Cooper would leap from a plane into mystery as the first man to hijack a plane.  Who he was, whether he survived, and where all the money went is still a matter for conjecture.

artists depiction of "Cooper"- who may have gotten his name from a Dutch comic book...

And now, you're reading Time Machine for this week, where we'll look at the many faces of Will You Love Me Tomorrow; the band that ALMOST had Janis Joplin for a singer, and why; and four new members of the top ten, including two that make leaps of at least 12 notches!  Ready, aim, fire!


So let's open the fun as always  with the #1s around the world.  Three changes this week internationally:  France  has at the top of its chart one Michel Sardou with his tune La Rire du Sergent
(The Laughing Sergeant).  Sardou is another artist to owed his fame initially to being banned; his first hit was Les Ricains (The Yankees) in which he, in light of anti-American sentiment over Vietnam and France's pull out from NATO, reminded Frenchmen of the debt owed to America.  The subject did not find favour with DeGaulle, and he "suggested" that the song not be played.  Sardot, the scion of theater star parents, has gone on to make a career of edgy political views.

Also new at the tops Over There, Ireland has adopted the UK #1 Cuz I Love You by Slade (a very good song, a la Come On Eileen);  and New Zealand will spend the rest of the year with Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey on top.


In the US of A, a consensus has formed behind the Shaft theme; LA, both Chicagos, and one Minneapolis station has Isaac Hayes at the top.  Detroit is united behind Family Affair; the other Minneapolis station has Baby I'm-A Want You, and Pittsburgh favours Have You Seen Her.  (Why am I using the English spelling of favour today?  Because it pisses my spell-check off.

"I say, Mr. Davis, I had no idea we were so popular in the Motor City..."

This week, we had 12 hot 100 debuts, of which I'll mention three.  At #61, Rod Stewart and the Faces hit with their version of (I Know I'm) Losing You;  at 86, it's rare Earth with one of their best, Hey Big Brother; and Betty Wright at 89 with her big hit Clean Up Woman.  Here's a didja know-  Wright was a member of a family gospel outfit called the Echoes Of Joy; as such, she was singing professionally at the age of 2, and discovered George and Gwen McRae when she was 14!

Oh, and something else I should mention at this point, kind of an Almost But Not Quite- Mamy Blue, the Pop Tops version, has peaked at #68 on the Cashbox countdown.  But is still on top in at least 8 other countries...

This week's birthday song list is going to have a story attached at the end.  Turning thirty this week:  Barry Manilow's Read Em And Weep ( which I mention not because it was a big hit or because I'm a Manilow fan- the first is false, the other true- but because it was the fourth top forty hit in a matter of months written and produced by Jim Steinman.  The others?  Total Eclipse Of The Heart, Making Love Out Of Nothing At All, and his own soon to debut Rock And Roll Dreams Come True.), Rainbow's Street Of Dreams, and the Moody Blues with Blue World.  Turning 35, we have Olivia Newton-John's A Little More Love, Nicolette Larson's hit of Neil Young's Lotta Love, Gerry Rafferty's Home And Dry, Don Williams' country crossover ( later covered by Eric Clapton) Tulsa Time, Gong Show contestant Cheryl Lynn's Got To Be Real, and Ian Matthews (without the Southern Comfort) and Shake It.  That song attached itself for me to a girl in high school on the flimsiest of reasonings- she and some other friends of the female persuasion were students in advanced Spanish, and somehow the line "she has a purse that was made in Mexico" stuck to her picture in my brain.

Turning 40, we have David Essex's Rock On... and the star of our coming story.  At 45 years old this week, Dusty Springfield's Son Of A Preacher Man and CCR's I Put A Spell On You.  Turning 50, Martha and the Vandellas Quicksand and the Murmaids with Popsicles, Icicles.  Hitting 55 this week we have the classic Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by the Platters, and Jackie Wilson's Lonely Teardrops.  And finally, turning 60, Eartha Kitt's take on Santa Baby.


