Today, a new president is sworn in. That has only occurred a few times in my short life, but it probably isn't something that I will be watching today since I am at work and my classes start tonight. Actually, I have never really been too concerned about the inauguration, and that isn't really changing this time around. I don't even care to watch the State of the Union address, which actually has greater implications than anything that happens at the inauguration. It does illustrate one of two things I don't understand about the timing of the inauguration, though. Why is it being held during the day on a weekday and why is it in the middle of winter.
The first question I have about inauguration scheduling is clear enough. It made sense when the inaugurations first started that it didn't matter if they were held on the weekend or on a weekday. People had to read about the inauguration if they cared at all rather than watching it on television. In this day and age, though, why not either hold the main event in the evening at a sports complex or on the weekend? If the incoming president has a religious issue with the day in question (say that it is on a Saturday and the elected president is a devout Jew or Seventh Day Adventist), then flexibility to be built into the system to hold it on a Sunday in that case.
The second question of why is it held in the winter makes less sense to me. That fact alone caused the death of the ninth U.S. president, William Henry Harrison. Not only that, but the inauguration was moved from March to the colder month of January years after Harrison's death. Inauguration day would make much more sense if it were in May or June than in January. Things would be so much easier if people would do them my way.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
my pet matthew
I think that most people have their little pet topics that they go back to. I have found that any time I put together a lesson to teach in my church I have to fight the tendency to work my way to my pet topics. Of all of my pet Scripture references, the Sermon on the Mount is probably the one that I go to the most. I usually remove my references to it by the time I present the lesson, but I always have a way to tie what I am saying to the Sermon on the Mount.
It is my opinion that nowhere is the essence of Christianity portrayed more completely and concisely than in Matthew chapters five through seven, with the possible exception of Jesus' comments on the greatest commandment. Jesus basically says that you have to do good works (be salt and light), but that the people who were the best at good works (the Pharisees and teachers of the law) still weren't good enough, so you should be perfect as God is perfect. He then spends the rest of His time illustrating perfection and imperfection. The implication is that something beyond works has to save you, but if you are truly perfect that motivation behind your works will show it even more than the works themselves. No matter what the lesson, if it has implications on Christian life, I can nearly always find something in those three chapters of Matthew, and especially in chapter five, that either validates or calls into question the point being made.
Recently, I have made a point of only sparingly referencing verses from these chapters, but I still have always expected that someone would call out the fact that I even now go to the passage so frequently. It isn't that there is anything wrong with that, but I sometimes feel like a singer who only knows one song but no one has caught on yet. Maybe I'm the singer to whom everyone is too nice to tell needs to learn a new song.
It is my opinion that nowhere is the essence of Christianity portrayed more completely and concisely than in Matthew chapters five through seven, with the possible exception of Jesus' comments on the greatest commandment. Jesus basically says that you have to do good works (be salt and light), but that the people who were the best at good works (the Pharisees and teachers of the law) still weren't good enough, so you should be perfect as God is perfect. He then spends the rest of His time illustrating perfection and imperfection. The implication is that something beyond works has to save you, but if you are truly perfect that motivation behind your works will show it even more than the works themselves. No matter what the lesson, if it has implications on Christian life, I can nearly always find something in those three chapters of Matthew, and especially in chapter five, that either validates or calls into question the point being made.
Recently, I have made a point of only sparingly referencing verses from these chapters, but I still have always expected that someone would call out the fact that I even now go to the passage so frequently. It isn't that there is anything wrong with that, but I sometimes feel like a singer who only knows one song but no one has caught on yet. Maybe I'm the singer to whom everyone is too nice to tell needs to learn a new song.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
imperfect melody
I know that I have been slipping lately. That stems mostly from having two kids in the house and no laptop. It's a poor excuse, but it's what I've got.
I have had some ideas for posts, and I expect to type some of them in the near future, but most have been too serious. It is easy to get into a pattern of the same type of post. Lately, I don't really feel like I have provided much intrigue, insight, or entertainment. Today is probably not the day that I step it up, though, since my topic is American Idol.
For the most part, I am not that drawn to American Idol. Most of the contestants don't sing the types of songs that I like, and the later stages of the show are eighty percent fluff. I do enjoy the first few episodes of each season, though, where many of the people who sing worse than I do throw tantrums about not making it past the initial round. It's not really to poke fun as much as it is to be in awe of how mentally disturbed a lot of these contestants are. Even with this reasoning, I am starting to feel a little guilty about what enjoyment I do derive from this.
