Coffee Klatch

I was feeling the need to blog about this, but thought I’d check to see if I’d written something about this before. Turns out I did, and it was at this exact same point in the NFL season: the weekend of the conference championship games. But my previous post was about a difference facet. Today I’m talking about etiquette.

It is considered rude to sing along to the national anthem when someone else is singing it. The U.S. Code Title 4 Chapter 1 is about the U.S. Flag, how it should be handled and displayed and how it should be addressed when presented when the national anthem is sung. It says how to stand and what to do while the national anthem is sung, but it doesn’t talk about the singing along element.

During the national anthem that was sung before the Colts-Patriots game, not only could you clearly hear people singing along, but the cheering began as early as the “rockets’ red glare.” I think that’s rather rude and an insult to the singer. Why have some special singer come in when you’re not going to listen to more than half of their song?

Was it the custom in times gone by for the audience to stand and sing it together? If so, when did the custom begin of having a guest soloist?

My thought: either be quiet and let the singer sing or else stop bringing in soloists and have the audience sing instead. Both at once is bad etiquette.

To end on a positive note, at least both of the soloists today sang the national anthem with a minimum of those frivolous embellishments that are so irritating.

[tags]national anthem, sports, etiquette[/tags]

After waiting several months, Indianapolis has finally gotten its first real snow of the season! We had about four inches by 9:00 this morning. So the boys are now outside making a snow fort and enjoying the snow. Of course, it’s now lightly drizzling and is supposed to continue doing that off and on today. And then tonight it will all freeze, so commuting tomorrow morning should be really exciting!

Isn’t winter weather FUN in the midwest??

I missed it the other night but tonight, from 8-10pm, they’re rerunning the Mythbusters Pirate Special (episode #71). They examined all kinds of myths associated with pirates. Here’s a video clip from the episode.

The first myth was that cannonballs were more dangerous from the splintering wood they caused than from the balls themselves. They did a sample with just a 2-inch ball bearing and an air cannon, and they tried with pine, white oak, and red oak, at a decent velocity, although a bit less than the 1200 ft/sec that cannonballs typically flew at. All three woods left a rather lethal spray of splinters. White oak was most lethal. Then they reproduced it at full size for 6-pound cannonballs at 300mph. They ended up needing to use a modified air cannon rather than gunpowder. It was HUGE! Since no real pirate ships were available, Adam had to build it himself after researching the dimensions of the wood, etc. The final cannon shot at about 500 ft/sec and they used four 150-pound pigs, since the bodies act similarly to human bodies in many ways. A plain cannonball went through ALL FOUR of the pigs! Then they tested it on the mockup ship, dangling the pigs behind it. The ball went all the way through and created lots of splinters, but none that flew and penetrated the pigs’ skins at all. It only would have been dangerous if you were right next to the hole. Since their muzzle velocity was only about half the speed of regular cannons, they weren’t totally convinced. The last option was to try to find a genuine cannon that would fire faster and closer to speed of pirate cannons. They found an actual piece of civil war field artillery that’s a real live cannon, with the same ball size, etc. The freshly ordered shot that were ordered for that specific gun were TOO BIG! Weird! So they got an angle grinder to take 1/8 inch off the ball. That gun, with 1.5 pounds of black powder, had a muzzle velocity of 1430 ft/sec. Once they tried that in the same scenario, it had tons more power and threw plenty of splinters, but the splinters didn’t have enough mass and velocity and didn’t really stick in the pigs. MYTH BUSTED!

The second myth was that pirates wore an eye patch not because of injury, but to keep that eye night vision ready. It’s said that they would switch the patch from one eye to the other when going from light into dark, keeping night vision cells (rods) sensitive since they’re not exposed to bright light. The science bears it out. The cones are what allow you to see details in normal light. Their test showed that it took over 20 minutes for the cones to adjust to be able to see details in the lowest levels of light. But the eye that had been covered with a patch was able to see those same details almost right away! They ran a test to verify, constructing a really cool obstacle course for the guys to run through in the dark, including life-size pop-up pictures of people that they had to either stab or not (don’t stab the wench, but DO stab the scurvy dogs), stacked cannonballs to avoid knocking over, a treasure chest to open with a key, and then they had to raise the Jolly Roger that was in the chest. Both guys took about 6 minutes to run through the course and get the flag raised. The course was rearranged and they did it again with fantastic results! Both guys did the whole course in less than two minutes and with 100% accuracy. Then they ran it through once more, with the course exactly the same but with a light-exposed eye and they took just as long as the first time. MYTH PLAUSIBLE!

