The Thinker's Book

CONTENTS

1  Popcorn—The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2  Don’t You Hate it When...?

3  Saddle Bronc Riding Should be an Olympic Sport

4  Baseball and Bubble Gum

5  What’s Not in the Queen’s Purse?

6  Nearing Home with Hope

7  Interesting and Provocative Quotes

8  I Believe in Santa Claus!

9  Moravians—The Oldest Protestant Denomination

10  Reflective Questions

11  Pets, PETA and People

12  The Wall Goes Up and The Wall Comes Down

13  Christ of the Klingons

14  Strange But Common Expressions

15  Famous Scientists

16  How Many Houses Have You Lived In?

17  A Whale of a Story

18  The Northwest Passage

19  The Price of Diamonds is Hard To Understand

20  A Brain Testing Trivia Quiz

21  The Most Interesting School in Canada

22  Medical Alphabet Soup

23  BANANA, Irrationality, and Affluenza

24  The Most Dangerous Creatures on Earth

25  Advent Calendars: From Bible Verses to Chocolates

to Beer Cans

26  Alfred Nobel – Not a Merchant of Death?

27  Corruption and the Bribe Payers Index

28  Childhood and Youth Memories

29  Interesting Countries

30  Stupidity May Be Contagious

31  Can You be a Christian Pastor and an Atheist?

32  My Retirement Party

33  Service Organizations

34  House Churches and Three-Self Churches in China

35  My Favorite Summer Jobs

36  It’s In You to Give

37  The Most Evil Men in History

38  The Teflon Kingdom

39  Pearls of Great, or Modest, Price

40  The Middle Wife and Other Tales

41  The Tragedy of Mexico

42  Make Babies, Not Money

43  Snowbirds

44  The Law of Unintended Consequences

45  The Dominion of Canada

46  We Need Sweet Honeybees

47  Think Tanks

48  Things You Don’t Want to Hear

49  Women’s Rights

50  Tibet

51  Academic Freedom: Is it a Myth?

52  My University Stories

53  Important and Intriguing Sentences

54  Driving Miss Daisy and Mr. Attitude

55  It’s a Digital Technological World Out There

56  Amazing Stories From 9/11

57  Highway Adventures

58  How Old Would You Be If You Didn’t Know

How Old You Are?

59  Ordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Guy

60  Camels; Would You Like One Hump or Two?

61  Some Favorite Bible Verses

62  What Did You Just Call Me?

63  Last Names (Family Names)

64  Escapades With Gene and Jerry

65  The Rise and Fall of...Detroit

66  R Movies and My Favorite Movies

67  I Don’t Want to be a Nurse When I get Big

68  Dr. Google Will See You Now

69  Singapore—A Model or an Anathema?

70  My Favorite Dog (Not Cat) Stories

71  My Sweetie’s Work Stories

72  John Dillinger, Fingerprints, and...Marketing

73  Happy Leap Year/Day!

74  Is Santa Jesus Real?

75  Pseudo-Science and GMOs

76  He Rose From The Dead! Really!

77  Wise Statements and Wisecracks

78  Hockey Seems Determined to be a Fringe Sport

79  ER Doctors’ Slang - Are You Whale or a Cockroach?

80  Filth, Negligence, Greed - and Hypocrisy

81  How Long Was the 100 Years War?

82  Most Admired and Desired Jobs

83  Camping vs. Motelling

84  Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus

85  Death by Appointment - Do You Want the Right to Die?

86  Grandpa to Grandson History—It’s Like a Time Machine

87  Wisdom and Sarcasm in 20 Words or Less

88  The Pope and the Mafia

89  Fraud, Freeloaders and Blind Porsche Drivers

90  Camping in the Southern U.S.

91  Iceland and Greenland

92  Is Major League Baseball Stealing Lives?

93  Why is Brazil Considered a Political Minnow?

94  The Star of Bethlehem

95  Sable Island

96  Questions to Ponder

97  Are You a Genius?

98  The Ten Commandments

99  Should Christians Participate in Civil Disobedience?

100  Improve Your Word Power

101 Eric Ebola Becomes a Pawn in an Attempt to Take Over the World

Popcorn - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I recently read an article by Jennifer Sygo in which she described popcorn as North America’s favorite movie snack. This isn’t big news. There has, however, been a massive amount of discussion about whether popcorn is good for us, and it turns out (like many other things) that the answer is yes, no, and maybe. And as they say in diet programs, portion control is also a big factor. Depending on how it is prepared and cooked, some consider it to be a health food while others caution against it for a variety of reasons.

