Posts Tagged: Benjamin Franklin

Writing — 2 Comments
20
May 11

Logistical Questions I Have In Regards To The Impending Rapture

We all know that tomorrow is the end of the world. I hope you’re not on God’s naughty list, or you’ll be headed towards an eternity of heat and sodomy. Of course, maybe you’re into that kind of thing. I’m not here to judge.

In any case, no matter how hip to the word of the Lord we might be, even the most devout among us probably have some questions we want answered about the impending rapture. If you know the answers, please be so kindly as to provide them in the comments below. I’m sure that there will be plenty of knowledgeable Christians surfing the net in their last few hours here on Earth.

1. What happens to all my books? Some people are understandably worried about their pets, but I don’t have any, and I don’t really care about a bunch of stupid animals and babies anyway. But I do have a lot of books. Can I take them with me up to Heaven? Or will there be some kind of library system?

2. Is there a dress code? Should I be wearing my tuxedo tomorrow in anticipation? Or is it more of a business casual type of affair?

3. What should I say to the people close to me who don’t get picked for Team God? I’ll be honest with you. My friends here are not what you would call bible humpers. They are almost certainly going to Hell. I’m worried that as I’m ascending up to Heaven, there will be a few awkward moments where I’ll be expected to say something encouraging. Any suggestions?

4. Who would win in a fight between Ben Franklin and the Devil? Strictly speaking, this isn’t a Rapture question, but it’s my last day to get an answer.

5. I’m sensitive to loud sounds. Should I be wearing ear plugs tomorrow? I know there’s going to be a lot of trumpeting and whatnot. But I’m worried that if I am wearing ear plugs, I won’t notice it’s time and I’ll miss the rapture all together.

6. Wait a minute. Didn’t Christ give his life so that all who have sinned would be saved? Didn’t he go down to Hell and bring forth all of the sinners who had ever lived and died and bring them up to Heaven? Won’t everyone be saved during the rapture?

7. Some people say the World will end this year. Others, like Roland Emmerich, say it’s going to end in 2012. Who’s right?

8. What happens if the Rapture doesn’t happen tomorrow? I quit my job this week, sold my car and house, and took the money and went on a wild bender in Las Vegas. It will be might embarrassing if the Rapture gets postponed. What kind of contingency plans are in place for Christians who shot their wad a little early?

Thanks to everyone for your help. May God have mercy on your soul.

Please Note: This blog, a God-fearing, Christian Blog, also expects to be raptured. So after tomorrow, it will be gone. You’ll only be able to access it through Google’s cache.

Writing — 2 Comments
9
Nov 10

I Have Been Saving Daylight For Years, Enough To Power A Small Planet For Almost An Entire Day

I consider myself to be something of a genius. I read The Hobbit when I was in third grade. I’ve solved a Rubik’s Cube in under two minutes. If you’d like a beta version of my time machine, give me a holler. But if there’s one thing I just can’t get my head around, it’s Daylight Savings Time. I mean seriously, what the fuck?

Every time I ask for an explanation as to why we have Daylight Savings Time, I’m told that it’s for the farmers. Really? Since when have we as a society given a damn about the farmers? Did congress get together and decide, “Man, those farmers are getting a raw deal, what with all the foreclosures and factory farms and John Cougar Mellencamp songs. Let’s throw them a bone with Daylight Savings Time?”

And when I ask, “If it’s so important to have the extra hour of daylight during the summer, than why don’t we keep the clocks that way year round,” people just stare at me blankly. Seriously, what the fuck?

Daylight Savings has come and gone for another season, so with some of those extra daylight hours I’ve saved up over the years, I thought I would finally solve this inexplicable mystery.

It turns out that Daylight Savings Time was invented by Benjamin Franklin. Some people contend that George Vernon Hudson, a New Zealander, came up with it first. But if that were the case, it would be the first time a sheepfucker* had invented anything useful.

In reading through Old Ben’s proposals, he explained that because both time and space are relative, it would be possible to accelerate the Earth’s rotation during the summer months, thereby slowing down time and earning an extra hour of daylight. This was very important to Ben because he had so many inventions he was working on. Then during the winter, the Earth would slow back to it’s normal pace, helping to speed us through the winter months.

Of course, Franklin died long before the technology became available to alter the Earth’s rotation. It wasn’t until 1918 that Daylight Savings took affect.

Now that I understand how it works, I still think Daylight Savings is retarded. We should have gone with McCarthy’s plan, and stolen daylight from the Soviets. Then we’d have plenty of extra daylight today, and we wouldn’t have to share it with anyone.

Proud to be an American!

Please Note, this blog is being written at exactly the same time you are reading it. Thanks Ben Franklin!

*I wasn’t sure if the term Kiwi was more or less politically correct than sheepfucker, so I decided to play it safe.

