Grace & Knowledge Blog

I noticed that a local church is advertising a youth activity for tonight that features "exiting Bible stories." 

The announcement reminded me of the most famous of the "exiting" stories, the Exodus.  Of course, the Bible is full of Exodus stories---Abraham and Sarah being expelled from Egypt, Lot escaping Sodom, Jacob and his family leaving Laban.... The Exodus is a pretty big theme in the Bible.  So the storytellers will have a lot of exiting material to choose from.

Tags: grace and knowledge articles, humor

On a quiet afternoon in Oxford, I went roman around town.  While walking one can notice a lot more details than are visible from an arial view.  On South College Avenue I noticed a sign I hadn't seen before.  It read:  Raising Helvetica

Oxford is almost deserted right now, so very little "Helvetica" is being raised.  But the sign gave a reminder that the students will return eventually and Oxford will come back to life as a font of knowledge.

Tags: humor, oxford oh signs

In the August/September 2018 Cartoon Caption Contest in the Biblical Archaeology Review, I made the online Honorable Mention List for the 10th time. 

The cartoon showed Samson wielding the jawbone of an ass, while a donkey looking on and presumably saying something.  I have the donkey saying, "To unleash the full power of the jawbone, Samson, shout ‘Hee Haw!’ as you swing it." 

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

Since my Cleveland Indians are playing the Chicago White Sox this week, I have found out that the White Sox right now have pitchers on their roster with last names Hamilton and Burr.  I wonder how they get along.  

Burr's first name is Ryan, not Aaron.  That's a bummer.  Actually, the White Sox have another pitcher named Aaron Bummer. 

Tags: baseball, humor

In the May/June 2017 cartoon caption contest in the Biblical Archaeology Review, my submission made the honorable mention list.  

The cartoon shows Jacob wrestling with the angel (Gen 32), and I have Jacob saying, 

"I may be 97 years old, but on WrestleMania, they call me the Bruiser from Bethel."

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

On the game show Wheel of Fortune tonight, one contestant, a man from Brunswick Ohio,  twice came within a single letter of solving a puzzle, but lost both times by making two of the strangest guesses I can remember seeing on the show.

In one puzzle, the board showed

A STREETCAR NA_ED DESIRE,

and this contestant guessed the letter "K".  In another puzzle, a crossword with the category "Sticky ________", three of the words were "Fingers", "Rice", and "Note".  The only word remaining was

_ICKET.

With a trip to the Caribbean on the line, the man guessed "Picket". 

At least the man picked up $1000 (the minimum prize on the show) for all his embarrassment.  And he already has twin daughters and a golden doodle.  What more does he need?

Tags: humor, wheel of fortune

Today I was reading something on Kindle.  In one place a word was divided up incorrectly.  One line ended with "pronoun- "

and the next line began with  "cement".  It took me a second to figure out what was going on.  What is pronoun cement?  It must be a concrete way to make your writing cohere as a unity.  (At least that is my pronouncement for today.)

Tags: humor, words

On Wheel of Fortune tonight, the category for the game's deciding puzzle was "Rhyme Time".  With each letter worth $6000, suspense mounted as the blanks were filled in. 

There were four words, with 3, 5, 3, and 10 letters respectively.  It soon became clear that the last two words were "and artichokes."  The last two letters of the second word were KS.

Things became clearer when someone guessed an L.  Then we knew that the second word was _ _ LKS. 

The person who guessed the L, the leading money winner at the time, guessed "Old folks and artichokes"--not a familiar phrase.  It was also clearly incorrect, since there was no L in the middle of the initial 3-leter word.

The next contestant then picked up the right answer--egg yolks and artichokes---and won $18000 to move into the lead.

Tags: humor, wheel of fortune

Each issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review has a cartoon caption contest.  I usually submit an entry.  They pick a winner and two runners-up.  And then online they have a longer list of "honorable mentions".  I made that list for the eighth time with the Nov-Dec 2015 contest, which shows a boy on a department store Santa's knee holding a copy of the magazine.  I have the boy saying,

"I want a codex of an apocryphal gospel, and this time no forgeries, OK?"

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

On Jeopardy tonight one contestant was a "senior fraud investigator".  Does that mean he investigates crimes perpetrated against the elderly, or crimes committed by the elderly? 

I can imagine all the senior fraud investigators gathering every year at an event called Codger Con. 

Tags: humor

Today in calculus class I asked the class how the find the integral of

sin(2x)/sin(x).

In a doubtful tone, one student asked, "Can we cancel?"  He had a feeling the answer was no.

I replied, "You want to cancel out sin? No, only God can do that."

Tags: campus life, humor

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

The results of the Biblical Archaeology Review cartoon caption contest for Jan-Feb 2013 have been announced.

For the fifth time, I made the honorable mention list. 

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

Last night at 2 AM, the clocks switched back to 1 AM in the annual shift from daylight time to standard time.