Let’s start with an explanation of why popcorn can be good for you. Plain popcorn is a low-calorie snack that contains barely 300 calories for a fully popped bag holding three or four servings. These servings also provide impressive levels of fiber and protein while being basically sugar-free and salt-free.

But (there’s always a but when health and food issues are discussed) popcorn isn’t a good source of other nutrients. Even the natural disease fighters, polyphenols, are at low levels in popcorn when compared to various fruits and vegetables.

And it gets worse.

Just plain air-popped popcorn is okay, even good for you, but plain popcorn is not what they serve at the movie theatre. A medium sized bag there can have almost 800 calories, and of course you will want tons of butter with that, adding about 250 more calories. Movie theaters have used coconut oil to pop the corn, and then topped it with butter so a medium-sized bag of buttered popcorn may contain as much fat as three Big Macs.

The specialty popcorns that you see at the mall or at an airport concourse have also been described as a nutritional landmine because of the high levels of calories, fat, sugar, and sodium. Even the innocent sounding kettle corn has high levels of sugar, as does caramel corn. So whether you’re snacking in a movie theatre or snuggling at home, try to get the old plain variety, at least some of the time.

Popcorn is a type of corn that expands from the kernel and puffs up when heated. Corn is able to pop because its kernels have a hard moisture-sealed hull and a dense starchy interior. This allows pressure to build inside the kernel until an explosive pop results. Some strains of corn are now cultivated specifically as popping corns.

There are many techniques for popping corn. Commercial large-scale popcorn machines were invented in the late 19th century. Charles Cretors developed a machine that popped corn in a mixture of one-third clarified butter (milk fat rendered from butter to separate the milk solids and water from the butterfat), two-thirds lard, and salt. This mixture could withstand the 450 °F (232 °C) temperature needed to pop the corn.

Popping results are sensitive to the rate at which the kernels are heated. If heated too quickly, the steam in the outer layers of the kernel can reach high pressures and rupture the hull before the starch in the center of the kernel can fully gelatinize, leading to partially popped kernels with hard centers. Heating too slowly leads to entirely unpopped kernels where the tip of the kernel is not entirely moisture-proof, and when heated slowly the steam can leak out of the tip fast enough to keep the pressure from rising sufficiently to break the hull and cause the pop.

Don’t you Hate it When...?

Some bon mots encountered by experience or sighted while mining the Internet:

You ask people, How are you? and they actually tell you their troubles rather than automatically saying, Fine.

You think of a clever response two hours too late.

People brag about how easily they lost weight.

You just started your shower and already the water is getting cold.

A person walks out of the store washroom without washing their hands and then touches the stuff on the store shelf that you wanted to buy.

Your friend asks you a question but somebody else butts in and answers for you.

Your know-it-all friend knows it all.

You accidentally start brushing your teeth with your Athlete’s Foot ointment instead of your toothpaste.

There’s always a car tailgating when you’re slowing down to find an address.

The person behind you in the supermarket runs his cart into the back of your ankle.

The elevator stops on every floor and nobody gets on.

When people get up from their seats before the bus has stopped but then fall into your lap when the bus jerks to a halt.

You leave a leaky pen in your shirt pocket when you put it in the wash machine

There’s a dog in the neighborhood that barks at everything.

You can never put anything back in a box the way it came.

You slice your tongue licking an envelope.

You wash a garment with a tissue in the pocket and your entire laundry comes out covered with lint.

The car behind you blasts its horn after you let a pedestrian finish crossing the street.

