ivman's blague

Aren’t pundits interesting people? Well, they don’t always interest this person! I have heard some really whacky analysis from some pundits in my lifetime. First off, what is a pundit? According to dictionary.com… Pundit: 1. a learned person, expert, or authority. 2. a person who makes comments or judgments, esp. in an authoritative manner; critic or commentator. (I can’t tell from the two definitions if they are they are mutually exclusive or complementary - is a pundit an expert, or does he only make comments?) The word pundit comes from a Hindi (Sanskrit) word pandita: a man esteemed for his wisdom or learning; a title of respect.

I like the word pundit itself because it contains the word pun. Again I appeal to dictionary.com… Pun: 1. the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words. 2. the word or phrase used in this way.

As much as I like puns, though, I don’t always like what pundits say. They can draw some of the wildest conclusions from a set of facts or events, suggesting a different meaning, much like a punster does, only it doesn’t always bring laughter. Their conclusions sometimes leave me scratching my head or talking back to the radio or TV. (Just ask my wife….)

Here in the upstate of South Carolina we’ve broken some records this week for cold temperatures and are experiencing a bit of “Indian Winter” - a term I use based on the term “Indian Summer” to describe having a bit of winter in the middle of the fall, rather than a bit of summer in the middle of the fall. This has to drive the global warming crowd as crazy as having to postpone a global warming conference because of snow this past spring - read the story here.

I ran across a map recently from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency. It shows temperature trends from January through October of this year in the continental USA. Below is that map:

As I looked at it, I thought of the map I’d seen of the county by county election results in the 2008 presidential election. Below is that map:

Would I be going out on a limb as an amateur pundit to say that it appears that Obama voters may be causing global warming? I appeal to the collective wisdom of my readers to make their own comments about either or both of the maps. What conclusions do some of you pundits draw from what you see? Feel free to be as whacked out as professional pundits would be. Have you heard some punditry lately that you think is whacked out?

quotation…

“Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” Romans 1:22

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Rob

OK, who put a “stop payment” on my reality check?

Tags: global warming, India, points of view, puns

Here in South Carolina we are definitely in the dog days of summer. It’s warm for sure, but not as hot as you’d think it would be in the midst of global warming. How about where you live? Those reading this in the Southern Hemisphere might be longing for some warm summer days. I’ve put a new poll up in the sidebar about favorite activities on hot summer days.

Over lunch this past Sunday someone mentioned having seen a man who looked remarkably like his Saint Bernard. It struck me as funny, especially since someone recently commented on my dog/owner look-alikes page. Have you ever noticed how many people end up with dogs that resemble them?

Here are some pictures from my files of children who look remarkably like their family dog. I suspect that the photographers did a lot of staging for these pictures, but they’re cute nonetheless.

Hope that those of you in this hemisphere have a nice summer weekend, and happy dog and people watching!

quotation…

“Letting your life be an Alleluia is going to cost you a lot.” - Ted Allston

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Rob

Did you know that in 1850, the first all white Dalmatian dog was spotted?

Tags: children, dogs, funny pix, global warming

A freshman at Eagle Rock High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair a few years back. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to the alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical “dihydrogen monoxide.” And for plenty of good reasons, since it can

1. cause excessive sweating and vomiting
2. it is a major component in acid rain
3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
4. accidental inhalation can kill you
5. it contributes to erosion
6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes
7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

He asked 50 people if they would support a ban of the chemical. Forty-three said yes, six were undecided, and only one knew that the chemical was water!

The title of his prize winning project was, “How Gullible Are We?” He believes that the conclusion is obvious.

Water is on the minds of a lot of us right now - the flooding in the Midwest and the severe drought in the Southeast. Our lawn is crunchy because I simply can’t afford to spray dihydrogen monoxide on it as well as the Lord can. Speaking of water, just today I received a link to an interesting picture from nasa.gov - a picture of water on Mars - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0504/WaterOnMars2_gcc.jpg

Though we try to live responsibly in our house, I for one am getting sick to death of hearing the expressions “green” and “global warming” - basically having them crammed down my throat. I strongly suspect that it is driven more by agenda than by science. And people are gullible enough to fall for it, lapping up whatever the alarmists dish out.