This is the closest we get to time travel, going back in time one hour.  If we didn't like what we were doing between 1 and 2 AM the first time,  we can try something different. 

This might have been a good day for weddings, since "2 became 1".   Just a thought.

Tags: current events, humor

I almost always submit an entry for the cartoon caption contest in the Biblical Archaeology Review, but most of my ideas are rather lame. 

Occasionally, though, I make the honorable mention list, as in July-August 2012.  (My other honorable mentions were in Nov. 2006, Nov. 2007, and Sept 2010.)

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

It's been raining in Ohio this weekend, with the arrival of the last vestiges of Hurrican Isaac.

Despite the dreary weather, a Labor Day game between the Reds and Phillies has begun in Cincinnati.  

The Phillies have struggled all year, and they have begun unloading expensive contracts and trying out new players.  Their pitcher today is one of those young players, a guy named Tyler Cloyd.  

Seeing that name made me wonder if the Phillies had any players named Gidney.  That could be a formidable one-two punch. 

I'm also reminded of the fact that baseball has an international appeal, and teams must be sending scouts everywhere.  The Phillies are a big-budget operation right now.  Have they actually been recruiting talent on the moon?

Tags: humor

Last night I was reading a murder mystery on Kindle when I ran into a word I'd never seen before:

 floccinaucinihilipilification

The handy Kindle dictionary helped me out, telling me that this word refers to the practice of estimating something to be worthless.  

So is the definition of this obscure word a piece of useless knowledge?  If you think so, you yourself have been guilty of floccinaucinihilipilification.

Tags: humor, words

Garrison Keillor's annual joke show was on the radio this weekend, and I caught part of it in the car this afternoon.

In one of the jokes, Jesus tells his disciples, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like 3 x squared plus 8x plus 1."

Peter then whispers to John, "What does that mean?"

John responds, "It's just one of his parabolas."

Tags: humor

Walking across campus yesterday, I noticed two Copper Minis parked near Bishop Woods. 

One had a pair of reindeer antlers attached to it.  The other had a license plate reading "TINY SUV". 

Tags: campus life, humor, license plates

An online dictionary defines the word "brethren" as

Tags: humor

At a Bible study I attended last week, one of the participants talked about the challenges faced by Bible translators in producing translations that are meaningful for various cultures.  

She said that in some cultures, it might make more sense to have Jesus say, "I am the sweet potato of life" rather than, "I am the bread of life". 

So in those translations, when God confronts Moses from the burning bush, does he give his name as "I YAM"?  

Just wondering.... 

Tags: humor

The results of the Sept/Oct 2010 BAR Cartoon Caption Contest have just been announced this week. 

I made the honorable mention list on this one, the third time I've managed that.

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

On the road tonight I saw a Pennsylvania license plate listing a dealer called Singh Auto World.  This caught my eye because I had never run across a car dealer with an Indian name before.  America is truly a melting pot.

A quick internet search revealed that Singh Auto World is a chain of used car lots in eastern Pennsylvania.  If they ever need a new advertising slogan, here's one:

"The Place to Go if You're Sikhing a Used Car" 

Tags: humor

This week the sign outside the Catholic Church on High Street carries the following message:

"Honk if you love Jesus.  Text while driving if you would like to meet him right away."

Tags: humor, oxford oh signs

One of the movies playing in Oxford right now is The Last Airbender.  It's supposed to be a big disappointment, not even as good as the cartoons on which it is based.

I remember seeing a few of the cartoons with Emily, our youngest.  I always made the same comment about the whole airbending thing

What is "airbending," anway?  I know what it means to break wind, so in airbending does one just bend the wind as opposed to breaking it?  

If so, can an airbender pass gas without anyone knowling?  That's a skill which could come in handy occasionally.  I don't think it could save the world, though.

Tags: humor

One of the liveliest blogs that I visit is the Evangel blog hosted by First Things. 

One of the bloggers there,  David T. Koyzis, recently posted a humorous poem about a professor struggling to grade student papers.  This poem is a take off on one of some of Lewis Carroll's nonsense verse, to which a link is provided. 

He invited people to add stanzas of their own, and I managed to construct one.

Tags: campus life, humor

Yesterday I received an email from Amazon about a mathematical monograph that will be published in February.

I  had a chuckle when I got to the final sentence of the "product description":

"The final part of the book is consecrated to the applications of the convex duality theory in the field of monotone operators."

This illustrates the minefields one encounters in working in an unfamiliar language.  (Remember "Ich bin ein Berliner"?)  Perhaps the author of the monograph has a dictionary in which "consecrated" is listed as a synonym of "dedicated" or "devoted".  But it's harder to get a feel for the distinctions among the ways these words are actually used in English.

There's certainly a sense in which the author's clumsy English is appropriate.  I anticipate that there is some beautiful mathematics in the monograph, and mathematical creativity is one of the highest expressions of  the abilities God has given us as creatures made in his image.

So anyway, if I contact the author, will he send me an anointed copy?

