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Trivia Throwdown!

I have a giant “virtual stack” of trivia items I’ve been building up over the past few weeks. Here are three of them:

– The Old Man of the Lake is a 30 foot tall tree stump that has been floating in Oregon’s Crater Lake since at least 1896. The stump, which has been bleached white over the years and can support a man’s weight, was first noted in print by geologist Joseph S. Diller, who wrote in 1902 that he’d seen the stump six years earlier. In 1938, a study of the stump was undertaken to see if it moved; the results were pretty spectacular: it does indeed move, and can do so very quickly. Boaters frequently note the position of the stump and relay it to other boaters for safety reasons.

– Every session of the British parliament is opened by the monarch, who travels from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament in a fine carriage. The House of Lords is assembled, and the monarch takes a seat on the throne. The House of Commons in then called to the chamber, and the monarch reads a speech which outlines the policies and goals of the current government. But what you might not know is that after the speech, a piece of legislation called the Outlawries Bill is introduced to the House of Commons. No member of the House orders the bill to be read, nor it is never printed, nor is any action taken on it. First used in 1727, the act of reading the bill is purely symbolic, to show the monarch that her (or his) speech cannot influence the business of the House. In other words, instead of running back to the House and arguing over what the monarch said, this bill reminds her (or him) that the House of Commons is independent.

– Mention the name Dallas Texans and most folks think of the AFL team that started in Dallas but later became the Kansas City Chiefs. Did you know that there was actually an NFL team called the Dallas Texans? And that they only lasted one season? And that they went 1-11? 

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Wednesday’s Off-The-Wall News

– DMV employees in New York state are now in deep trouble for selling fake IDs. The gang, which netted over $1 million from the scam, didn’t sell the otherwise legitimate IDs to teenagers wanting to buy beer or get into nightclubs. For $7,000 to $10,000 a pop, the officials were selling them to convicted felons and sex offenders! Read more about it here.

– Internet Explorer 6, long hated due to security holes and the various tricks web developers had to use to get it to work with other browsers – has died. Well, not really. But on March 1, 2010, Google will kill IE6 support on Google Docs and Google sites (other Google sites will discontinue support sometime shortly after that). And YouTube is killing IE 6 support on March 13, 2010. So a company in Denver, Colorado called the Aten Design Group will hold a “funeral” for the browser on March 1 at 7pm. If you’re in or near Denver and wish to attend, read more about it here.

– Researchers at Georgia Gwinnett College have found that looking at pictures of curvy women actually activates the same pleasure centers in the male brain that drugs and alcohol do. In the study, 14 men were shown “before” pictures of the naked asses of seven women. They were then shown “after” pictures of the same asses after they had undergone cosmetic surgery to move fat from their waists to the buttocks. While it might seem like frivolous research, researchers are hopeful that the information sheds light on pornography additions, infidelity, and erectile dysfunctions in the absence of pornography. I’d also like to point out that I’d never heard of “Georgia Gwinnett College” before reading this article. Apparently, after I moved to Charlotte, the Georgia legislature voted to create a new four-year college to replace Gwinnett University Center, a large complex where various universities (including the University [sic] of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Georgia State) offered various classes. Ya learn something new every day!

– Could dolphins hold the cure for diabetes? It seems that everyone’s favorite maritime mammal can turn the disease on and off, depending on how plentiful the food supply is.

– The Daily Mail has artist’s drawings of the new US embassy in London. It seems that the old embassy in Grosvenor Square is too small, too old, and too insecure. And personally, I think the old embassy has all the charm of heartless, 1950s Eastern European designs. The new embassy will be mostly glass and airy, and will be energy neutral, thanks to millions of solar cells placed on the exterior. I also like that the clever landscaping (terraced on one side; a pond on the other) negates the need for ugly security walls. What say you?

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The novel I never wrote

Back in the early 90s, there was a long stretch – almost a year and a half – when I didn’t date anyone. Sure, I went on a date here and there, but I just couldn’t find a girl I really liked. I still went to bars and nightclubs with friends, but I was kind of tired of that scene. I wanted something new to do.

One random day, I noticed that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Creative Loafing had lengthy lists of free classical music concerts held throughout the city. There were tons of the things every week, from something like “the choir of St. Luke’s Episcopal sings Bach’s oratorios” to the “Emory University Chamber Orchestra plays Haydn’s quartets”. Having grown up listening to a lot of classical music, I started going to these things almost every Sunday.

