Columns
Here’s a Thought: The Jersey Shore
By Taylor Mason
I wouldn’t know anything about the MTV show “Jersey Shore.” But "the shore," as we call it, is a big part of our lives. ...
Martha's Laugh Lines: "Oh, Yeah?"
By Martha Bolton
I'm a non-confrontational person. It takes me a long time to even realize when someone has been rude or hurtful to me, and even longer to address it.
Here’s a Thought: Christian Scientist Monitor
By Taylor Mason
Separation of church and state: I get it, I’m for it, I’m not even questioning it. But I don’t get the separation of science and church.
Time Out: I So Don’t Scream
By Cara Garretson
Ice cream, that quintessential summer treat loved by all. Except me. It hovers around the bottom of my Top 10 Treats list.
Here’s a Thought: Backtalk
By Taylor Mason
It takes place the middle of July every year, at a non-descript hotel in an obscure suburb of Cincinnati. It is a convention of ventriloquists.
What I Don't Know Could Fill a BookJune 10, 2008
By Joanne Brokaw
The most common advice given to writers is to write what you know, and that's a great suggestion, but if the truth be told there's a lot more that I don't know than I do know. In fact, what I don't know could fill a book, or at least a column. My ignorance spans a wide variety of subjects. Take, for example, air travel. No matter how many times my brother-in-law Eric, who is a pilot, has explained to me the principles of thrust, drag and lift, I still don't know how a plane can fly without flapping its wings like a bird. I'm frequently confused about current events, like global warming. I watched a special recently about polar bears and their plight to find food now that the ice caps are melting. The narrator explained that forty bazillion years ago the Arctic Circle was a warm climate, and then the Ice Age came and everything froze. Now, thanks to the irresponsible behavior of Americans (particularly SUV drivers) the Arctic is warming again, requiring polar bears to swim many, many miles to find dinner. I'm no scientist, but how do we know that the Arctic Circle isn't supposed to be warm? Maybe the problem was that it ever froze in the first place. And while we're talking about science, how about the Big Bang theory? No one has ever been able to explain to me where the very first elements that caused the explosion came from. Either they existed in eternity (opening the door for an eternal God) or they simply appeared from nowhere (and who besides God can create something from nothing). Either way, it's a God thing. Right? I don't know why the IRS allows me to deduct, without any verification, miles that I drive to writing related events but won't allow me to deduct the book shelves I bought for my office unless I can find the receipt. The government just believes me when I say I drove 18.4 miles to meet my editor to talk about my column over iced tea and quesadillas. On the other hand, despite the fact that I can provide a photo of my book shelves laden with writing related items, I can't deduct their cost on my tax return until I can prove I actually bought them. I’m full of questions. Why did God make woodpeckers and why do they find the trees outside our bedroom window so attractive? How big, exactly, is a gigabyte and who measured it? How does Hostess get the creaming filling inside their chocolate cupcakes? I’m useless in many everyday situations. I don’t know how to use a chain saw, change a flat tire, or program my new cell phone. I can’t bake a cake from scratch or hang drywall. I can’t follow directions involving route numbers; I need landmarks, like, "Turn left at the red barn and then go four miles until you see a chicken on a rooftop." To be clear, I’m not stupid, even though I can’t do basic addition and subtraction without using my fingers. I have a college degree and am an avid reader of everything from how-to books to classic literature. In fact, I’ve made it a goal to read the entire Bible this year, which brings up a whole new set of questions, the chief of which being, how did God manage to refrain from wiping the Israelites out completely after he freed them from Egypt? Talk about forty frustrating years. As a mother, I don’t know where God found the patience. Which is why I think it’s important sometimes to reflect on what we don’t know. It reminds us that no matter how smart we think we are, God is always smarter, and we’ll have to wait until heaven to get the answers to life’s most perplexing questions. In the meantime, God has everything under control, even when we don’t understand it. And that’s something that I definitely know for sure.  |
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Comments
You have the Internet dont you????
Common now if you can read then you can answer every one of your questions. You’re ether too lazy to find out or (more likely) you really don’t care. Ignorance is bliss after all. well lets see if I can clear some things up (without researching, as I understand them)
1. Airplanes create “Lift” because of the shape if the wings. The top of the wing is curved and the bottom is flat. Air has to travel further to get over the top then it does to go under the bottom. Thus a void is created under the wing causing air to push up from the bottom lifting the whole plane.
2. Sciences don’t call it “global warming” anymore, its now called “climate change” and yes the climate always has been and always will be changing. The arctic isn’t “supposed” to be anything. It just has always been cold. How do we know? By drilling down into the ice we can see the different layers and find out what the earth was like back when that layer was on top. Polar bears come into this because they make a good poster child for the tree huggers. No one can say if Polar bears would have gone extinct regardless
3. That is one of the big mysteries of life. Where did those Elements come from? Where did God come from? What are those Elements made of? What is God made of? As far as I’m concerned no one will ever be able to fully answer these questions. The Big Bang theory avoids the whole issue in EXACTALY the same way the god theory does. If god has always been then why can’t the stuff that made up the big bang always have been too? Maybe god DID infact make all the elements out of nothing, that still doesn’t answer where god himself came from. I personally like to believe that if you “zoom out” far enough you’ll see that this universe is only a microscopic portion of another much larger one (SCI-FI style) But then where did the stuff that makes up THAT universe come from? You see. No one will ever know.
For the record science is at least TRYING to figure out the answers to theses questions. Religion ignores them all together and then slaps you in the face for not having “faith”
4. I don’t know anything about American taxes but it seems to me that you should be keeping your gas receipts in much the same way you do for all other deductions.
5. Woodpeckers I can deal with. What I would really like to know why God made Mosquitoes, Leaches, Ticks, Lice, Bed Bugs.. (you get the point).
6. They find all trees attractive. I had one peck holes in the wood siding of my house!! That’s what they do.
7. One Gigabyte is roughly 1,000 Megabytes (its called the metric system) or something like 1,000,000,000 Bytes. One Bit is a unit of information. It tells the computer if the circuit is ON or OFF, Open or Closed, 1 or 0.
8. I have no idea about this one. I would hope they do it the same way they get jelly inside doughnuts, by injection.
9. Theses things you learn by doing. If you avoid doing them you’ll never learn.
10. The driving thing has been proven to be because of the way the Bain functions. It seems that MEN are better and following North/East/South/West Type directions. While WOMEN are better at the Landmark type. And yes they even tested gay men and found them to be good at BOATH types. I don’t remember if they tested gay women or not. The brain is wired this way because of are genes but you can change that with practice. The more you use one method the better you will become at it.
11. I can’t do addition or subtraction ether. I also can’t spell worth crap. I was diagnosed with a learning disability. But I have made Learning a passon of mine and maybe my Disability has made me a "smarter" person. I was able to answer most your questions off the top my my head after all. Intelligents is all relative.
12. The bible if full of questions. In fact I find that it creates more then it solves. Good luck with that one.
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