A piece of foil candy wrapper makes electrical contact with your tooth filling.

You set the alarm on your digital clock for 7:00 PM instead of 7:00 AM.

Your friend brags about the great deal they got but you didn’t.

You rub on hand cream and can’t turn the bathroom doorknob to get out.

People behind you in a supermarket line dash ahead of you to a counter just opening up.

Your glasses slide off your nose when you perspire.

You can’t look up the correct spelling of a word in the dictionary because you don’t know how to spell it.

You have to inform five different sales people in the same store that you’re just browsing.

You had that pen in your hand only a second ago, and now you can’t find it.

It rains on your first day off in three weeks.

You reach under the table to pick something off the floor and smash your head on the way up.

That fabulous sale that you were looking for ended yesterday.

Your car has a major breakdown the month after the warranty expires.

The quiet hotel room that you reserved has a loud party next door that goes until 3:00 AM.

You are in a hundred-car lineup at the border and the other line moves so much faster.

You are in a family restaurant and the guy at the table next to you licks the top of the ketchup bottle after smothering his fries.

Someone who doesn’t know what a breath mint is talks at length right in your face.

Saddle Bronc Riding Should be an Olympic sport

I find that watching the Olympic Games is both fascinating and enjoyable, but also frustrating sometimes. As they used to say in ABC’s Wide World of Sports, we see the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Behind the scenes we see much more. The variety of sports in the summer games ranges from the track and field events to rowing, to volleyball, to swimming, to diving, to weight lifting. There is Greco-Roman wrestling, not the Hulk Hogan staged villain type. I prefer the events where there is a clear winner based on time or score. In some events the judges seem to play an inordinately important role, sometimes subjectively determining winners to the third decimal point.

Diving, synchronized swimming, and gymnastics seem to be difficult to judge, at least from a casual observer perspective, and it’s interesting to hear the commentators point out supposed mistakes that we ordinary people don’t usually see. There have been cases where judges simply were not honest in their assessment. Then there is something called rhythmic gymnastics which, from my untutored male perspective, seems to involve a lot of aimless twirling around but which devotee professionals breathlessly and excitedly provide commentary.

But I have a problem with the equestrian events. Horse jumping as an Olympic event? How does this fit? Is it because the rich and powerful in the early 1900s wanted to have an event they could enter without sweating (sorry, I should say perspiring) too much? And then they also have, I think they call it, dressage, but a common, unsophisticated person like me would call it horse dancing. Horse dancing!

If this can be an event for the elite wealthy, I think they should have saddle bronc riding for the common people, like cowboys. I know it takes talent and time to train a horse to dance or jump, and creativity to have them do this in time to music like Pomp and Circumstance or other high-brow music, but using this logic I suggest that NASCAR racing could be a new Olympic event since this takes a lot of time and also doesn’t just depend on the individual.

If you go to a typical small town fair you may see mini-horse competitions; these could be the Olympic sport for ordinary people who can’t afford big horses. I suppose that bull riding is too gauche for the mandarins on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and bull fighting has pretty much lost its appeal, but saddle bronc riding would be great as an Olympic sport. There must also be other sports that could also reflect the supposed Olympic Spirit if this still exists and hasn’t been surpassed by corruption, nationalism, and commercialism.

There still is some tension between amateurs as defined by the wealthy as recently as fifty or sixty years ago where amateurs could enjoy their sport for the pure joy of participation and achievement (see horse dancing) while professionals were looked down a upon because they needed to earn a living in their sport. Kayaking, gymnastics, and diving are sports that are still pretty much amateur even while they travel the world, but there are other sports where the best athletes become very wealthy.

There still are lots of questions as to why some sports are in the Olympics and others are not. Why has tennis been in the Olympics for a long time, but golf (at least at this writing) is just now being considered? Both sports are widely pursued by both professionals and everyday folks. It’s interesting that soccer is in the Olympics; this is possibly the only sport in the world where the world championship (the World Cup of Soccer) has more prestige than the Olympic champion.

