Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 682
July 20, 2010
The majesty of the combine harvester. Oh, and a legitimately bionic cat, too.
This is one of my daughter's favorite books.
And it's great. It has terrific photographs of cows and pigs and horses and even a big red tractor. Just the kinds of farm paraphernalia that I would want introduced to my seventeen-month old.
And then I came upon this page:
The combine harvester?
In a book entitled MY FIRST FARM BOARD BOOK?
Really? The authors of this book decided to go with a combine harvester, piece of farm machinery that my wife...
Lacking less-than-vital information
There is a person named Lindsay Lohan and she is going to jail soon.
I know that Lindsay Lohan is a famous person, but I do not know why she is famous. As far as I know, I have never seen her in a movie or on television or heard her sing a song.
Perhaps she is like Paris Hilton, who I know is famous because she starred in a reality TV show and is the daughter of the man who owns the Hilton Hotels.
Or maybe she is like Miley Cyrus, who is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus and who sings...
Mired in hip-waggling and scat
My wife and I spent the evening listening to one of her former students, now a senior in college, perform with her jazz quartet.
I left the bar mystified as to why anyone would want to be a jazz singer. This young lady was clearly talented and she and her quartet put on an outstanding show, but a jazz singer seems to spend more time on the stage not singing than actually singing. She opened up each of the songs with her incredible voice, and she returned at the end of each song to wrap...
July 19, 2010
Organ swapping?
How about this for an idea?
Every year thousands of people die waiting for kidney and other organ transplants. It's tragic considering how many of us have an extra kidney just waiting to be transplanted.
Even more tragic, think about the number of perfectly good kidneys that are lost when patients die while waiting for heart, liver, pancreas and lung transplants each year.
Here's my plan:
If you are awaiting an organ of any kind other than a kidney (heart, liver, pancreas, lung...
Know thyself
I have friends whose daughter slept in a tiny bed at the foot of their own bed until she was five years old. Today that little girl is eight years old and is finally sleeping in her own room, but it took a long time to get there.
Probably not the best way to raise a child (by my friend's own admission), but surprisingly more common than you might think.
When my friend and his wife used to talk about this odd sleeping arrangement, they would say things like, "We know that we're crazy...
July 18, 2010
The world is slightly less interesting today
Scientists claim to have answered the question that has confounded philosophers for centuries:
Which came first? The chicken or the egg?
It was, they say, indisputably the chicken.
A team from Warwick and Sheffield universities examined the formation of a chicken's egg in microscopic detail and discovered that the shell was made from a protein found only in a chicken's ovaries.
I can't remember a time when I was opposed to scientific discovery, but the thought that my daughter will...
No cheese, a full beard and a lack of female leadership
It's the lack of consistency that often annoys me when it comes to religious tradition and belief.
It most often occurs with the strict adherence to certain lines of Scripture that conveniently validate one's personal beliefs while ignoring other line of Scripture altogether.
Leviticus 18:22, for example, forbids homosexuality and is viewed as the infallible word of God to a large but thankfully shrinking number of religious zealots.
But just a few lines later, Leviticus 19:19, which...
July 17, 2010
Playboy with tiny paper dresses
This morning, I brought Clara to her gym class and was subjected to the musical styling of a Journey cover band that transformed classic songs such as Don't Stop Believin' and Any Way You Want It into dorky versions of the same song thanks to the addition of a oh-shucks-golly-gee-wilikers lead singer.
Same words. Same music. Terrible singer. I don't get it.
What was wrong with playing the originals?
Even more befuddling was the cover of the Lady Gaga song Bad Romance that removed the...
How to write like a simpleton
One of the joyous aspects of becoming a published author has been watching people in my life take a crack at writing as well.
Today was an especially busy day in this regard.
In the span of three hours, I met with a friend about a novel that she is writing, spoke over the phone to a friend about the YA novel that he is now revising, and reviewed a possible Op-Ed piece for another friend via email.
Quite a bit of writing suddenly going on around me.
In discussing my friend's novel...
July 16, 2010
Rumble seats?
The 1970's were a strange time in America.
Disaster movies were quite popular throughout the decade. Movies like Poseidon Adventure, Airport, and The Towering Inferno were well received by audiences and critics alike.
But no movie was stranger than Earthquake, which was shown with Sensurroud, a series of large speakers and a 1,500 watt amplifier, that would pump in sub-audible "infra bass" sound waves at 120 decibels (equivalent to a jet airplane at takeoff), giving the viewer the...
