Spare change

Unsubstantiated rumour has it that a group of atheists and agnostics wants to remove the motto IN GOD WE TRUST from American coins and replace it with CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

Hard luck story

In the Chicago area when I was growing up people purchased their bed linens in stores accessible only by the many railways blanketing the region. When the railways declined most of these stores went out of business, except for one, which became known as the area's only. . .

The Mad Professor’s Song

It’s that time of year again. The time for marking papers and preparing exams. Sometimes paper-marking inspires fits of anger and frustration. Other times it inspires poetry, one of which I post below, with apologies to Lewis Carroll.

He thought he saw a hyperbolic
Comment overreach:
He looked again and found
An eccentricity of speech.
“Perhaps I’d better look,” said he,
“For someone else to teach.”

He thought he saw true talent
In an essay on Descartes:
He looked again and what he found
Quite rent his hopeful heart.
“I feel like quitting now,” he pined,
Before I even start.”

He thought he saw, but for a time,
A brilliant simile:
He looked again and saw instead
A bad analogy.
“If this be reasoning,” quoth he,
“Then reason I shall flee.”

He thought he saw an argument
With solid evidence:
He looked again: a mere assertion
Struggled to make sense.
“My brain is weary,” he complained,
“At such a lame defence.”

He thought he saw, while reading this,
A clever turn of phrase:
He looked again and, sad to say,
Sheer doggerel met his gaze.
“He’d best leave verse to other folk
Who know poetic ways.”

© David T. Koyzis, 2010

Today's history lesson

In 1927 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London settled in Newfoundland's favour the longstanding dispute between that dominion and Québec over this piece of the mainland. Thereafter the Québec government appointed a special minister-without-portfolio to attempt to undo this highly unpopular decision. This official became known to history as. . . (drum roll please and then click on comments)

Canada versus the US of A

I seem to have missed this when it first came out, but better late than never: Love Thy Neighbour, by 1989 Redeemer graduate Lloyd Rang, who, I seem to recall, majored in comedy writing.

The typewriter

Those of us above a certain age remember the trusty typewriter, on which we patiently rewrote our term papers after painstakingly composing them in longhand.



This now obsolete machine was immortalized nearly six decades ago by Swedish-American composer Leroy Anderson in his humorous piece, The Typewriter. My question is: might its humour be lost on the younger generation, most of whose members have never even seen, much less heard, one of these ancient word processors?

Copy-editing 101

Rule # 14: Eliminate ambiguous meanings from titles: Interview with an Ex-Vampire Novelist.

BBC documentaries

I recall seeing this on television as a child. It makes one appreciate the hardworking farmers who produce so much of our food.



While we're at it, the BBC broadcast the following clip a little over two months ago — on 1 April, to be exact!

Building our vocabulary

I came up with most of these a few years ago and posted them on my blog piecemeal. Here they are in one place:

leprokhan, n. 1. an Irish gnome misspelt; 2. a Mongol ruler with skin condition.

vegetarian, n. a person who avoids meat and eats only vegetables.

seminarian, n. a person who eats only seeds.

Schwarzeneggerländer, n. An inhabitant of California.

Leningrad, prop. n. former name of city of St. Petersburg, Russia, from 1924 to 1991.

Undergrad, prop. n. the St. Petersburg subway system.

Koyzistan, prop. n. A former Soviet republic in central Asia.

Paradigms, pl. n. for definition click here.

Bebop, n. 1. a sophisticated type of jazz developed after the Second World War, employing experimental tonal and rhythmic forms; 2. the name of one of the juvenile dinosaurs in Barney and Friends.

Parallel fifths, pl. n. (music), for definition click here.

Relativism, n. a variant of ancestor worship.

faux pas, n. surrogate dads.

Broadmindedness, n. the mental state predisposing one to accept the truth claims of a plethora of mutually incompatible reductionisms.

Narrowmindedness, n. the stubborn refusal to admit that the sheer variety in the cosmos might be reduced to a single key element.

Um, I don't get it. . .

Methinks the Russian news service Interfax hath fallen for ye olde April Fool's joke: The Anglican Church to face a new clerical reform. From its report:

When you a person is hired [sic], especially to a British state religious organization he shouldn’t be discriminated for his confession. The Anglican Church should give an example of fighting against xenophobia in our multicultural tolerant society and give equal opportunities to all people no matter if they believe in God, gods or any other power,” the [Rev Anthony Priddis] stressed.

Priddis has not excluded the possibility of future ordaining atheists in the Anglican Church, the weekly reports.

On the other hand, given recent precedent, maybe there is something to this after all.

Scorsese does Hitchcock

Anyone who knows Alfred Hitchcock's classic suspense films will love this wonderfully creative film short, The Key to Reserva, directed by Martin Scorsese. The major reference is, of course, to North by Northwest, including the haunting score composed by the great Bernard Herrmann, but see if you can detect allusions to some of Hitch's other films.



David Cornelius has written an illuminating review of this film. Might the Academy Awards have a category for it?

PDQ Bach

I discovered Peter Schickele's inimitable musical humour as a young man, and now my daughter loves it too. We both laugh uproariously at the antics of the fabled PDQ Bach, the last and certainly the least of old Johan's many children. Here are some excerpts from Schickele and company's recent Jekyll & Hyde tour:

Today's challenge

English-speaking Calvinists are generally familiar with TULIP:

Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints

However, given that some might see TULIP as old hat, today's challenge is to come up with another floral acronym that expresses the truths of Reformed Christianity. For example:

Perseverance of the saints
Authority of scripture
Noetic effects of the fall
Salvation in Jesus Christ
Yes to God’s grace

Entries may be left in the Comments below.

Judicial overreach?

The following report may or may not have been carried in the Canadian press:

OTTAWA - The federal government has decided not to contest an Ontario court ruling that henceforth people unable to use their legs and confined to wheelchairs must be legally considered able to walk. The decision is a controversial one, but the court’s reasoning is that the use of the term walking to cover only those able to propel themselves with their own legs is discriminatory and violates the equality guarantees of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court further argues that the popular conception that only people able to support their own weight with their lower limbs can be considered to walk is based on outmoded tradition that amounts to little more than atavistic prejudice. The immediate implication of the ruling is that all signs indicating the presence of “wheelchair ramps” must now be replaced with new signs calling attention to “walking ramps.” Over the longer term public school curricula will have to be changed to reflect the new court-mandated definition.

Improbable? Decreasingly so.