Now some more weird science, possibly as credible as some of what we’re being assailed with lately….

Then there are those students who aren’t quite as lucid as the freshman in the first story….

A teacher sent me the following list of comments from test papers, essays, etc., submitted to science and health teachers by elementary, junior high, high school, and college students. As she noted, “It is truly astonishing what weird science our young scholars can create under the pressures of time and grades.”

“H2O is hot water, and CO2 is cold water”

“To collect fumes of sulphur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube”

“When you smell an oderless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide”

“Water is composed of two gins, Oxygin and Hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.”

“Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes and caterpillars.”

“Blood flows down one leg and up the other.”

“Respiration is composed of two acts, first inspiration, and then expectoration.”

“The moon is a planet just like the earth, only it is even deader.”

“Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire”

“A super saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold.”

“Mushrooms always grow in damp places and so they look like umbrellas.”

“The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects.”

“The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is something to hitch meat to.”

“A permanent set of teeth consists of eight canines, eight cuspids, two molars, and eight cuspidors.”

“The tides are a fight between the Earth and moon. All water tends towards the moon, because there is no water in the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.”

“A fossil is an extinct animal. The older it is, the more extinct it is.”

“Equator: A managerie lion running around the earth through Africa.”

“Germinate: To become a naturalized German.”

“Liter: A nest of young puppies.”

“Magnet: Something you find crawling all over a dead cat.”

“Momentum: What you give a person when they are going away.”

“Planet: A body of earth surrounded by sky.”

“Rhubarb: A kind of celery gone bloodshot.”

“Vacuum: A large, empty space where the Pope lives.”

“Before giving a blood transfusion, find out if the blood is affirmative or negative.”

“To remove dust from the eye, pull the eye down over the nose.”

“For a nosebleed: Put the nose much lower then the body until the heart stops.”

“For dog bite: put the dog away for several days. If he has not recovered, then kill it.”

“For head cold: use an agonizer to spray the nose until it drops in your throat.”

“To keep milk from turning sour: Keep it in the cow.”

Who knows, one of these young scholars could have first come up with the global warming hoax….

The poll that I had up for a week revealed that over 80% of my visitors prefer that I leave the picture of the Paris skyline at the top of my blog, and so there it remains. Thanks to those who took the time to give their input.

My most recent blog post was about senior swingers and their personal ads. This weekend we received some pictures of a young swinger … our grandson Drew. Here are a few of the pictures we received:

quotation…

“Today people boldly redefine right and wrong. … The reason we want to redefine things is because we don’t like the guilt we feel when we keep falling short” - Dr. Drew Conley

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Rob

After eating, do amphibians have to wait one hour before getting out of the water?

Tags: global warming, math and science, school, students

We celebrated our grandson Drew’s first birthday this past weekend. I have way too many pictures to pick from, so I will show as much restraint as possible. Here are some of the stories and some pictures….

Grandma and Nora traveled up as planned. They got stuck in a horrible traffic backup in Tennessee, not far from the state line to Kentucky. They got off at the next exit the traffic crept up to to try to find a restroom. Several men from the DOT pulled off to see if they were OK. Becka asked the one man why the traffic was so backed up, thinking he’d say it was an accident since the southbound traffic was flowing fine. He told her that the some of the mountain had caved! Yikes! We were thankful that it had happened before they got that far. He told them that if they continued on the road at that exit, they would come to a gravel road that would eventually take them to Jellico on the other side of the place where the mountain had caved. It was after dark, but they could see well enough to know that the left side of the gravel road was a sheer drop-off! I was very relieved when they called me from Jellico!

On Friday they managed to stay ahead of the snow storm that hammered Ohio. Below is a picture of them at lunch time in Perrysburg, OH, with some of the snow from earlier last week.

