Understanding Religious Beliefs in Terms of Toys

It appears that religion - particularly "Christianity," however one chooses to define it - is becoming a major element in modern American political discourse (such as it is). This being the case, I believe it would be useful as a public service to offer this handy guide which will help you sort out the essential beliefs of various religions in terms of toys. This approach has the dual benefit of simplifying a complex issue, and appealing to religious bigots who act like spoiled children anyhow. Here you go ...

Capitalism - He who dies with the most toys, wins.

Hare Krishna - He who plays with the most toys, wins.

Judaism - He who buys toys at the lowest price, wins.

Catholicism - He who denies himself the most toys, wins.

Islam (General) - You must play with your toys five times per day.

Sunni Islam - Shi'ites play with the wrong toys.

Shi'a Islam - The twelfth toy is missing, but it will return someday.

Anglican - They were our toys first.

Greek Orthodox - No, they were OURS first.

Branch Davidians - He who dies playing with the biggest toys, wins.

Atheism - There is no toy maker.

Polytheism - There are many toy makers.

Agnosticism - It is not possible to know whether there are toy makers or not.

Evolutionism - The toys made themselves.

Church of Christ, Scientist - We are the toys. 

Scientologist - You must be silent while receiving new toys.

Evangelical - You must proclaim your toys loudly.

Communism - Everyone gets the same number of toys, and you go straight to hell if we catch you selling yours.

Bahai - All toys are just fine with us.

Amish - Toys with batteries are sinful.

Taoism - The doll is as important as the dump truck.

Mormonism - Every boy must spend time as a missionary, encouraging others to buy toys.

Voodoo - Let me borrow that doll for a second.

Hedonism - Screw the rule book! Let’s play!

Hinduism - He who plays with bags of plastic farm animals, loses.

7th Day Adventist - He who plays with his toys on Saturday, loses.

Church of Christ - He whose toys make music, loses.

Baptist - Once played, always played.

Jehovah’s Witnesses - He who sells the most toys door-to-door, wins.

Pentecostalism - He whose toys can talk, wins.

Existentialism - Toys are a figment of your imagination.

Confucianism - Once a toy is dipped in the water, it is no longer dry.

Non-denominationalism - We don’t care where the toys came from, let’s just play with them.

I hope this helps. If you have other suggestions, leave them as a comment.

Have a good day. Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday. I'll be here.

Bilbo

Going, Going, Gone ...

There are a lot of things we've grown used to over the years that are slowly dying out. Not only job-killing things like fresh air, clean water, sound banks, and safe drugs (don't worry ... the Republicans will protect us from those!). Other things that are going the way of the dodo are civility, common courtesy, good governance, and - bear with me, I'm getting to the point - a lot of familiar technologies.

Yesterday I ran across this fascinating article: 15 Current Technologies A Child Born Today Will Never Use. I'll leave you to read the entire article for yourself, but there are three things on the list that I think are worth singling out ...

Landline Phones. The development of cheap and ubiquitous cell phones that can be used anywhere is quickly driving the traditional wired landline phone to extinction. This is fine, until the battery in your phone dies, you can't get a signal, or the cellular network goes down - a problem I encountered personally on 9/11, when I was unable to contact Agnes for hours to let her know I was safe because the enormous volume of calls collapsed the local cell networks. I waited in line for nearly two hours to use a pay phone ... and those are going away now, too.

Mice. No, not the ones you buy a cat to get rid of, but the ones you use as an input device with your computer. The spread of touchpads and capacitive touch screens will make your mouse a thing of the past or, at the least, a secondary method of controlling your devices.

Phone Numbers. With the advent of smartphones, you seldom need to worry about a phone number ... you just touch the right icon in your contacts list and get connected, without ever having to remember the number you're "dialing" (remember when you actually had to dial a number?). User ID's, screen names, and e-mail addresses are quickly crowding out the traditional phone number.

Read the full list, and then leave a comment to let me know what things you think today's babies will never use.