Writing — No Comments
10
Oct 09

Don’t Let All These Facts About Robber Barons Bore You. They Are True!

robber_baronYou know the movie Citizen Kane? The one based on William Randolph Heast? Orson Welles plays Charles Foster Kane, the newspaper magnate and robber baron. He jealously guards his paper kingdom, hoarding all the nation’s periodicals for his own personal profit while secretly pining for his long lost teddy bear, Rosebud.

These are facts.

The Robber Barons ruled the 1800′s with their long names and pointed baron hats, robbing from the poor and filling their own coffers. They founded universities and built museums. They owned everything, including the government.

That all ended with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act in 1914. Congress broke up the monopolies and took away their baron hats.

Our list today does not celebrate the greatest captains of industry, but the monopolies themselves. The most famous of the Robber Barons did not necessarily have the best monopolies. Who wants to sit on a huge pile of oil? Or a giant heap of iron ore? These are the guys who, when they took you to check out their garage, really had something to brag about:

#6 James Lewis Kraft

Kraft invented the first processed cheese in 1912. By 1916, he had sold more than 6 million pounds of the very orange, but not very delicious, food like substance. His genius lay not only in the revolutionary industrial process, which allowed his cheese to be canned almost indefinitely, but in the fact that he convinced America that it was actually edible.

The purveyors of traditional cheese found themselves pushed out of the market by Kraft, whom they accused of fraud. They asked the government to regulate his products, and federal guidelines ultimately ruled that the fat and moisture content of pasteurized process cheese must match that of natural cheese. Since Kraft’s invention, per capita cheese consumption in the United States has risen from 3 pounds a year to 30. And despite what your senses are telling you, the law says that it is actually cheese.

#5 Benjamin Franklin

When Franklin invented electricity, not only did he usher in a new era of science and technology, he also became insanely wealthy. Even cooler, he wielded his lightning rod like an Olympian God, using it to defeat the British and give birth to the United States of America.

His son, William, not realizing its value, eventually sold his electricity patent to Thomas Edison, allowing the inventor to finally find some value in such devices as the light bulb and the electric toaster.

#4 Cornelius Vanderbilt

Everyone loves the board game Monopoly right? Or at least the idea of the game, because it turns out that actually playing Monopoly is inordinately boring. Well, no robber baron quite captures the flavor of the old board game like Vanderbilt. I mean, he owned all the railroads. Wasn’t that the best thing in the game? All four railroads?

Other awesome facts about Vanderbilt: Before he bought all the railroads, he had a monopoly on steam ships. This guy really knew how to get around. In today’s dollars, Vanderbilt was the second wealthiest American in history.

To top it off, Vanderbilt’s nickname was the Commodore. How cool is that? From now on, everyone has to call me the Commodore.

#3 Burgess Charles Montgomery

Before Mr. Burns became a fixture on American television, Montgomery was the quintessential corporate scoundrel. Because of the dangers inherent in nuclear technology, the US government initially allowed him a monopoly to insure the communists did not get the secret.

Montgomery for a short time had a monopoly on atoms themselves. Of course, the government soon wised up, and the monopoly was revoked. Montgomery secretly sold his atomic secrets to the Russians, for which he eventually went to jail. A very, very rich jail. A jail made of solid gold.

#2 Frederick August Otto Schwarz

Toys. One man owned all the toys in the world. He became rich, and therefore became jaded. He forgot what it meant to be a child. All joy passed from his life. His toys lost their appeal.

Until one day, an orphan boy showed up on the man’s door step. The young rapscallion reminded Schwarz of his own childhood. Together they made toys that every boy and girl could love. And Schwarz became even more rich and powerful.

He still lives today, his brain mechanically fused to a toy steam engine, insuring him of eternal life. A life of endless circles and tiny pine trees.

#1 Milton Snavely Hershey

His parents gave him the middle name Snavely. Of course he went on to become a twisted, evil candy magnate. But who cares? He literally lived in the Land of Chocolate, with rivers of chocolate, and chocolate dogs you could eat out of your hands.

Yes, Milton S. Hershey was the greatest Robber Baron in history, wearing his little chocolate hat to steal the candy from babies.

Lyric Of The Day:

Who can take a sunrise
Sprinkle it in dew
Cover it in chocolate
and a miracle or two?

The candyman
The candyman can
The candyman can cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good

Who can take a rainbow
Wrap it in a sigh
Soak it in the sun
and make a strawberry lemon pie?

The candyman?

The candyman
The candyman can
The candyman can cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good

“The Candy Man Can”
-Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley

Uncategorized — No Comments
7
Sep 09

It Is Also Well Drawn


#5 Dr. Mcninja

See Introduction | #9 |#8 | #7|#6

Do you remember when ninjas all of a sudden became really cool? It happened at about the same time robots became cool. And dinosaurs. And zombies.

