Category Archives: Retro

Photo of the Variable Time Period, vol. 100 – Special Old-School Edition

In honor of the 100th installment of the Photo of the Variable Time Period series, I’ve gone back to the beginning. No, not the beginning of tPotVTP — that started with one image last August — but the beginning of my foray into digital photography. I got my Canon Digital Rebel XT on 31 August 2005, and … well, you can see what’s happened since then.

Anyway, a week and a half after I got my Rebel XT, I took the picture that was destined to be the 100th Photo of the Variable Time Period.

The shade of the Irish (10 September 2005).

Official Mindreader Aerospace Engineer Becky enjoys a superb shade tree on the campus of Notre Dame.

The past is now, vol. 5

04 November (2004)
Let’s Leave Fraud to the Professionals; Isn’t That Why We Elect Them?

Now for something absolutely hilarious. When I was on ABCNews.com, I was reading the transcript of an 01 November interview Peter Jennings had with Kerry. The intention of Kerry’s statement seems quite clear, but his phrasing is unfortunate and highly amusing.

JENNINGS: What have you done, as the leader of your party, to make sure there will be no fraud?

KERRY: There’s not going to be any fraud on our part. That’s the job of election officials.


(Note: the rest of his answer, none of which related to the unintentional election official humor, can be found at the link.)

The past is now, vol. 4

30 July (2005)
Sometimes I Wonder If Newspaper Editors are Clever or Careless, or
Today in the News: Criminal Cuisine

My favorite headline of the day, on USAToday.com:

“Italians grill suspect”

I hope I’m invited to that one. I like Italian food! And, judging from a later headline on the same site, so does the suspect:

“Bombing suspect grilled in Italy, would prefer to stay there”

The past is now, vol. 3

03 May (2005)
Apparently the BCS Can Perfect Neither Means Nor Ends, or
In Other News, the BCS and the NCAA Filed For Divorce, Citing Irreconcilable Differences

These statements were recently brought to my attention:

“The BCS was never designed to pick the national champion.”
Robert Hemenway
Chairman, NCAA Board of Directors
Friday, 29 April 2005

“The Bowl Championship Series was created … (to provide) a guaranteed matchup between college football’s top teams in a true national championship game.”
BCS media guide

I’m slightly confused. The BCS believes the C in its name; the BCS believes it was created to crown a national champion. (It also believes it can accomplish that goal. But that’s another topic.) But it seems some members of the NCAA believe it had no such intention.

In one sense, that’s just wrong. All I remember hearing was that the BCS, through the many incarnations of its formula, would match the top two teams in its championship game. I don’t know why the word “championship” would be plastered all over the system if it didn’t intend to produce a champion.

At the same time, it seems clear that Mr. Hemenway feels the BCS is not capable of producing a legitimate champion. And I’m sure there are many others within the NCAA who are beginning to share that opinion, if they don’t already.

What we have, then, is a system (the BCS) that has been shown to be incapable of meeting its primary goal, and an organization (the NCAA) that must continue to work with that system despite a continued erosion of confidence — and, some would say, reason for confidence — in the system.

Isn’t it funny that the old two-poll system produced less controversy than does the BCS? Perhaps that’s because the polls did not lay claim to more authority than they had. The AP poll champion was the AP champion; the USAToday/ESPN (Coaches) poll champion was the Coaches champion. And most years, they agreed on the number one team. But the BCS champion, we’re told, is THE champion, yet it gives us little reason to believe that claim. The BCS is not omniscient in ranking football teams; the two polls never claimed to be. The BCS is a failure because its stated goal is simply not possible.

So tell me again: if the BCS excels only at producing disagreement and controversy, and if so many people, including some within the NCAA, believe it doesn’t work, then why must we continue to suffer under its rule?

The past is now, vol. 2

01 June (2005)
If Nothing Is Written, Nothing Will Be Written, or
I Write What I Write, Whatever I Write

I love to listen to sports figures try to talk without saying anything. It’s like listening to politicians, except the subject matter is a game. The most typical non-answers come during the ridiculous halftime interviews, when coaches say things like, “Well, we need to score more,” or, “We need to make some stops.” Other non-answers come during press conferences when the coach is being pressed to make a decision (such as naming a starter) and he doesn’t want to reveal his decision (or he just doesn’t want to make one yet).

One of my favorite examples of sportspeak came from that type of situation, and it was uttered by Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr. In addressing a question concerning the quarterback situation one year, he said:

“If nothing changes, nothing will change.”

Of course, as Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons recently demonstrated, coaches aren’t the only people who know sportspeak. Players can speak the language, too. Wallace was being questioned about the rumors of Pistons coach Larry Brown’s decision to accept a front office job with Cleveland. (Brown has testily denied such rumors.) In answering the questions, Wallace said:

“It is what it is, whatever it is. Do I believe the rumors? It is what it is.”

Don’t you feel so informed now? If nothing changes, nothing will change, and it is what it is, whatever it is.

The past is now, vol. 1

The first of a likely brief series of selected highlights from the old mindreader:

04 December (2005)
Sports News: Jesus Inducted Into NHL Hall of Fame, and
I Have Something Important to Tell You, But I’ll Just Write It on the Wall

On Thanksgiving, I was in the Lone Star Steakhouse in Battle Creek. After the meal, I made my way into the bathroom (obviously, the men’s room). And, remarkably, I found humor in the bathroom — and it wasn’t bathroom humor!

On the wall, someone had written a serious message: “Jesus saves.” But a hockey fan, believing that Jesus must be a goalie, had supplemented that message with a simple, direct conclusion:

“And Gretzky scores on the rebound!”

I walked out of the bathroom laughing at the quick wit of that hockey fan.

Though the Gretzky quip was very humorous, it illustrates a major problem with impersonal evangelism. The message of the gospel — summarized as the pithy “Jesus saves” — is worth communicating to everyone around us, but the message loses something important when it is not communicated personally. Not only does it become very dry and detached, lacking the necessary genuine human component (Jesus saves, and I know because He saved me); it also becomes much more open to mockery, as shown in the restaurant bathroom. Anyone else who reads that particular message on the wall is far more likely to be struck by the humor than to be struck by the truth; in that sense, whatever good intentions the original writer may have had were lost in the humor of the second writer.

Of course, in the restaurant, there also was the issue of defacing property. It seems contradictory to proclaim the truth of salvation through Christ through a blatant display of disrespect for others’ property.

My point, I think, is simply this: be careful with impersonal methods of evangelization.