Does rum work for cleaning all kinds of stains? They compared rum, “ye olde 17th-century soap,” a secret recipe (urine reduces to ammonia), and modern laundry detergent and how they cleaned stains of blood, sweat, and pitch (tar). The first problem was that the sweat that Adam worked so hard to generate just didn’t leave a stain. So he substituted oranges, assuming that pirates would have kept them on board to avoid scurvy. The conclusions were that the best for blood was the stale urine and the best for the tar was the modern detergent. The old soap didn’t do that well and the RUM WAS THE WORST cleaner. Definitely better for drinking than for washing!! MYTH BUSTED!

The final myth was whether pirates could be up in the rigging and stick a knife or sword in a sail, sliding down to the deck, using the sail to slow down enough to allow the pirate to land lightly on the deck and begin fighting. They found out that sails had “reef bands” that are three times the thickness (3 pennies thick), with 2-4 of them per sail, going across horizontally. So that was a concern. They took three differen period-style weapons, clamped them in and pulled the sailcloth past with a deadweight to remove the human factor. They found that the sharper blade cut faster (big surprise) and that it was possible for a human to hold a knife/sword and not have it ripped out of their hand or anything. The full weight on a two-reef-band sail with a sharp knife was too fast, hitting the ground way too fast. A duller knife hit a reef band and came out, causing the dummy to plummet to the ground even faster. So they tried a live person trial in a gym that had huge nets to catch people who fell. Without any knife (freefall) ended at 25 mph, which would break both legs. Trying the knife, when he hit the reef band, it kicked the blade up and therefore out of the sail, creating a freefall for that. If it were sharper, to cut the reef bands, it wouldn’t slow the person enough to land safely. A real-life situation would only be different in that there would probably be two reef bands instead of just one. Oh, and a hard wooden deck to break your legs. MYTH BUSTED!

So there you go! What a blast! (I LOVE this show!)

[tags]mythbusters, pirates, cannons, rum[/tags]

So last night we had yet another person audition for the Circle City Ringers. She’s an experienced ringer who was sight-reading treble parts as strong as anyone else in the group, including those who’d played the songs before. Four-in-hand and shelley-ringing were second nature to her and she’s so in love with handbells that she’s perfectly willing to drive an hour each way to be in a group like ours. How cool is THAT?

That makes two new ringers in our group since Christmas, bringing our total number of regular members to 12! The handbells that we borrow and use are 4-1/2 octaves (4 octaves in the bass and 5 octaves in the treble, so G3 to C8) and 12 is a perfect number of people to cover those. No more having treble ringer 4-in-hand C-D-E-F and G-A-B-C. Now they can shelley the octaves and we can play MUCH better and much better music.

Last night was really encouraging. Our group is really just 2 years old now and last night we sight-read songs like “Fantasy on King’s Weston” by Fred Gramann and “Rondo Passacaglia” by Cynthia Dobrinski and actually got them, if not concert ready, then ready to make better music out of them in preparation for a concert. It was so exciting last night to work those up in about a half-hour apiece and see them improve so much. It’s a sign of great things to come.

[tags]handbells, circle city ringers, music[/tags]

Here’s the latest cool new thing that Google has come out with. It’s called Google Reader. Overall, it has a VERY nice look. It’s easy to read and pleasant to look at. And of course Google has put lots of functionality into it. The only thing it doesn’t do (yet) that Bloglines does for me is handle email subscriptions. If Google Reader adds that capability, I’m dumping Bloglines like a month-old potato and going Google.

Here are some of the features, if you’re curious.

You can add folders and put the feeds in the folders. You can rename the feeds, so you’re not stuck with the name they have if you don’t want it. You can sort newest or oldest and show all the items or only new ones. You can even add a star to a particular post, just like you do to certain emails in Gmail. Oh, and you can add tags to individual posts also.

There’s also a “Subscribe” button that you can drag onto your web browser’s toolbar, so when you’re on a page that has a feed, one click will show the feed in your Google Reader. If you like it, you click the “+Subscribe” button at the top and you’ve got it.

If you want to add subscriptions to the blogs of friends, using any of the popular bloglike software (e.g., MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga, Flickr), you can easily add their feed by entering their username and selecting which service they use.

Do you use another feed reader? You can easily import your subscriptions from that reader to Google reader. You just have to export your subscription in OPML (XML) format so it can be imported. Here’s a link to export instructions for a variety of other feed aggregators. If you have organized your feeds into folders, those folders will import also.

If you like, you can even add the Google Reader to your Personalized Google Home Page.

Current music: Impressions of the Season, by the Raleigh Ringers

[tags]google, google reader, rss, feeds, aggregators, technology, Internet[/tags]

Nineteen years ago, an 8-year-old girl disappeared in a remote northeastern jungle area of Cambodia while she was herding buffalo. Now 27, she has been found, being called “half animal.” They’re having difficulties figuring out what happened to her, since she doesn’t speak any real language any more. Read the whole story at Fox News.