I'd write more, but I need to get to work so I can use at least ten of the items on the list. After all, I work for the government ... where we use the latest bludgeoning-edge technology.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

A Seat At an Expensive Table

I generally don't pay much attention to columnist LZ Granderson, who I think is just another left-leaning blowhard different only in political orientation and degree of erudition from the odious gasbags of the right. But yesterday he published a column that spoke eloquently to what I believe is the most serious problem that affects what's left of our political processes today - the cost of the proverbial seat at the table. You can read that column here.

One reason our political system is so screwed up is that it costs so much to run for office and, once there, to keep it. Presidents, members of Congress, many judges, and public officials at every level must dedicate a large part of the time they should be doing the people's work to raising the money needed to fund their next campaign. Well-heeled donors are courted to attend parties, dinners, receptions and other campaign events costing many thousands of dollars per person. Political parties and their associated PACs and super PACs build enormous war chests of cash in the name of free expression of political beliefs, and the source of much of that money is anonymous and unrestricted, thanks to the generosity of Supreme Court decisions which equate corporations and organizations with Real People.

At a time when axes are being taken to budgets for education, tens of millions of dollars are being raised by both parties to buy elections and cement power. What will that money buy? Countless billions of tacky yard signs and flyers, torrents of annoying robo-calls, and hours upon hours of attack ads washing great floods of half-truths and outright lies over a cynical and tired electorate. The armies of earnest young campaign workers who go door-to-door, flacking for their candidates of choice without a real clue of where they stand on issues are a bonus ... as volunteers, they come for free, allowing the bottomless vats of campaign cash to be spent - frequently anonymously - on other things.

Mr Granderson notes in his article that the median annual income in the United States is about $50,000, and that a recent fund raising event for Mitt Romney required a minimum donation of  $75,000 to attend. I doubt that very many teachers, construction workers, nurses, police officers, or firefighters made it through the door to have their voices heard.

Yes, Dear Readers, we live in a political system dominated by the Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules. You and I can - and should - cast our votes, but if you haven't written a check with a lot of zeroes left of the decimal point, your voice isn't likely to be heard. As Mr Granderson writes,

"These big (campaign) spenders are not just involved in shaping dialogue. They get involved with shaping policy, which inevitably makes the good of the people secondary to the good of the deepest pockets."

Just a little something for you to ponder as you contemplate how far down the table your cheap seat is from the well-funded throne of the person who is supposed to represent you.

Good luck come November.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Photographic Secrets

Yesterday's post about the new zip line at my daughter's house seems to have hit a popular nerve ... I don't often get ten comments on a single post. I thought about sticking with success and writing about zip lines again today, but I guess I should probably move on. Let's talk about one of my favorite topics ... photography.

I come from a long line of ... well ... a line of ... well, actually, I'm the son of a professional photographer. My father was (and remains) a well-known and respected advertising photographer. Dad preferred to describe himself, though, as an "illustrator" rather than a "photographer" because his work involved much more than just taking the picture ... he found the models, scrounged the props, dressed the sets, invented special effects in the days before digital manipulation, developed the pictures (to this day his hands are a mess from being bathed in developing chemicals), and hoofed packages of completed prints from place to place (no e-mailing digital files back then). It was fascinating work, but involved long hours and a lot of creativity and imagination.

I love photography, but I'm far from being in my father's class. He's forgotten more about the subject than I'll ever know. Although I am generally considered to be a pretty good photographer by people who don't know better, it's only because I have absorbed a few critical lessons from The Master. And because I'm such a good guy, I'll share four of them with you. Write these down ...

1. Take as many pictures as you possibly can. This is a lot easier in these days of digital photography, when we don't have to pay for developing of all the prints. Most of the pictures you shoot will be no good for one reason or another (out of focus, subject's eyes are closed, flash failed, forgot to take the lens cap off, etc), and so you throw those away and show everyone the good ones. They'll think you're a great photographer.