Most people know that a couple of months ago a major Paula Abdul fan, who had been one of those featured contestants, killed herself a few blocks from Abdul's home. Upon watching several failed contestants tonight a few things were obvious to me. First, someone told Simon Cowell to tone it down because he didn't go after people like he used to. Second, there are a lot of mentally unstable people who audition in the show. It should not shock anyone that a former contestant killed herself after being on the show. It should be more of a surprise that this has only happened once.
It is a staple of the show to have some crying contestant stomp out of the audition room saying that Simon is an idiot who does not know real talent. The person who goes through that tirade for the cameras has to be at least a bit delusional. I would have to believe that people who are delusional are more likely to do unfortunately extreme things such as take their own life due to how they were portrayed on a reality show. If you have a show that lasts several seasons and show countless delusional people going through this same routine, isn't this sort of thing inevitable?
I don't really expect to see much more of this season with school starting, but I think that every time I see a contestant on the show who has obvious issues I am going to wonder if he or she is able to go to the same extremes that this one unfortunate fan did. This stage of the show is still interesting. It is just now a bit more sombre, and I'll think twice before laughing about a specific contestant.
I have had some ideas for posts, and I expect to type some of them in the near future, but most have been too serious. It is easy to get into a pattern of the same type of post. Lately, I don't really feel like I have provided much intrigue, insight, or entertainment. Today is probably not the day that I step it up, though, since my topic is American Idol.
For the most part, I am not that drawn to American Idol. Most of the contestants don't sing the types of songs that I like, and the later stages of the show are eighty percent fluff. I do enjoy the first few episodes of each season, though, where many of the people who sing worse than I do throw tantrums about not making it past the initial round. It's not really to poke fun as much as it is to be in awe of how mentally disturbed a lot of these contestants are. Even with this reasoning, I am starting to feel a little guilty about what enjoyment I do derive from this.
Most people know that a couple of months ago a major Paula Abdul fan, who had been one of those featured contestants, killed herself a few blocks from Abdul's home. Upon watching several failed contestants tonight a few things were obvious to me. First, someone told Simon Cowell to tone it down because he didn't go after people like he used to. Second, there are a lot of mentally unstable people who audition in the show. It should not shock anyone that a former contestant killed herself after being on the show. It should be more of a surprise that this has only happened once.
It is a staple of the show to have some crying contestant stomp out of the audition room saying that Simon is an idiot who does not know real talent. The person who goes through that tirade for the cameras has to be at least a bit delusional. I would have to believe that people who are delusional are more likely to do unfortunately extreme things such as take their own life due to how they were portrayed on a reality show. If you have a show that lasts several seasons and show countless delusional people going through this same routine, isn't this sort of thing inevitable?
I don't really expect to see much more of this season with school starting, but I think that every time I see a contestant on the show who has obvious issues I am going to wonder if he or she is able to go to the same extremes that this one unfortunate fan did. This stage of the show is still interesting. It is just now a bit more sombre, and I'll think twice before laughing about a specific contestant.
Monday, January 05, 2009
put a cap on it
I understand most common etiquette. Generally, it's a good thing, because it allows for interaction between people who might not be able to do so otherwise. It also is a means of shielding your true feelings about a situation, which I have heard lauded and denounced. I think etiquette is generally motr og a good thing a bad thing. There are some individual manners issues that I simply don't understand, though.
Two issues I have already discussed are holding the door open for others and tipping. In both of these cases the issue is that the standards for how to deal with those situations are not standard enough. Today's issue is wearing hats indoors, which is more an issue of me not knowing why it matters.
My hair has a very peculiar nature. If I get within a few feet of a hat it spontaneously gets hat head. It could take the form of a yamaka shaped ring on my head or it could take the form of an Alfalfa-type tuft of hair sticking up for the world to see. In some cases what about my hear has changed is not immediately obvious, to me at least, except that something in general just doesn't look right.
There is actually video of me at my college graduation that perfectly illustrates what I am describing. When I put my mortarboard on I knew something was not quite right, but I did not figure that it mattered. However, at some point during the ceremony there was a prayer where the men were expected to remove their mortarboards. At that moment my mom focused the camcorder on my head. There was one tuft of hair that was pointing the wrong direction and it seriously looks like I had a bald spot there in the video.
Because I am so prone to hat head, I have long avoided wearing any kind of hat. There is no use putting one on if I am going to have to take it off indoors and have everyone find out what my hair decided to look like today. Really, in the last fifteen years I have only worn hats with any frequency in two specific situations. The first was to minimize sunburn when I worked for a general contractor in high school and the second has been to keep from freezing when scraping off my car on frosty or snowy mornings.
