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Ten On… – Week 8

22 May 2008 11 Comments
Ten On… – Week 8

Here is another collection of online oddities.  You’re welcome to post ten of your own, and link here if you do!

1. “SLOG” WORKS FOR ME: Few things online aggravate me more than a blog that hasn’t been updated for years, is apparently abandoned without so much as a goodbye, and just left there to take up space unnecessarily. I’m not talking about long-running blogs from people who’ve had a lot to say but have passed on; I’m talking about short-lived blogs from people with next to nothing to say and who are too lazy to just hit the delete button and remove their share of internet clutter. Over at Lost Remote, there’s an important question: What do you call these little abandoned blogs? What’s your favorite choice?

2. WRIST INFECTION: It may look cool, but it has to be one of the most tiresome watches ever invented when it comes to deciphering what time it is. I’m talking about the Infection Watch which simulates the growth of bacteria in a Petri dish. The red LEDs indicate the hour, the yellows indicate the minutes in multiples of five, and the greens indicate individual minutes. By the time you finish counting, it’s at least a minute later than when you started.

3. PARKING SHOWDOWN: Two Colorado men got into a fight — with Tasers, yet! — over a parking place. Apparently, a security employee clamped a metal boot on a car, and the resulting argument ended with lots of zapping. Said a police officer, “It was a just kind of a bonehead deal.”

4. PHOTO FINISH: A school asks a yearbook company to make adjustments in the student photos. The school requested that the photo company make every student’s head the same size and have their eyes at the same level as everyone else. (Seriously?? A school took time away from actually educating students to think this up?!?) But someone goofed, either accidentally or accidentally on purpose. Not only were some heads placed on different bodies, “some necks were stretched, one girl’s arm was missing, and another girl’s head was placed on what appeared to be a nude body, with the chest blurred.” What a class reunion they’re going to have one day. Maybe by then, they’ll all think it’s funny.

5. GONE TO POT: The last time I passed a vending machine, candy and potato chips cost anywhere from fifty to seventy-five cents. But when you’re caught up in the munchies, apparently you’ll even part with the pot that got you there. A New Zealand man offered to pay for some M&Ms and chips with marijuana. And a pipe to smoke it with. He should have checked the parking lot first.

6. CAUSE AND EFFECT?: McDonald’s has announced that its french fries are now being cooked in trans-fat-free Canola oil. At the same time, its stock price dropped a few cents. Is Wall Street resenting the healthier change? Only time will tell. In the meantime, have a french fry.

7. A WING AND A PRAYER: We now return to New Zealand, where pilots who found themselves in mid-air and out of gas started praying. A reasonable tactic. But wait’ll you hear what they landed next to!

8. COSTLY CUP: I don’t know what’s worse: a cup of coffee that costs $100, or what happened to the beans to get the price so high.

9. STILL SMILING?: What’s the cost of a nice smile? For a woman in Utah, it was almost her home. Somehow, a collections agency seeking payment of a $68 dental bill managed to get her home sold right out from under her without her even finding out for two years. This happened back in 1996. She has spent the last 12 years in ongoing legal battles to try to get her home back. Lesson: pay your dental bill before the dentist starts frowning.

10. JOKES JUST WAITING TO HAPPEN: There is potentially no end to the number of nerd jokes this one will inspire. An “Interactive Telecommunications” student has created a virtual girlfriend. No further comment necessary…just go see for yourself.

That’s my 10. Do you have 10 of your own?

11 Comments »

  • fdtate said:

    I can’t begin to tell you how much abandoned blogs irritate the hell out of me, especially if it’s one that I like to read. It makes me wonder what the hell happened. Did the guy die or just lose interest. I can understand not deleting the thing on the off-chance that you’ll one day return or to save the material that you’ve worked on, but a final post would be nice, something along the lines of “This was taking up too much of my time” or “I got a life.”

    I love the story about the tasers. Since the police are having such a good time tasering people, sometimes for no apparent reason, maybe we should all get one and get in on the fun.

    # 23 May 2008 at 3:28 am
  • Cat. said:

    I’m crying with laughter over the yearbook story. Personally, I’d prefer to have the messed-up yearbook, or both “editions” at least! What a memory from high school to carry with you…. :-D

    # 23 May 2008 at 8:47 am
  • Jeff Tompkins said:

    Haha. We both blogged about the guy with the pot. Good call.