And now, the story.  One of the songs turning 40 this week was a cover by Melanie (Brand New Key) of the Carole King comp Will You (Still) Love Me Tomorrow.  First thought was-  I don't know if this is going to be real good, with Melanie's somewhat screechy pipes; second thought was, gee, a LOT of people have recorded this song.  Let's look and see how many we find.

The Shirelles, of course, had the biggest with the first, hitting #1 in 1960.  But a wide cross-section of people have also recorded it, from Mike Berry...

You know me, mate!  I was Spooner on the UK comedy Are You Being Served!

... to Ronnie James Dio with his band the Prophets...

His version was "then"... in 1962.

Now as far as those what actually hit the charts, we have the Four Seasons making it to #24 in 1968; Roberta Flack got to #76 in 1972; Jody Miller, a country star who had made a living doing covers of 60's hits in country style (top 40 country with songs like He's So Fine, Baby I'm Yours, Be My Baby, To Know Him Is To Love Him, and... House Of The Rising Sun?) made it to #69 on the country charts in 1975...

Whatever it is, I'm there...

...a band called Morningside Drive had a disco version that hit #33 in 1975 as well; Dana Valery, a singer of all trades who is now a hypnotherapist, hit #95 with another dance version in 1976; and Dave Mason made it to #39 with his last top 40 hit in 1978.  Carole, of course did an excellent job on her massive hit lp Tapestry in 1971; but she says (allegedly) that "the definitive version" was done by the Bee Gees on the tribute album Tapestry Revisited in 1995- it was pretty darn good.  That lp also contained Rod Stewart on So Far Away, Amy Grant on It's Too Late, Faith Hill doing Where You Lead,  the Manhattan Transfer on Smackwater Jack (I'll have to check at least THAT one out!), and Celine Dion on You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman.


Oh, and Melanie's version which started this all?  It was DAMN GOOD.

The biggest mover in the countdown is up in the top 40... the big dropper, Al Green and Tired Of Being Alone, falling from 18 to 51.

Our 45 at 45- one more time for newbies; the 45 at #45 45 years ago this week- is on its way down.  It's Piece Of My Heart by Big Brother And The Holding Company, who had been an unconventional instrumental band until they auditioned Janis Joplin to be their first lead singer.  Now she was also being courted by another band from down home in Texas- the 13th Floor Elevators, reputed to be the first truly psychedelic band.  They had had a national hit in 1967 with You're Gonna Miss Me (#55), and had a big rep in their home state.  Janis' connection to them was through her friend  Clementine Hall, wife of 13FE electric jug player Tommy Hall.  Clementine was like a den mother to the band, especially to the increasingly-disturbed leader Roky Erickson.  She chose the Holding Co., though; and when she went solo, much of the band joined Country Joe and the Fish for a time, before briefly reforming with new female singer Kathy McDonald, who may (if you read her wiki story) or may not have been one of the female vocalists on the Stones' Tumbling Dice (credits list two other ladies "and friend").

Eight songs hit the top 40 this week.  Tom Jones' Till, which we mentioned a couple weeks ago and is an AWESOME vocal performance, moves up 3 to #40;  Yes moves up nine to #37 with Your Move (better known, perhaps, as Seen All Good People); Van Morrison's Wild Night moves up 7 to #35; Neil Diamond comes in with a song called Stones at 34, up ten; Dennis Coffey and the Detroit Guitar Band climb a quick 18 to #33 with the instrumental Scorpio; Melanie (ain't it funny how THIS works out?) climbs nine to #32 with the aforementioned Brand New Key; the big mover, up 28 to 31, Three Dog Night with An Old Fashioned Love Song; and the highest spot in the top 40 goes to the Staple Singers with Respect Yourself, moving up 18 spots to #29.

Yeah, if I get two mentions, I oughta get a picture...

With four new songs coming in, four old ones drop out.  The four droppers were Superstar (10 to 24), I Found Someone Of My Own (8 to 17), Maggie May (4 to 16), and Yo-Yo (5-15).