Softball and baseball seem to have been rejected as Olympic sports because they aren’t popular in enough countries. But there are some rather unusual or less popular sports in the summer Olympics, as least as far as North Americans are concerned. Water polo, modern pentathlon, and European handball come to mind.

There are some interesting sports that are no longer included in the Olympic Games. Would you believe that croquet was once an Olympic sport? Motor boating and tug-of-war were Olympic sports at one time. So was cricket, which is wildly popular in many countries but isn’t considered worthy of Olympic status today, perhaps because some think that watching an all day cricket game is as exciting as watching paint dry.

I think that the IOC should consider adding some new sports to the summer games menu. I have already mentioned saddle bronc riding, but how about ballroom dancing? This requires as much athleticism as rhythmic gymnastics. I briefly watched a program called Prime Time Sports recently and they had two good suggestions. The first one was Synchronized Cannonball Diving.

To minimize the influence of judges, half of the marks would be for water displacement and the other 50% for artistry. Didn’t ABC’s Wide World of Sports broadcast the world belly flop championships some years ago? The other suggestion was distance diving. Why stop at a ten-metre platform? Even if they have to cut a hole in the roof of the pool, why not go as high as the bravest athletes want, with extra points for higher dives?

I almost never watch American Gladiators, but there must be some sports in their repertoire (which includes games such as Gauntlet, Earthquake, and Joust) that are of Olympic caliber. I saw another intriguing suggestion in the comic strip Blondie during the London 2012 Summer Olympics. Dagwood advocated a sandwich building event, and anyone who has seen his masterful sandwich creations would agree that this requires real creative talent. There are world championships for Rock, Paper, Scissors but I suppose the practitioners of this sport are too eclectic for the IOC.

Pierre de Coubertin, the initiator of the modern Olympic movement, said that the important thing is not to win, but to take part, so it would be great to have more people participate. I suspect that some sports now in the Olympics don’t contribute very much to the Olympic Spirit whose objective is to build a peaceful and better world involving mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity, and fair play. De Coubertin ideally wanted to inspire and motivate the youth of the world to be the best they can be through educational and entertaining interactive challenges, but money, as in $$$$ has mostly taken over.

One of my friends suggested that one sport that should be in the modern Olympics is lying. The sport of lying gained popularity soon after creation in a small garden somewhere in the middle east, and it rapidly spread to Greece where they euphemistically called it philosophy. Individuals and teams could compete in three weight classes: Light (little white lies or fibbing); Medium (hyperbole, fable telling, spin-doctoring); Heavy (big whoppers, propaganda, terminological inexactitude).

Lawyers and politicians are often the primary experts, but in today’s spirit of political correctness we have spin-doctors, or lobbyists, or market analysts, or in some cases, athletes. Probably every country is adept at the sport so it would meet the criteria of being widely practiced, plus that of being ancient. I suspect that no country would want to place last as this would tarnish their national pride.

We know that everyone has had some experience in this sport, and it wouldn’t take expensive facilities or a lot of training because most participants have natural ability. However, there are several problems with including lying as an Olympic sport. Determining the winner would, of necessity, be subjectively decided by the judges, and since it is clearly possible that judges may actually be better liars than the contestants there always would be some uncertainty whether the identified winner was actually the best. And there may be some conflict with the Olympic motto of higher, stronger, faster.

Baseball and Bubble Gum

When my sweetie and I picked up our granddaughter from preschool one day, the little tyke kept singing a ditty, the first verse of which went something like this: My Mom gave me a nickel / to buy a pickle / but I bought bubble gum / balloon, balloon, balloon, POP!

The catchy tune and topic led me to reflect on the use of chewing gum, and bubble gum in particular.

First, we should dispense of the myth that if you swallow a wad of gum it stays in your stomach or gut for months. I don’t know who looked in kids’ stomachs but apparently this myth isn’t true. Anyway, my sweetie seems to have taken a renewed interest in chewing gum, not necessarily bubble gum, but any kind of gum. I don’t mind this, really, but my problem is that sometimes she chews gum with the vigor of a young teen-aged girl using two-thirds of the Rice Krispies® approach.