    As for story #4 about the school yearbook:

    ““some necks were stretched, one girl’s arm was missing, and another girl’s head was placed on what appeared to be a nude body, with the chest blurred.” What a class reunion they’re going to have one day. Maybe by then, they’ll all think it’s funny.”

    Maybe by then they’ll actually LOOK that way. I hear people really go downhill when they get old. And at 36, I’m searching for the signs myself!

    # 23 May 2008 at 7:37 pm
  • Paul said:

    “pilots who found themselves in mid-air and out of gas started praying. A reasonable tactic.”

    A reasonable tactic? Do you honestly believe that? An understandable response perhaps, but I can’t quite see the use of the word ‘tactic’ to describe the action. And reasonable – according to the definition of that word, and given all available evidence – it most certainly was not.

    # 24 May 2008 at 9:47 pm
  • Patrick (author) said:

    Well, Paul, as you know, I’m a Christian. So, yes, I believe that prayer is a good and reasonable thing.

    I do not believe that you should pray to the exclusion of everything else; I’m sure the pilots did all they could to land the plane safely and would have done so without prayer. It would have been dumb for them to pray and take no other steps to land the plane safely.

    But as they’re taking those steps, I don’t think saying a quick prayer is a bad thing by any means.

    # 25 May 2008 at 8:24 am
  • Paul said:

    “I’m sure the pilots did all they could to land the plane safely and would have done so without prayer.”

    So…

    # 25 May 2008 at 11:15 pm
  • Patrick (author) said:

    So…we’re still left to wonder — at least those who believe are left to wonder — whether they landed successfully solely from their own actions and their own skills, or through any assistance that might have resulted from their prayer.

    It goes back to my pastor’s cancer scare: we will never know whether he had it and the prayer cured it, or whether he never had it at all. You likely believe he never had it. I tend to agree, but the believer in me cannot rule out the possibility — however slight — that prayer had an affect.

    But there should be nothing wrong with a believer praying when he feels the need to do so, no matter how pointless or silly it may seem to someone else, right?

    # 25 May 2008 at 11:44 pm
  • Paul said:

    So, wait. Are you sure, or are you not sure?

    # 26 May 2008 at 11:53 pm
  • Patrick (author) said:

    I’m sure that if I were in their situation, I’d have been praying while I was trying to land the plane safely.

    # 27 May 2008 at 12:31 am
  • Paul said:

    Even though you’re sure they would have landed safely without prayer? See these are the things that make me slightly loopy when trying to talk to religious people about their faith. You don’t seem to really know what you believe. Is prayer efficacious or isn’t it? You seem to say that it is not, but what the heck, let’s do it anyway.

    # 27 May 2008 at 8:04 pm
  • Patrick (author) said:

    Even though you’re sure they would have landed safely without prayer?

    That’s not what I said. What I said was, “I’m sure the pilots did all they could to land the plane safely and would have done so without prayer.” Sorry for any confusion, but the “would have done so” referred to them taking whatever action they deemed necessary to safely land the plane, not landing it safely without prayer.

    In other words, I was trying to say that the pilots would have taken every step to land the plane safely whether they took the additional step of praying or not.

    Do I know what I believe? Definitely. Do I believe that prayer helped them? Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

    I do not know and cannot know whether not praying would have doomed them; neither do you.

    But I absolutely believe that prayer is efficacious. Perhaps through praying, God gave them an assist and guided the plane to a safe landing; perhaps the act of praying relaxed them enough to think more clearly and make the right decisions to bring about a safe conclusion.

    In either case, the act of believers praying to God would have been efficacious.

    You seem to want me to say definitively that had they not prayed, they would have died, or that the only reason they survived is because they prayed. There are religious people who would surely agree with either statement. I’m not one of them.

    I don’t believe that you can spend your entire life ignoring crises and danger and just praying for God to rescue you. We have to do what we can to help ourselves. I believe that there are times when God will give us special insight or lead us to a right decision. In this case, it is entirely possible that the act of prayer led these pilots to the right choices that landed the plane safely.

    But in any case, if they believe in God, (even if you don’t) and they want to pray, (even if you wouldn’t), what is the harm?

    # 27 May 2008 at 9:51 pm

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