If hats were not considered a faux pas for men to wear indoors, I might sport one more often. For example, in the winter I could wear a functional hat outside, like a tuque, and I could wear a less sweltering and more stylish hat indoors to hide the hat head, like a fedora. I know that I would be more likely to wear a cap in the summer months as well if I didn't think I was violating some social rule by wearing it indoors. As it is, I don't own any baseball caps that I am aware of because I wouldn't wear them.
I should look at the positive side of things, though. This rule in etiquette is saving me all of the money that I would otherwise be spending on caps and fedoras. Some day I really should calculate how much I would have saved by not buying hats and invest it in a company that makes head gear. If nothing else, it's would be something mildly interesting to talk about.
Two issues I have already discussed are holding the door open for others and tipping. In both of these cases the issue is that the standards for how to deal with those situations are not standard enough. Today's issue is wearing hats indoors, which is more an issue of me not knowing why it matters.
My hair has a very peculiar nature. If I get within a few feet of a hat it spontaneously gets hat head. It could take the form of a yamaka shaped ring on my head or it could take the form of an Alfalfa-type tuft of hair sticking up for the world to see. In some cases what about my hear has changed is not immediately obvious, to me at least, except that something in general just doesn't look right.
There is actually video of me at my college graduation that perfectly illustrates what I am describing. When I put my mortarboard on I knew something was not quite right, but I did not figure that it mattered. However, at some point during the ceremony there was a prayer where the men were expected to remove their mortarboards. At that moment my mom focused the camcorder on my head. There was one tuft of hair that was pointing the wrong direction and it seriously looks like I had a bald spot there in the video.
Because I am so prone to hat head, I have long avoided wearing any kind of hat. There is no use putting one on if I am going to have to take it off indoors and have everyone find out what my hair decided to look like today. Really, in the last fifteen years I have only worn hats with any frequency in two specific situations. The first was to minimize sunburn when I worked for a general contractor in high school and the second has been to keep from freezing when scraping off my car on frosty or snowy mornings.
If hats were not considered a faux pas for men to wear indoors, I might sport one more often. For example, in the winter I could wear a functional hat outside, like a tuque, and I could wear a less sweltering and more stylish hat indoors to hide the hat head, like a fedora. I know that I would be more likely to wear a cap in the summer months as well if I didn't think I was violating some social rule by wearing it indoors. As it is, I don't own any baseball caps that I am aware of because I wouldn't wear them.
I should look at the positive side of things, though. This rule in etiquette is saving me all of the money that I would otherwise be spending on caps and fedoras. Some day I really should calculate how much I would have saved by not buying hats and invest it in a company that makes head gear. If nothing else, it's would be something mildly interesting to talk about.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
predictions
I have been reading quite a bit of news lately. I tend to enjoy getting overviews of the past year and predictions of the upcoming year. The overviews remind me of what I can and, more importantly, what I cannot predict. The predictions, since they are typically all over the board, remind me that few others have a clue, either. People, even when they are considered experts, are really so bad at predicting what is going to happen when that when anyone accidentally stumbles onto a painfully obvious prediction that happens to be accurate, that person is heralded as a genius for life.
Predictions in world affairs are difficult for two reasons. First, and most obviously, a very scant few people understand most of the variables that affect where the economy is going to go, or whether an armed occupation will backfire, or whether the arctic will resemble a sauna in a hundred years. Many people can identify the things that will impact what happens, but predicting what the value of those variables will be that will impact the larger prediction is a challenge as well. Second, most predictions rely on understanding irrational people who behave irrationally. People cannot be relied on to know what is in their best interests, let alone to act on it, which is an assumption that most economic theory relies on. What is popular today may not be tomorrow just because peoples' whims have changed for no real good reason. That people cannot be reliably predicted is one of the few things that I can reliably predict.
Predictions in world affairs are difficult for two reasons. First, and most obviously, a very scant few people understand most of the variables that affect where the economy is going to go, or whether an armed occupation will backfire, or whether the arctic will resemble a sauna in a hundred years. Many people can identify the things that will impact what happens, but predicting what the value of those variables will be that will impact the larger prediction is a challenge as well. Second, most predictions rely on understanding irrational people who behave irrationally. People cannot be relied on to know what is in their best interests, let alone to act on it, which is an assumption that most economic theory relies on. What is popular today may not be tomorrow just because peoples' whims have changed for no real good reason. That people cannot be reliably predicted is one of the few things that I can reliably predict.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