Tags: books, humor

Mathematical research is carried on by mathematicians all around the world, and the vast majority of this work is reported in the English language. 

That is a fortunate situation for mathematicians like me whose native language is English.   It means that I have access to almost all of the work in my research area. 

But it also means that  an increasing amount of the mathematical literature in the world is written in really bad English. 

I'm not complaining.  I'm thankful that Chinese mathematicians, for example, do the best they can with English rather than just write everything in Chinese.   I can read English and German, but that's the extent of my facility with written language. 

And sometimes I am treated to some unintentional humor while reading a paper in bad English.  In a paper I was reading recently, a writer reviewing the literature on his topic noted that one author had "removed some omissions" from a previous author's work. 

That made me stop and think.  I had never heard of anyone removing omissions.  How can you get rid of something that wasn't there in the first place? 

Then I thought about it some more.  Suppose an omission is present.  If someone then proceeds...

Tags: humor

It's been several years since I've seen Saturday Night Live, but I can remember that before they went to a commercial, they would sometimes focus the camera on  someone in the audience and put a funny message on the screen that made a comment about that person.  A message of that type occurred to me yesterday:

"Can't talk to himself without an interpreter."

Why did I happen to think of this?  Well, in discrete math class yesterday we were talking about relations--sets of ordered pairs. One of the exercises in the textbook dealt with the relation R consisting of pairs of people (A,B) who speak a common language.  So, for example, if person A speaks English and Chinese and person B speaks Russian and English, the pair (A,B) is an element of R, as is the pair (B,A).    

The exercise asked whether the relation had a certain list of properties.  One was the reflexive property.  (A relation S is reflexive if the pair (X,X) is in S for all X in the underlying set.)  The class quickly agreed that  the relation R in the exercise was reflexive.  We can all talk to ourselves, after all. 

And...

Tags: campus life, humor

One of my favorite features in the Biblical Archaeology Review is the cartoon caption contest. 

I always submit an entry. I've never won, but I have made the "honorable mention" list a couple of times--in Nov 2006 and Nov 2007.  So I'll keep trying. Most of my attempts are rather lame, but occasionally I come up with a good one.

Tags: bar caption contest, humor

Recently, while  my wife was watching "The Bourne Supremacy" on TV, it occurred  to me that any four-syllable noun could potentially  generate a title for another book/movie in this series.  For example:

• The Bourne Prosperity---Bourne finally remembers where he put his wallet.
• The Bourne Ventriloquy---Bourne throws his voice around.
• The Bourne Spectroscopy---the plot of this one includes a range of elements too numerous to mention here.
• The Bourne Philately---enemy operations stamped out.
• The Bourne Monotony---a marathon of these movies shown one after another.
• The Bourne Lobotomy---the end result of watching The Bourne Monotony.

Tags: books, humor

It has now been almost two weeks since I got home from the hospital, and life is starting to feel more normal,  The stitches came out on April 22, and I can write, trim my fingernails, use dental floss, and sleep without holding my right hand in some special position. 

I also started the rehab process this week.  I'm still a long way from being able to make a fist, but the fingers are gradually becoming more flexible.  Typing is going better.  I still get slowed down on words containing the letter p, of course.

In the hospital we started collecting jokes that friends passed along to us.  This week I posted a list of the 'top nine" consequences of the experience.  (There were originally ten, but one had to be removed.  That happens sometimes.)

9. Added a new term to my vocabulary:  necrotizing fasciitis.

8..Offered a role in new movie ``Attack of the Flesh-Eating Bacteria''.

7. Turned down Adrian Monk's request that I remove my left pinkie to restore symmetry.
 
6. My infection has been officially declared the worst April Fool's prank of 2009.

5. I am no longer invited to tea parties because I cannot hold a teacup with pinkie extended.

4. My grading...

Tags: humor, necrotizing fasciitis

Since last May I've been "playing chicken" with Garrison Keillor (unbeknownst to him).  As big a fan of his as I've been over the years, would I really be willing to lay down $40 to see his one man show in Oxford?

 As March 18, the day of the performance, approached, the pressure mounted.  What comments would he make about Miami University?  What song would he have his audience sing?  To find out, I would need to buy a ticket.

 Finally, about 6 hours before the show, I flinched.  I relented and purchased a ticket.

It turned out to be a great show, full of stories, sonnets, and songs.  My favorite line was his reference to contemporary praise and worship anthems as "7/11 songs"---7 words repeated 11 times.

The monologue culminated with a retelling of the main plotline of his novel Pontoon.  

I enjoyed that book, and  it was fun to hear him rehearse the story personally.

I'll post a report at Grace and Knowledge.

Tags: books, garrison keillor, humor, lectures

I found out yesterday that there's a third campus lecture scheduled for 7:30 PM on April 2---a  physicist talking about antimatter.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Oxford on April 2.  When a lecture on antimatter coincides with two other lectures  that matter, the results could be cataclysmic.

Tags: humor, lectures