Marvin Gaye slips from 6 to 10 with Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).

The Jackson Five jump from 21 to 9 with Got To Be There.

A more modest move of four notches take the Grass Roots to #8 with Two Divided By Love.

Bread rises (you knew that was coming again, didn't you?) two spots to #7 with Baby I'm-A Want You.

The big move- 17 spots from 23 to 6- belongs to Sly and the Family Stone with Family Affair.

Another more modest jump of 6 puts the Chi-lites and Have You Seen Her at #5.

The former Cat Stevens (well, he wasn't former then but.. oh, you know) goes from 7 to 4 with Peace Train.

Cher drops a notch to #3 with the former top dog Gypsies Tramps And Thieves.

John Lennon moves into the runner up spot with Imagine.

And that means the winnah and still champeen for this week is...

 

 

 

 

...Isaac Hayes and Theme From Shaft!!!


Next week, more music and pictures of pretty girls!

Life is like a blog post...

Well, it tries to be when we go for a walk.  A good walk is a good blog post; but a bad walk is still a good walk, it just doesn't make a good blog post.  Today's walk had elements of both.

There was a cute story;  as we approached the woods, a lady and her dog, a big black one that kinda was built like Vinnie the Airedale, were moving up the side of the woods.  About 20 yards away, this dog (whose name, we learned soon later, was Baxter*) saw Scrappy.  Scrappy saw him just a bit later.  I was trying to go slow enough to give her a chance to clear us (as it looked like Baxter was giving her a bit of difficulty), but Baxter slowed to match us.  Finally, she shouted, "Come on, Baxter!"

And he sat down.  He refused to move, until she said he could come meet Scrappy.

The meeting was cordial, and after a thorough sniffing, an invitation from Baxter to roughhouse, and the near-avoidance of the inevitable tangling of leashes, we went our merry way.  Well, Scrappy and I did.  Baxter sat back down when we left and wouldn't move until he was sure Scrappy wasn't coming back.

(*- I find Baxter's name ironic because Laurie's sister has a mini poodle, white, named Baxter.  So now we know one at each end of the scale.)

A good post-walk includes lots of pictures, too.  But this one had one at the start-

- tree starting its descent to the forest floor, right at the corner of Main Trail and Loop Trail North.

And it has one picture from the end-

- the river so low that Scrappy didn't get to go down as we had about 10 yards of gooey mud flat to get to it.


However, there was one spot in the middle that made it all worthwhile.  For those of you that play along on "The Map", this is on the south side of the Swamp.  We were walking the far south end when I saw something move up against the woods...

Two foxes!

Mr. Fox had gotten up to shake himself else I'd have never seen them.

I wish they had been getting along better. Hard to get them in one shot when they sit so far apart!

The Mrs.  was content to watch us pass from a distance as she sunned herself.

While he got up and left when we got the closest (which wasn't very close), this little stinker was content to continue sunbathing until we were long gone.



________________________________________


More pictures in a sec (one really cool one, IMHO), but I notice by my junk folder that it's time to play a brief round of spam e-mail instruction, a public service to make your spam more intelligent ( and intelligible.)

First, a while back a friend of mine warned us that a new blogroll engine called Feedspot was trying to take the place of the lamented Google Reader, and using some questionable tactics to draw an audience.  I have a hard time taking FS seriously when they send me stuff like this:

Your Blogspot blog "Chris' cap collection" has 23 new followers onFeedspot

Hi CWMartin,

My name is Anuj. I'm Founder of Feedspot - A Google Reader replacement with built-in Search and Sharing features.http://www.feedspot. com

We recently launched Feedspot and got reviewed by TechCrunch.

I'm writing this to let you know that your blog 'Chris' cap collection' has started getting new followers on Feedspot. You can view your blog and its followers on Feedspot from here. If you need detailed monthly/yearly analytics on how your blog is performing on Feedspot, please let me know.

As your blog is adding value to Feedspot, I'd like to give you one year Feedspot Premium subscription for free. Please use (my e-mail)_FEEDSPOT as promocode to enable your annual subscription.

