Even Teachers Can Be Doubtful of Smart
In highschool, I took my first biology class and sat at the lab table with cool people the first week. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be cool, I just liked the people. They were always doing amuzing things. Most of time the amusement was tied to future punishment. But I like the oddball. It seems the odd is many times more real and honest than the supposed perfection of the pretty people.
Anyway, after a week I had to choose. Follow the fun of odd or follow my passions centered around science. I moved from the back corner lab table to the front and center lab table with the smart dull people. I took my 1st test and received my expected 100%. Biology came easy for me.
To my dismay, my teacher called me to her desk and wanted to know who’s test I copied. Talk about being speechless. It’s true I didn’t study, but that didn’t mean I cheated. It just meant some things come easy for me.I was with the “bad” crowd in the back and moved up front for the test. Cheating seemed a logical conclusion to her.
This teacher turned into a life long mentor and friend. With her encouragement, I interned at Southwest Research in high school and later was hired as a student scientist, even before I graduated from college. She is special and recently had the Peggy Carnahan Elementary School named after her.
My physics training and professional work on the Cruise Missile program underscores a simple fact: “Drawing conclusion with insufficient information is a risky business…”
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Creativity Can Get You In Trouble
I grew up with a sister and brother, both older than me. I worked at being the class clown and most of the time succeeded. People like a clown. People are not so fond of smart. People should stop and consider it takes being smart to really be funny. But sometimes, the creativity that goes along with smart can get you in trouble.
My sister was watching me or some would say, babysitting me one day. I had been goofing around outside with my friend and broke a pocket knife blade in half. I instantly fell upon the opportunity. I went in the house and got ketchup. I pressed the broken blade against my upper arm and pored ketchup around the blade. It was an awesome looking wound.
I then went running through the house screaming looking for my older sister. It worked. She screamed and turned white as a sheet. It seems she might have even cried a bit if she hadn’t been so mad. I felt bad. I think maybe I had gone just a little too far, but it did create a quite the unique memory.
I wonder if my sis remembers the event as well as I. Probably better… :]
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Lest we should forget what war leaves behind… Belgium. 5 months. 500,000 dead and this before we got really good at killing.
LONDON — Harry Patch, the last soldier to fight in the trenches of Europe during World War I, died Saturday at the age of 111, his care home in southwest England said.
Patch — nicknamed “The Last Tommy” by Britain’s media — was conscripted into the British army at the age of 18 and served as a machine gunner with the 7th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. He was 19 when he fought in the Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, in Belgium in July-November 1917 in which an estimated 500,000 soldiers died.
That battle was one of the bloodiest in the conflict. One of the opposing German soldiers was an Austrian named Adolf Hitler, who as leader of Nazi Germany went on to launch World War II in Europe.
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The Bearer of Bad News Beware!
It is easy to not like the bearer of bad news. Somehow the message is tied directly to the messenger. Take for example Jeremiah. He was much more than a bull frog or just a friend of mine. He was a prophet, consistently bearing bad news…
“When the priest Pashhur son of Immer, the chief officer in the temple of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin at the LORD’s temple. The next day, when Pashhur released him from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, “The LORD’s name for you is not Pashhur, but Magor-Missabib. For this is what the LORD says: ‘I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends;” said Jeremiah
Jeremiah was one of a kind. He brought bad news. He was beatened and tortured. Then tells his captor he is to be named, “Fear of every side”. In those days, a name was important. You were what you were named, just like now you are what you eat.
In those days, it was tough being a prophet. I think much like today it is tough being a prophet. People don’t like the bearers of bad news. Then, the tithes dry up and the bills don’t get paid. The economics of bad news was probably much the same yesterday as today.
ZINGER: It is much more profitable to bring good news, as our nations goes to hell.
Ouch! Where did that come from?
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Super Burgers are not for Wimps!
My sister and her husband are visiting from back east. It’s been fun chatting about stuff from our childhood and the issue of food surfaced. We were remembering how creative mom was in making meals cheap. I think the most famous of all meals is the “one dish meal”, but that’s not the one that stuck in her mind or better yet throat.
The big memory was the Super Burger! Get your pen out. You’ll want to share this with your family. Get some ground meat, not much. Pan sear it. Add a can of mixed vegetables. Squirt in some ketchup. Squirt in some mustard. Mix it all up and slap it between a couple of buns. God works in mysterious ways. You eat that a couple times and you will never complain about the one dish meal again. 
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