At around the same time, the Atlanta Symphony made headlines by hiring a 23 year-old named Christina Smith to be principal flautist. She wasn’t especially pretty, but she was around my age and in a major symphony orchestra, so she had a lot of “nerd appeal” (and if you click the link to see her picture, remember that she was much cuter eighteen years ago). As you might guess, I developed a minor crush on her.

One Sunday I pulled into a church parking lot for a show. I was sitting in my car, finishing a cigarette… when, to my great surprise, a car with Christina Smith inside pulled in to the space next to me! I quickly put out my smoke and followed her inside. And during the walk to the church, I gave up any notion of ever having a relationship with her. Not that I ever expected to have one anyway. I was still in college and living at home. But the brand new Mercedes her older, elegantly-dressed boyfriend drove and the way she snuggled up to him was an unwelcome “she’s out of your league” punch to the gut.

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TEC angers EVERYBODY

Well now they’ve done it.

It seems that The Episcopal Church, in a cost-cutting move, has fired the unionized cleaning and maintenance company at the church’s Manhattan headquarters and replaced it with a cheaper, non-union company. This is a big-deal in union-friendly New York, and the move has angered people on both the left and right side of the church.

The left is angry that church leadership would turn its back on the working man, especially after TEC called upon other companies to use unionized labor. In fact, at the most recent General Convention, the House of Bishops took Disney to task for its union-busting policies… and now church leadership is doing the same thing!

For their part, the right is angry that the church would try to save a few thousand dollars at a time when it’s spending millions suing its own parishioners. One traditionalist said last week that “[m]illions are spent on lawyers by 815 while nine cleaners are fired to save a few thousand dollars”.

Nice.

Read more here.

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Decisions, Decisions

Think about all the decisions you make in a day. I’m not talking about the big decisions, like “should I join the Army?” or “should I get married?”. I’m thinking about the hundreds or thousands of little decisions you make in a day.

For example, on a weekday morning my better half will wake up and go to the bathroom to get ready. She will choose between this lipstick or that lipstick, this eye shadow or that eye shadow, then choose this dress or that dress, these shoes or those shoes, and this bracelet or that bracelet. She will then go downstairs and choose between yogurt and a banana for breakfast. She will then choose whether to drive the white Jeep or the green Jeep to work. She’ll then have to decide if she wants to take Wilkinson Boulevard or I-85 to get to the office, and whether to listen to “The Bob and Sheri Show” or something else along the way. She will decide whether to try to make a traffic light or if she should stop safely. A few minutes later, she will decide whether to change lanes, or wait for a truck to pass first. She’ll then have to decide whether to park in this space or that space. Once inside the office, she’ll have to decide whether to check her email or voicemail first, whether to return this call or that call first, then decide whether to process this invoice or that one. She’ll make a hundred other decisions before lunchtime, where she will decide whether to pick something up or open a can of soup she’s brought from home.

The reason I mention all this is because I had a thought yesterday.

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TEC deposes Fort Worth clergy

To the surprise of absolutely no one, C. Wallis Ohl, provisional bishop of the (Episcopal) diocese of Ft. Worth deposed (fired) all the bishops, priests and deacons of the (Anglican) diocese of Ft. Worth on Monday. While the move was expected, it just goes to show how very bitter and classless The Episcopal Church has really become. Ft. Worth was one of several dioceses to break away from TEC in 2008.

As mentioned in this post, the history of the Ft. Worth diocese is pretty unique, and the legal proceedings currently underway are intriguing. Basically, the Anglicans say that only their diocese (in the “legal corporation founded in the state of Texas” sense) is allowed by Texas law to hire attorneys to defend the diocese; the Episcopalians disagree, and want the matter to go to trial… which doesn’t make any sense. How could the matter go to trial if both parties claim to represent the same diocese?

To put it another way, let’s say that someone wanted to sue Microsoft, and when the trial begins, two sets of attorneys show up in the courtroom claiming to represent Microsoft. One group of attorneys can prove that they were hired by Steve Ballmer (or whoever Microsoft has appointed to hire legal counsel); the other group of attorneys cannot. These attorneys are pressing for the case to go to trial, while the first group presses for the other group to be dismissed because they cannot prove that they were hired by the people appointed by the by-laws of [Microsoft\the Diocese of Ft. Worth], a Texas corporation.

Read Ohl’s disgusting letter here (but why would you?)