Current music: Allegri Miserere - The Sixteen 25th Anniversary Edition

I have mentioned before that I’m back in the SCA (do a search for SCA or use the Medieval category) and I’m finally narrowing down the persona that I want.

For those unfamiliar with the process, when you’re a part of the Society for Creative Anachronism, you come up with a medieval persona that you “play” when you’re at SCA events. Kind of like real-life role playing. At the minimum, people generally come up with a place and general time they want to be from, for instance: 13th century France or England in the late 1400’s. THAT’s necessary to help you come up with a name. If you’re going to play the game, as it were, you at least need something that other people can call you. So picking a time and place allows you to get a list of names that you could choose from. Of course, some people probably pick a name they like and find a time/place they could use it, but the more “serious” people are interested in some specific facet of medieval Europe and they tailor their name and persona to match.

After picking a name, you’re encouraged to develop a persona, as detailed as you like. You might be Wilhelm the Merchant or a monk named Thomas or Natasha, a seamstress. Whatever you like. Some people even develop an entire history for their persona, with parentage and a life story.

You probably will then want to figure out what your person would wear, since you’ll need to get or make some kind of costume for you to wear to the various events. That will, of course, be effected by the place and time that you’ve chosen. For many people, the clothing fashions play a big part of determining that time and place.

Then, whatever you’re interested in, you simply LEARN about. There are always people to help you find the resources you need, or often even to teach classes that you’d like. There are all kinds of handcrafts (calligraphy, illumination, embroidery, leatherwork, sewing, and woodworking, to name just a few) as well as various skills (like fighting, music, dance, cooking, brewing, and heraldry). Pretty much, if it went on in the Middle Ages, there are people in the SCA who do it.

Except for the Black Plague.
So that’s persona development in a nutshell. It’s only limited by your interests and drive. And the more you learn and the more skills you develop, the better you can play the persona you’ve chosen.

I’ve pretty much settled on my persona. I’m looking at early 15th century Austria. To be more specific, I’ll be from Salzburg around 1425. I went back and forth between a clerical and an academic persona and have settled on the academic. Probably be teaching at the University of Vienna, since the University of Salzburg wasn’t founded until 1622. The University of Vienna was established in 1365 and, except for the Charles University in Prague, it’s the oldest university in Central Europe. The U of Vienna was also the first university in the German-speaking world. There’s a nice article in Wikipedia about the University of Vienna.

Some activities I’ll be able to pursue while playing this persona are learning more about the medieval universities and how they taught, developing a specialty subject area and even teaching SCA people in the way the class would have been taught back in the Middle Ages. I’ll probably delve into the more knowledge-based arts and sciences, too, like writing, cartography, heraldry, and maybe even book-binding. Boy, wouldn’t it be cool to learn how to make woodcuts the old way? I could also learn more about medieval technologies, sciences, or sociopolitical/spiritual topics, like how medieval towns were run (by magistrates, etc.) or how philosophers and religious types spread their knowledge. And of course activities like dance or brewing are fine for just about anybody.
That’s it in a nutshell. I think it will be very interesting, with all kinds of possibilities for me to learn, to make and do things, to teach, and to help others get excited about these kinds of things too.

Current music: Sacred Road, by David Lanz

[tags]medieval, middle ages, SCA, universities, persona development[/tags]

Here are a couple of emails that were sent to the list for my local SCA group, the Barony of Sternfeld.

Well, now……here’s something I never knew before, and now that I know it, I feel compelled to send it on to my more intelligent friends in the hope that they, too, will feel edified. Isn’t history more fun when you know something about it?

Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating
victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English long bow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous English longbow was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as “plucking the yew” (or “pluck yew”).

Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, See, we can still pluck yew!

Since ‘pluck yew’ is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodentals fricative ‘F’, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute!

It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as “giving the bird.”

IT IS STILL AN APPROPRIATE SALUTE TO THE FRENCH TODAY!

And yew thought yew knew every plucking thing!

Response:

In England, the analog to giving someone the finger actually uses the index and middle finger. The same story is attributed to its origin.

Response:

Actually the way I heard the tale—- the index finger and middle finger were amputated-by the French to incapacitate the archers.- The “v” shaped waving of the index and middle finger-whilst holding the ring finger and pinky finger to the palm of the hand was the equal of ” I have my balls (masculinity–ability to fight), where are yours?” The “V-for-Victory” sign from WWII (see Churchill photos) have the thumb facing the face–the insult to Hitler; the “V-for-Victory” has the thumb facing outward — see photos after May 1945… Big difference!