This means that there is a lot of snap and crackle (though not too much pop, since this isn’t bubble gum) and vigorous jaw movement. I’m sure you will agree this can be a tad annoying after a while. Occasionally she offers me a piece. I normally refuse because, after a few minutes, I find that the gum has the flavor and consistency of the chewing gum you might pry off the bottom of a church bench or a movie theatre seat.

This, naturally, leads me to baseball, a game involving long periods of inactivity interspersed with short bursts of intense action. With the possible exception of semi-sedentary sports such as lawn bowling, baseball seems to be the only sport, at least as far as I’m aware, where most of the participants routinely and incessantly chew gum during the game. One baseball player was even videoed blowing a huge bubble milliseconds before swinging at a pitch.

If a hockey or a football player tried to chew gum the earthquake force of an opponent’s assault would cause surely the player to swallow the gum wad.

My point, finally, is that baseball players and coaches seem to chew their gum for hours (that is, the length of a typical baseball game) with the same prolonged level of enjoyment. So my question is—does the flavor really last that long, and, if so, what brand of chewing gum are these guys chewing? It is possible that with their zillion dollar salaries they can buy some ultra-expensive special long lasting gum, but somehow I don’t think that’s the explanation.

Someone from the Fleer Chewing Gum Company discovered bubble gum in 1928, when they found that a new product stretched more easily and was less sticky than regular chewing gum. This highly successful new gum was first called Dubble Bubble and was pink because that was the only color available.

People had to be taught how to blow bubbles. (If they had used kids that probably wouldn’t have taken long.) Natural rubber, such as chicle, may be used to make bubble gum today although synthetic gum-based materials are now widely used, supposedly because they provide better texture and longer-lasting flavor. (I haven’t found the longer lasting part to be the case.)

Apparently, chewing bubble gum keeps the mouth occupied and moist, and the brain alert, which may be one reason why chewing gum is popular. The culture of baseball, and stress relief (not boredom relief?) is possibly the most common reason why most players chew something, whether it be gum, tobacco, or sunflower seeds. Baseball has a lot of between time...waiting to bat, waiting for the next pitch, waiting while the pitcher warms up, waiting for the national anthem, waiting during the rain delay, and so on.

Chewing tobacco became common in professional baseball’s early years. Some players still chew tobacco as indicated by chew or dip placed between their lips and gums. In 1998, a Cleveland Indians player who used a smokeless-tobacco chew got throat cancer, and major league baseball subsequently barred teams from providing players with tobacco products. Players are still free to use their own tobacco, but common sense and health issues gradually reduced the use of tobacco chewing. Baseball players found that chewing bubble gum was almost as good, and was considered safe. Not as many players are dipping snuff on the field now and there is not as much spitting going on.

So, what kind of gum do baseball players chew? It seems that there is no specific kind of gum but a popular one is Big League Chew which has many flavors and is said to be addicting. Big League Chew was introduced in 1980 by pitchers Rob Nelson and Jim Bouton, who came up with the idea of shredded bubble gum in a pouch as something different and fun. The basic Double Bubble brand of bubble gum is also often found in baseball dugouts. We know this because ground crew duties include sweeping the dugout to clear away gum wrappers and other mundane items, such as sunflower seed husks and paper cups.

Of course, commercial motives also played a role in the use of bubble gum by baseball players. Bubble gum companies, such as Topps, sold collectable baseball cards for every player starting in the 1950s. Cards in the ‘50s and ‘60s smelled like bubble gum and were often stained by the gum. But no one cared, since no one thought they were valuable, and kids loved the gum and their heroes. However, commercialism took over and most cards are now sold separately, mostly for collectors, not for kids.

What’s Not in the Queen’s Purse?