2. Fill up the frame, especially when you are taking pictures of an individual or group. If you look through the viewfinder and your subject is a tiny figure in the middle of the frame, you're too far away. Get closer or zoom in until your subject dominates the picture. Of course, this is a flexible rule ... if you want to show your subject in the middle of a landscape vista, for example, you'll naturally want to show more of the background.

3. Compose your picture carefully. Don't just point and shoot unless you see the opportunity for a one-of-a-kind Kodak moment (grandchild doing something unbelievably cute, for instance) ... whenever you can, take the time to study the subject and take the photo from the best angle and in the best light. If you take your time and think the picture through before you shoot it, you'll end up with fewer things like overhead wires or trash on the ground that your eye edited out of the picture when you took it.

4. Use a flash diffuser. The built-in flash in most cameras, and most external flashes, will give you a very bright flash that results in hard, dark shadows, especially at close range. Using a diffuser will soften the light and give you a better result with fewer intrusive shadows*, which is especially good when you're taking portrait-style photos. This is a "puffer-style" diffuser that slips over the hot shoe of your camera to diffuse the built-in flash ...

And this is a "light sphere" diffuser that fits over an external flash** ...

So there you have three common-sense and one equipment suggestion for better pictures. Someday, you'll thank me.

Have a good day, and may your frames be ever filled and your pictures well-composed.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* The added bonus of using a diffuser is that it looks really cool, and people will automatically assume you're a professional. 

** Some external flashes come with a built-in diffuser that pulls out of the flash body and folds down over the flash. They're better than nothing, but not as good as a snap-on diffuser.

Zip Lines

Because there isn't enough danger and excitement in our lives, our son-in-law Vin and his next door neighbor Darren decided this weekend to put up a zip line ... for the children's amusement, of course. You can imagine the results.  Here's the story in pictures:

Leya helps Mr Darren unpack the coiled steel cable. I'm not sure I'd have wanted a four-year-old that close to my midsection with a pair of wire cutters, but he's pretty brave ...

Once the cable is unpacked, it petulantly tangles itself in a Gordian fashion, as steel cables are wont to do. Agnes and Vin work mightily to untangle the mess ...

... and Leya provides valuable assistance with untangling the cables, proving my father's old adage that every job is easier if you hold your tongue right ...

Leya's not entirely sure about how high up this thing is getting to be ...

Once the line was up and before the children were allowed to ride, the adults had to make sure it was safe. My daughter Yasmin takes the plunge ...

I rode it, too. There are no pictures of me riding it though (thankfully) because my not insubstantial weight resulted in my fanny acting as a brake on my forward momentum.

Vin and Darren rigged up an old swing seat so that the children could ride, rather than having to hang from the grip ...

Once she got used to the speed and the altitude, Leya decided it was actually a pretty fun ride ...

Of course, two-year-old Elise wanted to ride, too. Leya decided to help by towing her sister along the line ...

And Elise, too, decides this zip line thing is pretty cool ...

Darren's friend Sandy, who is a nurse, was observing the whole thing with a critical eye, especially as Vin and Darren tried to outdo each other in speed of ride. I think she was quietly envisioning the supplies she may eventually need to patch up the "older" children ...

Zip lines. The best excuse yet for sitting on a comfortable bench with a beer, watching everyone else taking the risks.

Have a good day. Make the acquaintance of those underused shoulder muscles.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Mothers' Day 2012

This marks the fifth year that I have revised and updated my traditional Mothers' Day post. If you've read it before, you may want to see if you recognize the changes ... oh, and the last part is different from last year.

Today is Mothers’ Day, the one day each year we set aside to honor the lady we undervalue the other 364. It’s the day we remember the person who made our hurts better, explained our homework, cooked our meals, washed our clothes, drove us where we needed to go, warned us about our less-savory acquaintances, embarrassed us in front of our friends, and did her best to point us down the straight line of a moral and upright life.