Best, Anuj Well, Anuj, let me give you some tips.  My Caps blog has about 5 followers, is mainly read when I beg my regular readers to go see some new cap I found, and I doubt that 23 people in the whole world have stumbled onto it, let alone friended it on FS.  Certainly if you are a REPUTABLE BUSINESS, you can go about this a bit more honestly.  BTW, Anuj Agarwal IS the name of FS's founder.  Either he is a no-moral idiot or a spammer he's allowing to work for his company is. Either way, I believe I shall pass. Next up, Yet another 2 and a half million bucks I foolishly left in a bank in Benin. There really IS a Benin.  Just take a right at Togo... Anyway, the hook to this one, as we learn from one Barrister Miracle Joseph, (or Joseph Miracle, it's hard to tell), goes like this: Remember,the reason why your total fund was arranged on ATM CARD is because many People complain about Freud stars every day from Benin and we are trying to stop this fraudulent from Benin and am assuring you that it will stop because we are now working with the internet operation such as YAHOO MAIL, HOTMAIL,MAILLOL and also the united state FBI and Economic financial crime commission (EFCC). And many people have been scammed by bank wire transfer going around the whole African and the reason to STOP paying money to the fraud stars So the scam can be eradicated in this country and I want you to follow your fund code which follow bellow, and wish is given to you by the Federal high court of Benin and the code is (746*78F*GN) Now obviously the pertinent question is, are they "Freud Stars" or "Fraud Stars", and whichever one they are, what the heck are they?  Google it and you get a band called the Radio Stars headlined by a dude called Freud.  And by the way, MJ, the terms "ATM card" and "Yahoo Mail" don't exactly scream legitimacy to most Americans. This next one is just too full of fun not to share the whole thing.  With my comments within: -- Hello my good friend, Compliment of the season! (Which season would that be?) You may not understand why this mail come to you, (no foolin'?) But if you do not remember me, you might have receive an email from me in the past regarding a multi-million-dollar business proposal which we never concluded. I am using this opportunity to inform you that the multi-million-dollar business has been concluded with the assistance of another partner from U.K who financed the transaction to a logical conclusion. ("Logical"?  How about "successful"?) I thank you for your great efforts to our unfinished transfer of fund into your account due to one reason or the other best known to you. I want to inform you that I have successfully transferred the fund to my new partner's account in China that was capable of assisting me in this great venture. Due to your effort, sincerity, courage and trust worthiness you showed during the course of the transaction. I want to compensate you and show my gratitude to you with the sum of USD 500,000.00. (Now at this point, I have to point out yet again-I don't have amnesia, and if I don't have amnesia, this scam will never fly.  I think I'd remember a half-million buck business deal.) I have left a certified bank draft for you worth of Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only. My dear friend I will like you to contact my Account Officer with heritage bank in Benin on his direct email address (tontonforkids@yahoo .fr) for the collection of your bank draft with him, his name is Mr. Tony COLEMAN,i authorized him to release the Bank Draft to you whenever you contacts him for the collection.  At the moment, I'm very busy with my partner because of the investment project which I and my new partner are having at hand. Please I will like you to accept this token with good faith as this is from the bottom of my heart, Also comply with Mr. Tony's (Mr. Tony, how cute!) directive so that your draft can reach you without delay. Note her contact again below: Name:  Mr. Tony COLEMAN   Yours sincerely, Mrs. Elise Edward. Tonton, I found out, is some international internet TV site, and it kinda looks like it features Bollywood dramas.  What it would have to do with my $500,000 business deal in China which I never made, I don't know. Finally, we have a letter from the First National Bank of Reno, Nevada.  They are taking a VERY proactive stance on scam victims: Attention:Beneficiary  I am Mr.Frank Anthony, Chief Cashier,of The First National Bank U.S.A. This is  to bring to your notice that The U.S Government received a letter from the  British Colony Government and also African Development Organization concerning  Scam Victim's, after the meeting the African Development Organization/British  Colony Government and United Nation Organization, agreed to pay each and  everyone his or her name appeared in the list as a victim with the sum of $6,  Million United State Dollar. Hey, I've been scammed!  Give me six mill!  BTW, the address sent with the e-mail was the location of a bank- a Mutual Of Omaha Bank branch.  I didn't know Marlin Perkins branched into banking, I thought he was strictly an insurance guy. Because ANYWHERE in Nevada can seem like a Wild Kingdom... ____________________________________________ And now, the other pictures I promised, from a previous walk... This guy and his mate were circling overhead, screaming their joy to the world.  I thought I missed the shot- till I enlarged it.  Ain't it cool?