Therein lies the beauty of Dr. McNinja: its mastery of our cultural zeitgeist. Dr. McNinja is not simply chasing after the latest iconography. It is creating it. The comic’s love affair with the pop of our times goes way beyond the pirate killing ninja protagonist. It includes his gorilla receptionist, Judy, and his raptor-mounted, bandit child sidekick, Gordito. Yes, he has faced off against zombies and vampires, but he has also fought the clone of Ben Franklin, and an antagonist known simply as the Ghost Wizard.

My favorite is the appearance of gun wielding dolphins. As the t-shirt says, dolphins don’t need thumbs…for revenge.

Dr. McNinja is unlike most comics you find on the Internet. It is not a single strip of panels, which always features a self-contained joke. It is also well drawn. Because it is instead modeled after a comic book, reading one panel will not mean much to you. It might just be a picture of the doctor driving with a wizard in his backseat. It might be a sketch of a giant lumberjack smashing the doctor’s office. The only way to truly appreciate the adventures of Dr. McNinja is the way God intended, from the beginning.

Dr. McNinja is always bizarre, and always fun and interesting, and worth reading from cover to cover. Except there is no cover. It’s a webcomic. And you can read it for free on the Internet. Awesome.

Lyric Of The Day:

If you were here
Would you calm me down
Or settle the score?
The feelings I fight (I’m a stranger in town)
Burn so bright (but if you were here)
The feelings I fight (would you ease my mind?)
(Come on!)

The sleep fled from my eyes
And I, I know that I need some
Give a thought to the one that you know

Or would you calm me down
When the breath gets shallow and fast?

“The Ghost Of You Lingers”
-Spoon

Writing — No Comments
11
Aug 09

Conqueror Of The Old Northwest


Well, it has finally happened. The email responses to Dance With Sunflowers have become so voluminous, I can no longer keep up. So I have decided to start a new feature of my blog where I answer reader questions.

Let’s call it the Weekly Mail Blog.

Email #1

Dear Doc,

Where have you been? You use to post several times a week. But it’s been months since your last post. What’s going on?

Missing you,
Holly Graham
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Dear HG,

As much as I like blogging every day, there are other things I like just as much, like trips to the dentist or sentry duty. If I blog too often, I will be neglecting these other worthwhile pursuits, and I could end up as the next Wil Wheaton.

But rest assured that I will keep blogging as much as I can, when I am not busy doing other things I enjoy more.

The Good Doctor
_______

Email #2

Dear Doc,

I have been reading your blog, and I’ve been thinking, “Hey, it can’t be that hard. I should start a blog of my own.”

Any advice for a first time blogger? Is it even possible for a guy to start blogging without the backing of a huge corporation and unlimited resources?

Aggressively opinionated,
Roger Matthews
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Dear RM,

I’m sorry to say that most blogging sites require a master’s degree in one of the hard sciences and three letters of reference from people that don’t actually know you but will vouch for your forthrightness. As if that weren’t enough, you must also show proof of certificate from one of three fully accredited etiquette and good manners training programs.

Fortunately, several of the top universities now feature major opportunities in microcommunications. Early figures indicate 27% of graduates are able to secure at least part time blogging employment within the first six months.

The Good Doctor
_______

Email #3

Dear Doc,

Who’s your favorite historical figure?

Antiquated,
Jonas Abraham
Bucksport, Maine

Dear JA,

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass ‘armonica’. He formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity, and as a political writer and activist he supported the idea of an American nation. As a diplomat during the American Revolution he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence of the United States possible.

Franklin is credited as being foundational to the roots of American values and character, a marriage of the practical and democratic Puritan values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of Henry Steele Commager, “In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat.” To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin, “the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become.”

Franklin became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming very wealthy, writing and publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin was interested in science and technology, and gained international renown for his famous experiments. He played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin & Marshall College and was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society. Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to 1788 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Toward the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent abolitionists.

His colorful life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and status as one of America’s most influential Founding Fathers, has seen Franklin honored on coinage and money; warships; the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, namesakes, and companies; and more than two centuries after his death, countless cultural references.

And to answer you question, my favorite historical figure is George Rogers Clark.

The Good Doctor

Lyric of the Day:

Everything alive must die
Every building built to the sky will fall
Don’t try to tell me my
Everlasting love is a lie

Everlasting everything
Oh nothing could mean anything at all

Every wave that hits the shore
Every book that I adore
Gone like a circus, gone like a troubadour
Everlasting love for ever more

Oh I know this might sound sad
But everything goes both good and the bad
It all adds up and you should be glad
Everlasting love is all you have

Everlasting Everything
-Wilco

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