Mothers are the wonderful and woefully underappreciated people from whom the Army and the Navy stole their one-time recruiting slogans - the Army's "We do more before 9 AM than most people do all day," and the Navy's "It's not just a job, it's an adventure." With all due respect to Soldiers and Sailors everywhere ... you guys ain't got a clue.

Somewhere in my web surfings I found this little riff on how we look at our Mothers at different ages:

Age 4: Mommy can do anything!
Age 8: Mom knows a lot!
Age 12: Mother doesn't know everything.
Age 14: Mother doesn't know anything.
Age 16: Mother is so old-fashioned.
Age 18: Her? She's out of it.
Age 25: Mom might know something about that.
Age 35: Before we decide, let's ask Mom.
Age 45: What would Mom have thought about that?
Age 65: I wish I could talk that over with Mom.

It’s true.

My mother passed away eleven years ago at the age of 74. She spent a long and honorable life raising four children who, I like to think, made her proud. And in her twilight years, her once-formidable mind ravaged by Alzheimer’s Disease, she missed much of the result of her love and care and sacrifice – a son who finally knows how to dance (and who may yet write that book she thought he had in him), a small army of grandchildren, and five beautiful great-grandchildren who will never know her love and wisdom and the off-the-wall sense of humor that brightened the lives of those who knew her. 

The next generation of Mothers has taken over. My beloved daughter Yasmin and the best daughter-in-law in the world, Tabitha, between them are raising the world’s five greatest grandchildren (with a sixth on the way!). And someday those wonderful grandchildren will sit down on Mothers’ Day and reflect – just as their grandpa does today – on the marvelous lady who gave up so much of her own life and dreams to make them who they are.

Take the time today to give your Mother a hug and a kiss. Someday, you’ll wish you had.

And so again this year, I wish my own Agnes, Yasmin and Tabitha, Amanda and Fiona, Raquel, SuzyQ, Chrissy, Kathy, Miss Cellania, and all the other mothers out there doing the world's toughest job, a very happy Mothers' Day and many more to come.

We couldn't be what we are, or do what we do, without you.

And, just to not be too maudlin about it, here's something all you mothers out there can appreciate:

The Differences Between Motherhood and Prison

In prison, you get three square meals a day.
At home, you cook three square meals a day and try to get your kids to eat them. You eat their leftovers.

In prison, you get an hour each day in the yard to exercise and mingle.
At home you get to clean the yard up so you can mow it so your kids can spread more toys all over it so that you can go out and clean it again next time you need to mow.

In prison, you get to watch TV, cable even.
At home, you get to listen to your children fight over the remote control and get treated to hours and hours of cartoons and Disney movies thanks to cable and DVDs.

In prison, you can read whatever you want and attend college for free.
At home, you get to read weekly readers starring Dick, Jane, and Spot and worry about how to send your child to college and still be able to eat for the next twenty years.

In prison, all your medical care is free.
At home, you have to pawn your mother's silver and fill out trillions of papers for insurance and hope the doctor will see you before you die.

In prison, if you have visitors, all you do is go to a room, sit, talk and then say good-bye when you are ready or your time is up.
At home, you get to clean for days in advance and then cook and clean up after your guests and hope that they will one day leave.

In prison, you can spend your free time writing letters or just hang out in your own space all day.
At home, you get to clean your space and everyone else's space, too, and what the heck is free time again?

In prison, you get your own personal toilet.
At home, you have to physically hold the bathroom door shut in order to keep from having someone standing over you demanding to know how long till you're done so you can do something for them.

In prison, the prison laundry takes care of all your dirty clothes.
At home, you get to take care of them yourself, plus everybody else's, and get yelled at because somebody's favorite shirt isn't clean.

In prison, they take you everywhere you need to go.
At home, you take everybody else where they need to go.

In prison, the guards transport all your personal effects for you and make sure nothing is missing.
At home, you have to lug around everybody else's stuff in your purse and then wonder who went in it and took your last dollar.