When the mind has too much time...

I have one of those brains that never shuts up... no matter how I try.  When most peoples' brains shut down and shut up, mine looks for something to occupy itself.  My brain demands down time games when I'm doing something that does not require its presence.  One of those games is trying to name off the periodic table. 

Are you serious?  Yup.  Just now, I got 84 out of 118 while in the shower.  I know I probably lost a chunk of my audience at the words "periodic chart", because ejukashun isn't what it used to be.  But I think it's fun to try to go down the alphabet and see how many of the chemical elements I can name off.  (Oh, THAT periodic chart.)  It's fun for me to remember that some of the elements don't get their abbreviation from their English name (for example, oxygen is O, carbon is C, praseodymium is Pr), but from their ancient Roman (i.e. Latin) name.  Thus you have to find silver and gold in the As (silver= argentium=Ag, gold = aurium= Au), sodium under Na, lead under Pb (plumbum, which we get plumbing from because those daffy Romans used lead for their water pipes), tin under Sn, antimony under Sb.  (Antimony?  Isn't that what I pay my ex-wife?)

It gets easier if you remember some of the scientists who worked on the elements;  like Cm= curium for Madame Curie, Es= Einsteinium for Albert Einstein, Rf= rutherfordium for Rutherford B. Hayes.  Or to know where they work on such things; thus Cf=Californium, Bk = Berkeleium (for Berkeley), Ds = Darmstadtium for Darmstadt (in Germany, which also has Ge for Germanium).

I said Germanium, not geranium!

Then you have your radioactive elements (37 if I counted right), the ones not found in nature (20 of those), the ones that don't have a name yet (4 of those- I say we call them Martinium, Laurieum, Scrappyum, and KCesium).  See how neat this is?

Another one I like to do is naming the independent nations of the world.  If you count Kosovo and Taiwan, that's 197 states, 44 of them new since I was in grade school. 13 of these have a combined area about 69.8% of Indiana.  There are 14 nations just in the South Pacific (which I miss about half on a regular basis) six more island flyspecks in the Caribbean (where I usually lose count), and don't get me started on the fragments of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (which account for 22 of those 44).  One of my favorite cartoons from the era of the Soviet breakup came from that brief period where they called themselves the "Commonwealth of Independent States."  The plaque for the Soviet UN ambassador had been changed to "Smithereens", and the ambassador was complaining that it needed to be changed to "the Commonwealth of Independent Smithereens".  As I recall, he was seated beside the ambassador from Bunnyland.


Or I might try naming cities, rivers, animals, etc., with one from each letter of the alphabet and see how long it takes to thin out the letters I can actually fill in.  I'm always surprised how soon I run into trouble with the letter "R".

Sunday message: Friends and robots

Would you like to be a robot?  I don't mean the flying, crushing, striving robots of comic books and absurd fiction, but the reality.  They do what they are programmed to do.  They know what is fed into them.  Without ever questing or questioning, with no joy or pride of creation.  That is a robot.  It knows what to do and does it, with no choice in the matter.


Recently, a fellow blogger posted about "why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden, knowing that Adam would fall?"  That is a good question of itself and is exactly the same question as "why are we here?"

The answer being:  The Choice.