Pheasant feathers were not used–pheasants were an Asian bird that was not cultivated in Wales. The Welsh Archers used goose feathers — remember that domesticated geese are not flyers-migratory geese do fly and have long spine flight feathers.

To Goose- is to pluck — PL is a very common word in French (most French would have no trouble: Plaisir, Plackard, etc.)

Interesting ideas and they make sense. Whether or not they’re true, there sure seems to be SOME connection to English archers. Sometime I’ll have to look for some articles or something to document whether this is true.

[tags]middle finger, Churchill, insults[/tags]

The Herald-News, from Joliet Illinois, recently posted a story about a middle school student who got in trouble for reporting a gun on campus.

Seems Ryan Morgan heard a rumor about there being a gun in the boy’s restroom. He checked it out and found a pellet gun in the garbage there. So, being a good student, he put it in his pocket and took it to the assistant principal to turn it in. And what thanks did he get? He got expelled!

Audrey Morgan said her son tried to do the “right thing.” The couple asked the board to give their son a 10-day suspension instead of sending him to an alternative school.

The school board’s lawyer said that the administrators were “bound by state law” to recommend expulsion to the board, but after the outcry following his parent’s talking with the media, they changed their minds and decided to just force him to be home schooled instead.

So it’s not “expulsion,” it’s “forced home schooling.” Semantics??

[tags]zero tolerance, guns in schools, public schools, idiots[/tags]

This morning I was listening to NPR on the way to work, like I usually do. They featured a story called “Experiencing Other Faiths to Find Your Own,” about a girl from Davidson College (NC) who took a year to travel abroad and explore other ways of looking at religion.

With a small group of students, Gillian Siple, a religion major, lived in China, Thailand and India. She meditated in monasteries and ashrams, lived and studied among Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus — not your typical study-abroad program.

She remembers living at a meditation center in Thailand, wearing the traditional garb of a yogi. “I remember waking up at 4 o’clock in the morning and taking out my mat and I can remember just thinking, ‘What if my friends saw me now? Would anyone recognize me? I am so far from the person and the life that I live back at Davidson right now. There’s no remnant of that life on my body right now.’”

Even her faith began to fall away. She says that when she mediated, she felt an uncommon sense of peace. She wondered: Have I gone into this too deeply? Am I still a Christian, or am I becoming something else?

She said she now calls herself a “Christian Pluralist,” meaning that she is open to the validity of other religions. I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s actually possible. A Christian is someone who follows Christ and His teachings. One of those teachings, very clearly put by Him, was that there IS no other way.

• John 14:6 says: “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
• Acts 4:12 says: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”

True Christianity has no allowance for other religions being “correct.” Granted, nobody should be forced to believe anything and everyone should be allowed to believe whatever they want and follow whatever religion they choose, but that does not make everyone right. There’s a big difference between allowing everyone to believe what they want and endorsing what everyone believes.

“Christian Pluralism,” then, is really an oxymoron. You can’t have both with integrity; one or the other must be compromised to be held to by one person. From this story, it sounds like Gillian has compromised her Christianity for the sake of Pluralism.

But that’s not really a surprise. When listening to her tell her story, I was struck by the feelings she expressed about when she was on this trip and tried to reconnect to her Christian God. She went into her room and knelt and tried to pray. She got as far as “Dear God…” and no words would come. I think that was when she said she began wondering what she was becoming if she couldn’t pray to this God that she no longer knew.

My thought: If you immerse yourself in error, of COURSE you will lose connection with the Truth. Investigating and learning are good, and learning about other religions can help you appreciate your own faith, but becoming steeped in the ways of error will not help you learn the Truth. Maybe it’s the difference between intellectually learning something and becoming personally involved, making it part of you.

This isn’t a popular concept nowadays, but it needs to be said. People today want to hear that anything is legitimate and valid as long as it is believed with sincerity. It makes people feel better about themselves and it soothes the guilty heart to be told that there are no absolutes. What counts is being nice to people and keeping your religion to yourself. They say there’s no such thing today as being wrong in the area of religion. But true Christianity (and true Islam and several others) teaches that there IS such a thing as right and wrong and that following other religions is error. There is no reconciliation there. Apart from dialogue, whose purpose is basically to encourage civility, but not necessarily acceptance.

My thought: If God came down to earth and told us what was right and wrong and what to believe and how to live, it would become our obligation to follow Him. (And you know what? That HAPPENED!)

Be sure to visit the NPR page itself to read the whole article that prompted this post. You can even click the “Listen” button at the top and hear the story just like it was broadcast this morning.

[tags]religion, Christianity, pluralism, NPR[/tags]