What Becka and Nora didn’t know was that a few weeks ago I cashed in some frequent-flyer miles to fly up for the weekend too! I was supposed to arrive in Detroit at about midnight, but because of the snow, our pilot was delayed in arriving from his flight from Toronto. So my three hour layover in Chicago O’Hare became a six hour layover! (reminiscent of the theme song of Gilligan’s Island … a three hour tour!) When I arrived in Detroit at about 3:00 a.m. my son-in-law (who was in on my surprise) was there waiting for me. It was so fun when I slipped into our bedroom, kissed Becka to wake her up, and enjoyed her complete surprise!

We all really enjoyed being together on Saturday as preparations were going on for the “friends party” at 5:30 that afternoon. Meg and Jim asked me if I would give Drew his first trim to try to reduce his “baby mullet.” Here are a couple of pictures of the process….

“Hey, Grandpa, what are you doing to me?!”

A lot of preparations went on in the kitchen for the food for the party the theme of which was puppies. Nora set up a cookie factory on the kitchen table….

Here’s a tray full of the finished product….

Megan made a cute cake she’d seen online….

Drew also got his own cupcake - his first taste of cake! He enjoyed the cake, but he didn’t want to touch it.

Drew really enjoyed the presents….

Grandma loved being with her boy….

It’s hard to remember his being such a tiny preemie a year ago - he’s such a fine, upstanding boy now!

My flights home Sunday were less eventful, and the delay in Chicago O’Hare was shorter than Friday night’s delay. What’s kind of sad is that 10 hours of my weekend were spent at O’Hare! Yuck! Becka and Nora are driving back to South Carolina today (Tuesday). It will be great to have them home again!

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My recent trip up north, where they are experiencing one of their hardest winters in a long time, reminded me of the horrors of global warming and of an e-mail I received recently about the Northern Lights and a frozen Antarctic wave.

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Yellowknife, named after copper, is the the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Here are a few pictures of the Northern Lights over Yellowknife and living in teepees at 37 degrees below 0….

It’s beyond cool!

Below are some pictures of Antarctica. In the e-mail I received, what you see below was attributed to a quick freeze of a wave in super frigid air, but according to snopes it’s actually the result of melting and refreezing. Whatever the situation, that’s one cold place!

quotation…

“It’s nice to have the things money can buy, as long as you don’t lose the things money can’t buy.” - Kevin Johns

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Rob

If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?

Tags: arctic, birthdays, geography, global warming, grandparents, Northern Lights, travel, weather

Today I’m posting a few of the myriad “LBJ’s” - light bulb jokes - in existence. This whole thing came to mind as we replaced our lighting fixture in our dining room last week. I’ll start off with one that is unfortunately not a joke!

Q: How many Congress critters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 400 (314 members of the United States House of Representatives and 86 members of the United States Senate)

Late in 2007 Congress voted for an energy bill to force Americans to change the relatively inexpensive incandescent light bulbs they’re currently using and replace them with expensive new, “energy-efficient” light bulbs, and President Bush did not veto the bill! (I guess he’s joined the rest of those belonging to the Global Warming Cult.) This brings to mind the 1992 energy bill, in which Congress banned the 3.5 gallon toilet, mandating that Americans no longer use more than 1.6 gallons per flush. Those new toilets have proven not to be enough to, er, get the job done. Since it sometimes takes two and three flushes per visit, Americans are using the same amount of water, if not more, than they did before Congress stuck its collective nose into our bathrooms.

And I’ve read that “those who know what’s best for the rest of us” are also considering banning top-loading washers and disposable diapers, among other things. The “Progressives” won’t be happy until we’re virtuously beating cloth diapers on rocks by a steam in pitch darkness!

(Mini-rant ended…)

I guess we’ll cope with this news by making “light” of it, so to speak….

Q: How many college students does it take to change a light bulb?
A: I dunno, I forgot my calculator at home.

Q: How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Define “light bulb”

Q: How many evolutionists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but the bulb change will take billions of years.

Q: How many deconstructionists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: On the contrary, the NILE is the longest river in Africa.

Q: How many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to change the bulb, and one to write a song about how good the old light bulb was.

