Sunday Stealing – Doing It for Ourselves

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

This week we aren’t stealing, we’re contributing! These are questions suggested by our “usual suspects.” They were entertaining, which isn’t a surprise because our participants are bright and fun. Thanks to everyone who took part.

DIY Meme – Doing It for Ourselves

The obvious song.

1. Would you rather have every traffic light turn green or always get the best parking spot? (Kwizgiver

As a person who takes the bus a lot and doesn’t have to worry about parking as often as most, clearly the latter. And of course, I’ll always choose green anyway.

2. What’s the most difficult thing you have ever done? (Gold in the Clouds

Physically, it might have been crawling/hobbling down a mountain in Utah in 1994 with what turned out to be a torn meniscus.

My contribution

3. What information do you know that you are proud of/happy about, but others say, “Who cares?” (Roger

There are so many! It’s faded somewhat, but I could tell you a state by its telephone area code, which remains a geographic identifier to this day. I wrote about it here, and someone I knew well said, “You must have too much time on your hands.”

But the big one is knowing all of the U.S. Presidential terms by year, even those who died in office. So I know there were three Presidents in both 1841 and 1881. This is useful when examining the history of wars, recessions, land acquisitions, and similar events.

4. What mystery do you wish you knew the answer to? (Myra/Mevely)

There’s even a well-regarded book about it: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. And I think even more about the converse, about seemingly good things happening to arguably bad people.

5. What small, ordinary thing brings you disproportionate joy? (Country Dew)

Rainbows, fer sure. As I’ve noted here, we have a rainbow-creating front door, and even little rainbows cause me indescribable giddiness.

6. What time do you go to sleep/wake up?  (Annie)

Oh, geez, going to bed sometime between 10:30 pm and 2 am, depending on how much is running through my head. Up at 5 am to 7:30 am.

7. What is your favorite sleeping position? (Lisa

On the side. I need at least two pillows.

8. Describe your personal Utopia. (Pandora

No more wars, no more hunger, a clean environment and we can teleport.

9. Imagine that you have a machine that can create any new invention for you based on your description. What do you ask the machine to create, and why? (Plastic Mancunian

A miocroplastics/PCB vacuum cleaner that would suck up large bodies of water to separate the bad stuff from the good. You could have them at water treatment plants. The why is that too much of our water is potentially or actually dangerous to us.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

R is for Rainbows

I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.

double-rainbow-lrgBecause I was bereft of a topic, I decided to Google the word rainbows. Interesting things I found:

About Rainbows

Author Donald Ahrens in his text Meteorology Today describes a rainbow as “one of the most spectacular light shows observed on earth”. Indeed the traditional rainbow is sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors and diverted to the eye of the observer by water droplets. The “bow” part of the word describes the fact that the rainbow is a group of nearly circular arcs of color all having a common center.

Think You Know Rainbows? Look Again

Although the most common rainbow is a single crescent containing every color from red through violet, if you pay close attention, you will discover that rainbows come in a surprising variety of colors and shapes. And scientists are finally figuring out why.

From Wiktionary:

From Middle English reinbowe, reinboȝe, from Old English reġnboga ‎(“rainbow”), from Proto-Germanic *regnabugô ‎(“rainbow”), equivalent to rain +‎ bow ‎(“arch”). Cognate with West Frisian reinbôge ‎(“rainbow”), Dutch regenboog ‎(“rainbow”), German Regenbogen ‎(“rainbow”), Danish regnbue ‎(“rainbow”), Swedish regnbåge ‎(“rainbow”), Icelandic regnbogi ‎(“rainbow”).

XKCD (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License).
rainbow-xkcd

Bible verses about rainbows (Genesis 9:12-17 and others)

God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth…”

Welcome to Reading Rainbow® Skybrary Family

Skybrary is a carefully curated, ever-expanding interactive library of digital books and video explorations designed to engage young readers and foster a love of learning.

rainbowbridge
Rainbow Bridge National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)

Rainbow Bridge is one of the world’s largest known natural bridges. The span has undoubtedly inspired people throughout time–from the neighboring American Indian tribes who consider Rainbow Bridge sacred, to the 85,000 people from around the world who visit it each year.

The Couch in Rainbow Colors: ‘L.G.B.T.-Affirming’ Therapy

Started in 2006, Antioch’s program is, to its leaders’ knowledge, the country’s first and only graduate-level L.G.B.T.-affirming clinical psychology specialization.

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