Doesn’t that make you want to go out and do something illegal?

Happy Mothers' Day!

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

A week surely does go by quickly, doesn't it?

According to Kinetic Analysis Corporation, a firm specializing in predicting and assessing the cost of disasters, it would cost about $160 billion to repair New York City after the beating it took in the film The Avengers; representative Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, a strident foe of President Obama's health care law which mandates insurance coverage for all citizens, has elected to take dual citizenship in Switzerland ... where health insurance is mandatory for all citizens; Facebook co-founder Eduardo Savarin has renounced his US citizenship in an evident attempt to avoid liability for taxes on his earnings from Facebook's upcoming IPO; the former brother-in-law of singer Jennifer Hudson has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2008 slayings of Hudson's mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew; and China and the Philippines are inching toward conflict over possession of the Scarborough Shoal (called Huangyan Island by China and Panatag Shoal by the Philippines), a small lagoon in the South China Sea claimed by both countries.

Heck of a world, isn't it? Good thing you have Cartoon Saturday to help you cope with it.

We lead off this week's selection of cartoons with the usual awful puns ...

And ...

Clowns are always good for a few cartoons ... in a few weeks, we'll have a whole Cartoon Saturday featuring clown cartoons, but for now, these two will have to do ...

And ...

Many people who should know better don't accept the concept of evolution; nevertheless, the evidence for it is overwhelming ... as studies of how birds construct their nests have shown ...

While we're on the subject of birds, I received this cartoon yesterday from my nephew Eddie, who is always on the lookout for good cartoons for me ...

And, speaking of WiFi and antennas and such, these two cartoons were just too good to pass up ... 

 And ...

While we hunker down and get ready for the presidential campaign season, this seemed like an appropriate cartoon to run ...

And finally, apropos of presidential campaigns, political ass-clownery, economic chaos, the near-disappearance of common courtesy, and the threat of mankind's potential extinction by wandering asteroids, I leave you with this comforting thought ...

And that's it for this week. I hope you have a great weekend of minimum stress and maximum fun ... and don't forget to honor Mom tomorrow for Mother's Day.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Ghost Towns

Back in the summer of 1969, I spent a month hiking in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of southwestern Colorado as a student at the Colorado Outward Bound School. The scenery was beautiful beyond description, and one of the fascinating parts of the scenery was the relative profusion of "ghost towns" - communities that had been abandoned when game moved on, mines played out, or the population just got itchy feet.  This is a typical ghost town ...

Ghost towns aren't just found in the West. There are smaller ghost towns dotting the mountains of rural Pennsylvania ... relics of the oil drilling era that were abandoned when the wells ran dry. It was fun, if a little dangerous, to explore old ghost towns and imagine adventures taking place there.

I hadn't thought about ghost towns for a long time, and then yesterday I ran across this fascinating article: Hobbs, NM, Picked As Site of Scientific Ghost Town.

It seems that scientists interested in how various technologies and infrastructure elements of a city interact with each other are creating a completely-equipped, fully-operational city to help researchers test "everything from intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks to automated washing machines and self-flushing toilets."

The mayor of Hobbs is excited about the new $1 billion ghost town going up on 15 square miles of land west of the town, hoping it will diversify the local economy. A spokesman for Pegasus Holdings, which is developing the scientific ghost town, said it will be modeled after the real city of Rock Hill, SC, complete with highways, houses, commercial buildings, old and new. No one will live there, although the buildings of the town will include all the normal appliances and plumbing found in a real town.

The purpose of building the scientific ghost town is to let scientists test the impact of new technologies on the  infrastructure of an existing city without disrupting the day-to-day life of the inhabitants. One potential study might look at how new wireless networks might interfere with other, existing networks, or with other electronic devices (whether your neighbor's home wireless network will open your garage door, for instance). The possibilities are endless.