Q: How many gorillas does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Just one, but it takes a lot of light bulbs.

Q: How many dyslexics does it change to take a light bulb?
A: Eno

Q: How many stockbrokers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Oh, no! The bulb’s out! Let’s sell our GE stock NOW!

Q: How many pre-med students does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Five: One to change the bulb and four to pull the ladder out from under him.

Q: How many jugglers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One, but it takes at least three lightbulbs.

Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: How many can you afford?

Q: How many mystery writers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two, one to screw it almost all the way in and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.

Q: How many editors of Poor Richard’s Almanac does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Many hands make light work.

Q: How many magicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That depends on what you want to change it into.

Q: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. It’s a hardware problem.
A: One, but if he changes it, the whole building will probably fall down.
A: Two. One always leaves in the middle of the project.
A: Five. Two to write the specification program, one to screw it in, and two to explain why the project was late.

Q: How many database programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Three: one to write the light bulb removal program, one to write the light bulb insertion program, and one to act as a light bulb administrator to make sure nobody else tries to change the light bulb at the same time.

Q: How many political pollsters/activitists/candidates/recordings does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Way too many, but they have to do it while you’re eating dinner.

Q: How many presidential candidates does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It won’t ever get done. They only promise change.

Q: How many Amish does it take to change a light bulb?
A: What’s a light bulb?

Q: How many dogs does it take to change a light bulb? (I know, I know - dogs can’t change light bulbs, but hey, “lighten up” and enjoy!)
A: It depends on the breed (see below)….

Golden Retriever: The sun is shining, the day is young, we’ve got our whole lives ahead of us, and you’re inside worrying about a stupid burned-out light bulb?

Border Collie: Just one. And I’ll replace any wiring that’s not up to code.

Dachshund: I can’t reach the dumb lamp!

Toy Poodle: I’ll just whisper sweet nothings in the Border Collie’s ear and he’ll change it for me. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry.

Rottweiler: Go Ahead! Make me!

Shi-tzu: Puh-leeze, dah-ling. Let the servants take care of such things….

Lab: Oh, me, me!!! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze let *me* change the light bulb! Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Can I?

Malamute: Let the Border Collie do it. You can feed me while he’s busy.

Cocker Spaniel: Why change it? I can still wet on the carpet in the dark.

Doberman Pinscher: While it’s dark, I’m going to sleep on the couch.

Mastiff: Mastiffs are NOT afraid of the dark.

Hound Dog: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Chihuahua: Yo quiero Taco Bulb.

Pointer: I see it, there it is, right there….

Greyhound: It isn’t moving. Who cares?

Australian Shepherd: Put all the light bulbs in a little circle….

Old English Sheep Dog: Light bulb? Light bulb? That thing I just ate was a light bulb?

If you can’t get enough light bulb jokes, I have more in my “pre-blog archives.” The post is called Let there be light! I’ve had the ivman.com website for 5 years, and I’ve been posting humor and funny pictures at a rhythm of about twice a week. I’ve been posting regularly to the blog for only one year now, and the blog is just one feature of the whole ivman.com “domain.” If you haven’t read through the archived iv’s or looked at the funny pictures, you’re missing out on four year’s worth of postings - and maybe some great laughs. You can get to them by clicking on the “pre-blog archives” tab or the “funny pix” tab at the top of the blog.

special request update…

Thanks to the 200+ people who took our campus son Tim’s online survey over the weekend. When I told him that there were 4,963 unique visitors to my blog during the month of January 2008, he was excited that he might get as many as 1,000 take the survey. That would give him a far better sampling for his research. I hope many more of you will take the time to answer the 10 questions on his anonymous survey and submit your answers by clicking the button at the bottom of that page. The link is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=jNTcwcdc_2bUDcECUc3cxt4A_3d_3d

quotation…

“You are the light of the world if you are a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.” - Dr. Drew Conley

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Rob

Some gardeners turn their lights on in the evening so they can watch their phlox by night.

Tags: dogs, global warming, government, lawyers, light bulb jokes, rants, society