As a loyal Canadian citizen I am periodically bombarded by media attention given to the Queen of England when she visits Canada as the titular Head of State or performs some royal function elsewhere. The Queen is always pictured wearing some fabulous hat worn by the rich and famous in the 1930s, plus a modest purse that prudently matches her outfit. While ordinary modern day women, even quite young ladies, seem to carry purses weighing seventeen kilograms, the Queen’s purse doesn’t seem to have room for much in it.

This isn’t the sort of thing that normal people worry about, but I’ve started to wonder, What’s not in the Queen’s purse?

Not cash or credit cards. She didn’t get to be one of the richest women in the world by spending her own money.

Not a lottery ticket, since she already won the lottery—she gets the English people to give her a huge allowance each year.

Not a Sudoku book or a pencil in case she has to wait for her doctor or a dental appointment. The Queen doesn’t wait; she gets waited on.

Not a spare green grocery bag in case she needs to pick up some vegetables for dinner on her way home from work. First, the Queen doesn’t go to work; her work comes to her. Second, she has people to do her shopping and cooking.

Not keys. The movie The Queen with Helen Mirren suggested that the Queen sometimes drove a Range Rover on her estate, but I don’t think that she does this very often. And I don’t know who locks the doors at Buckingham Palace, but I’m pretty sure that the Queen doesn’t do it.

Not a little flask of sherry or something stronger. The Queen’s mother was known for enjoying a bit of gin every day, perhaps more than once a day, but the Queen doesn’t seem to need this type of pick-me-up.

Not a receipt for the little black dress she bought last week and plans to return after the party. The Queen would not be amused if anyone suggested that she would consider this sort of thing.

Not a camera. The Queen doesn’t take pictures; everyone else takes pictures of her.

Not a cell phone or a smart phone or a tablet or even an address book. She has other people to take her calls and plan her schedule. Somehow I don’t think that the Queen tweets and even if she could have a zillion Facebook friends I suspect that she would consider this as undignified.

Not a pack of cigarettes or an e-cigarette. While many modern women demonstrated their independence by smoking, (or at least they used to before the hazards became known), the Queen is much too sensible to engage is this sort of silly and dangerous behavior.

Not a comb or a tube of lipstick. She has worn the same hairdo for over sixty years, while looking quite dignified. And not a can of hair coloring, since she has gracefully become grey over the years.

Not a paperback book. Her various good will walkabouts or tours keep her much too busy, and when she’s at home she reads official government dispatches.

Not a copy of The Sunday Report (a newspaper which has been described as practicing yellow journalism) or other English tabloids, which sensationalize the activities and foibles of celebrities.

Not a ball of yarn and a crochet hook or knitting needles. Many grandmothers may have such items in their purse, but I’ve never thought of the Queen knitting a sweater for the grandkids or crocheting pot scrubbers.

Not a travel pill container with aspirins or heart medication. She has people who take medication for her.

Not a package of Tide Spot Remover in case someone spills something on her. She probably wears an outfit once and then gives it to a charity.

I’m sorry that I haven’t been more helpful. We don’t really know what is in her purse even if we’re pretty sure what’s not there! Perhaps it’s just a tissue and a tiny mirror. Maybe a lipstick, too.

Nearing Home With Hope

This is my attempt to summarize the 2011 book, Nearing Home written by Billy Graham. This book presents an engaging description of Dr. Graham’s experiences in getting old and provides insights and advice for all of us.

Near the end of his life, Mickey Mantle, the iconic but free living New York Yankee baseball player said that he would have taken better care of himself if he had known that he would get that old. Billy Graham has no such regrets but he still said, Getting old has been the greatest surprise of my life. He goes on to say that he had been taught during his life how to die as a Christian but not how to live in his later years. He said something else that most elderly people can relate to, namely that old age is not for sissies. At the same time, Billy Graham acknowledges that the Bible doesn’t paint old age as a time to be despised or a burden to be endured.

When I turned seventy, I was very surprised (they say that behind every seventy year-old is a surprised thirty year-old wondering what happened), and Billy Graham relates to this when he writes that: I am not sure exactly when it happened, but as the years passed, it gradually dawned on me that I was growing older.

Graham advises us not to retire from life, since work (and activity)