If you are a scientific ghost in need of work, head for Hobbs, where the new ghost town is estimated to eventually create more than 300 permanent and about 3500 temporary jobs. Who knows? Someday, you might be able to include "Mayor of a Ghost Town" on your resume.

It would position you well to move on to bigger things ... like mayor of Detroit.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

More Odds and Ends

Just a few random thoughts for the day ...

It appears that Rep Michelle Bachman, the lady who singlehandedly lowers the collective IQ of Congress by at least ten points, has become a dual citizen of the United States and Switzerland. This apparently means she is also eligible to run for office in Switzerland ... God help them. I hope the Swiss also got a future draft pick.

The US Postal Service has backed away from its plan to close thousands of small post offices across the country as a way to save money; instead, the offices will remain open with reduced hours and many thousands of employees will go from full-time to part-time status. If you want me to write you a personal, hand-written letter (see previous offers here and here), you'd better e-mail me your address now*, while you still have a post office for me to deliver it.

Who figures out what junk e-mails to send to particular addressees? Lately I have been getting several ads for laser hair removal per day, which is especially annoying since I think women with hairy arms are especially sexy. Is somebody deliberately bugging me? In any case, nature is doing a fine job on its own of removing my hair, necessitating the use of Simoniz rather than Dippity-Do on the back of my head.

Senator Richard Lugar's loss by a landslide to challenger Richard Mourdock in the Indiana Republican primary advances the cause of legislative gridlock, assuring the continuation of what has been referred to as "end-zone politics" - in which the two parties cluster behind the goal lines at opposite ends of the field and leave no one to play the game in mid-field. Looks like we're facing one of two possibilities in the coming years: either a useless, overpaid Congress that accomplishes nothing; or an activist Congress dominated by rigidly hyperconservative legislative Wahhabis who are ready to march resolutely into the imagined paradise of the past.

Famed hair stylist Vidal Sassoon died yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. I guess that's the ultimate in bad hair days, eh?

That's all.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Offer not available to Mike, who still owes me a letter, but hasn't been able to write one because Claudia apparently won't let him use the family pencil**.  If you are already one of my occasional pen pals (like Amanda and Kathy), hang back and give someone else a chance.

** With apologies to Dorothy Parker.

Airport Screening Statistics

There has been a great deal of debate about the efficacy of the airport passenger screenings conducted by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA, in DC shorthand). The dedicated professionals of the TSA perform a vital function in helping to protect us from those who would imperil us with their explosive shoes or underwear, and in ensuring that - no matter how early you go to the airport to meet your flight - you have the maximum opportunity to miss your connection because of long lines and endless delays at the screening stations.  The TSA is not, of course, the only security agency displaying enviable skills at shooting itself in the public relations foot - it was the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that actually shut down the Newark airport, grounded all flights, and re-screened everyone in Terminal C because of a baby that evaded screening.

The baby, suspected to be a terrorist because it was wearing a butt turban, was never found.

Yes, security screening - whether by the TSA or by other overly enthusiastic security agencies - is an unfortunate by-product of the sad times in which we live. It does serve a useful purpose, though ... consider these statistics released by the Department of Homeland Security which document the results* of security screenings over the past year:

Terrorists Discovered (not counting babies) - 0
Transvestites - 133
Hernias - 1,485
Hemorrhoid Cases - 3,172
Enlarged Prostates - 8,249**
Breast Implants - 59,350***
Natural Blondes - 3

So ...

The next time you are stuck in screening hell while trying to get to your flight, just remember that the dedicated men and women of the TSA and other security organs are doing a vital and thankless job. Inconveniencing you is just a bonus.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Statistics do not include confirmation that 535 members of Congress had no balls.

** Under a new GOP health care reform proposal, money will be saved by mandating administration of prostate and breast exams during airport screenings.

*** Studies show that the potential destructive power of explosive underwear is directly related to cup size.

P.S. - Thanks to my brother Mark for giving me the idea for this post.

B.