God could have made us robots, with perfect knowledge of Him, bound to only believe, only worship, only do right and not wrong.  But God wanted more than robots, He wanted a people to LOVE Him.  And you can't have that without The Choice.  The Choice to love Him, or reject Him.

He gave Lucifer and all the other angels that choice, and to show how powerful The Choice is, allowed that one-third of them chose against Him.  And He gave Adam and Eve that choice too.  Thing is, Adam and Eve were unique in human history- directly made by God, in constant fellowship with God, in bodies that needed for nothing, and in a Garden where they had everything they could ever want.  We today do not begin to have a frame of reference for what it was like to be them.

And yet, we try to shoehorn it into OUR framework.  One poster called the whole story "ridiculous" and "hilarious".  Another questioned how Adam and Eve could have been expected to make the right choice.  Another chose to look at it from the angle that, "without knowledge of good and evil, they had no way to know that god is good and serpent is bad."

How about this:  God created them, gave them everything, spent time with them teaching them.  He set up one thing that they had to do.

The Choice.

One tree that they could not eat from.  Black and white, with consequences therefrom.  When we tell a child, "don't touch the stove," Are we expecting them to mull over the esoteric ramifications of why they shouldn't touch it, to way the effect on their eternal souls of perhaps taking the chance of touching that which is forbidden?  NO.  It is a black and white question of obedience.  That is what The Tree was. Period.  I tried to explain this to the commenter.  The response?

" They knew right and wrong IN THEIR FRAMEWORK"

That's just a post hoc apologetic that isn't in the text, it attempts to massage away the contradiction, and it's only convincing to people who have already bought into the story for other reasons.




  Which is basically atheist for, "If it isn't within MY framework, it is ludicrous and has no validity."

He continued to try to argue the notion, How would A&E know who was good and who was the evil?  How about, "Because the One you know created you, gave you all you have, showed you nothing but kindness- and the other tried to turn you against all that?"


We have 84 Facebook friends.  By my count, I've actually physically met 51 of them (some of whom have two accounts), 5 more I have become what I consider to be friends with through the internet, and 28 whom I'd have to say I barely know, if at all.  And yet, to FB, they are all my friends.  The knowledge of Jesus Christ works a lot like that.  There are people, like myself, who know Him because He has become a personal part of my life, has moved in me through His Spirit, lets me know He is there and He died for me.  For others, He is a "Facebook friend", someone they read about, search scripture for, but never REALLY let Him in on a personal level.  And when they hit the places where they perceive contradictions in scripture, they become confused, they doubt- they call the stories "ridiculous."  Or, to put it another way:

Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. ¹⁷ But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. (From Mark 4).

What I'm trying to say is, you can feed all the data you want into your brain, but like the robot, it's only going to be a list of "if this, then"s.  You'll do the things programmed in, but without the least understanding of why.


The poster has gone on about trying to find the truth about God, the Bible.  She's swung from one of man's theories to another.  And now, she doubts, because she cannot make them intellectually coincide with the other.  But faith is not about knowledge, or data, or anything that man comes up with.  It's about, do you Know Him or are you just Facebook friends?

It's about The Choice.  One side submits to God, and the motivations of God are revealed- slowly, incompletely, filtered through your own perceptions and limitations, "through the mirror darkly,": as Paul says.  (Why not just explain the Truth to us completely, you ask?  "Because YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!"  God is BEYOND you, deal with it!)  The other side divorces all that God is and does out of the equation, assigns Him (for reference) the place of "the genie in the bottle", and ridicules the concept of "god" when "god" doesn't do as man would.  And they never see the other side, because they too have made The Choice.  They just made the wrong one.


It was sad to me that the poster brought up the verse where Jesus says, "Ask anything in My Name and it shall be granted", and based doubt upon certain prayers not then being granted.  We have a BIIIIG misconception as mortals about the difference between in HIS name and in OUR name.  When Jesus asked in His name, He finished with, "Not my will, but Thine be done."  God's will was done, the prayer answered; and yet the cup did not pass from Jesus' lips without Him drinking.

But of course, that's just me "massaging away the contradiction."