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I think if you want to mess with someone, a fun thing to do would be to have your email signature say “Sent from your iPhone X” or “Send from your Galaxy S8” or whatever phone you know they have.

Even better would be if they read it while at their computer, not on their phone.

Since it’s football season, that means I’m watching TV.

And since I’m watching TV, that means I’m seeing commercials.

One things I’ve noticed about the various car commercials is that various car manufacturers are promoting their version of collision avoidance or pedestrian detection or the like.

The most common theme seems to be showing distracted people darting into traffic. The next common theme seems to be showing distracted drivers not noticing normal traffic patterns.

Either way, the message is that one (whether driver or pedestrian) doesn’t need to pay attention closely to traffic or road conditions or potential hazards because the car will handle it.

I realize there are emergency situations where the car can detect and avoid a collision better than a person can. The commercials are trying to sell “safe car” but they are not accounting for human psychology. The commercials are training the millions of viewers to trust that cars will fix their mistakes and they can relax behind the wheel, which I think will make the roads less safe.

Remember people, the way the law is written, if you are driving a vehicle then you are responsible for what it does.

I don’t remember what responses I had back when I was younger and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

But now that I’m older and know better, let me tell you the answer I’d like to give:

Retired.

Aim high, kids.

As you may know, today is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. I won’t go into all the history and details of the reformation, as there are many other knowledgeable sites with good information if you’re so inclined.

Today’s topic is actually better suited to John Wycliffe than Martin Luther, but I think they would share the same sentiment, along with a bit of Aldous Huxley.

Luther (and Wycliffe) was fighting against church officials and the rules they imposed. Not because they rules per se, but because they were not part of the Bible. Luther’s cause was to obey God, and if man’s rules didn’t comply with God’s then it was man’s rules that lost out.

The reformation started by Luther and continued by Wycliffe included putting God’s words in the hands of the people. Rather than needing a priest to tell the people what God thought, the people should read the scripture for themselves. The main point being that people should read the Bible for themselves, pray to God themselves, and generally interact with God directly rather than through a middleman.

Luther was known for writing songs that were to be sung by the congregation, rather than sung by a choir and heard by the congregation. Wycliffe was known for translating the Bible into the common language of the people, rather than keeping it in the fancy academic languages of Latin/Greek/Hebrew.

What do we see happening today? Rather than church leaders forbidding people to sing themselves or read their own Bibles for themselves, we have the Brave New World approach: have an entertaining worship band that is so loud that it doesn’t matter if the congregation sings or not, and put the Bible verses on the screen so the congregation doesn’t need to look in their own Bibles.

I don’t think it’s being done on purpose to make lazy/uninformed Christians, but it can get there pretty easily. Make things so convenient that congregants don’t need to practice any individual disciplines.

To throw a little bit of Orwell here (more Animal Farm than 1984), what’s to keep the pastor from rephrasing the verse he puts on the screen, to better make his point? What’s to keep him from dropping Bible verses from the slides after a while? Put something on a giant screen, and people will pay attention to it.

We’re coming full circle from the start of the reformation in that people are happy to have a middleman do the work of reading, singing, and praying for them so they don’t have to.

I recently read this sentence in a publication:

In life’s darkest moments, when nothing can minimize the unveiled devastation of a terminal diagnosis, news of a loved one’s death, a wayward spouse, drug use turned into addiction or crushing debt, do you value the offer of rescue?

You know what I thought when I read that?

How does drug use turn into crushing debt?

I realize debt usually goes along with drug use, as people waste money they have, run out, and still have to find money to continue their addiction. Plus, as we all learned in school, Drugs Are Really Expensive.

But I think that was not the idea they wanted to convey with that sentence. And I think the Oxford Comma would have helped clarify their thoughts. Here’s how I would re-write the sentence:

In life’s darkest moments – when nothing can minimize the unveiled devastation of a terminal diagnosis, news of a loved one’s death, a wayward spouse, drug use turned into addiction, or crushing debt – do you value the offer of rescue?

See how there is a comma between each separate item in the sentence, leaving no ambiguity for the reader. I see why they thought they should avoid the comma – it made for too many commas because of their clauses. But using hyphens to separate the clauses frees up the commas so that one can be used for the list.

We took a week to visit famous places in Pennsylvania and New York (specifically Philadelphia and Manhattan).

Day 5

Had some breakfast in the hotel room. Cereal and milk, because of the fridge. Plus some other items that didn’t need to be heated.

First stop of the day – the subway station. It was located two blocks away. An uneventful walk there, and then we were down in the station. First order of business was to buy MTA cards for the family. However, subway stations are not setup to be the starting point of a family journey. The MTA agent in her tollbooth-like enclosure said she could help me if I had a problem with my card, but to buy a card I had to use the self-serve kiosk. The self-serve kiosk lets you buy one card at a time, and requires a number of menu selections.

I waited until there was no one in line, then I started. Bought a card, bought another card, then it wouldn’t let me buy a third card. I switched credit cards – my guess was the credit-card fraud department figured more than two swipes of a credit card at a self-serve kiosk means that someone’s card was stolen and the thief is looking to quickly convert it to different currency. So I switched credit cards and slogged through two more transactions.

At this point, I felt sorry for the people who had lined up to use the kiosk, so I stepped aside to let them use the thing. Then I returned with a third credit card for the last two MTA cards. I handed them to Alpha and Beta, who liked the feeling of responsibility and freedom with an MTA card, but I kept Gamma’s and Delta’s cards because I had a feeling they wouldn’t hold on to them very well.

So Some Wife and Alpha and Beta swiped themselves through to the platform. I lined up Delta and Gamma in front of the turnstile. Swipe one card: “Go”, swipe the next card: “Go”, swipe the third card and walk my self through.

It would be a lot easier if they’d let you combine riders on one ticket. On the plus side though, some of our stops were short enough that they were considered legs of one trip and so we weren’t charged for them.

Our hotel was up by the Lincoln Tunnel, and our first stop was the World Trade Center. It was early enough in the morning that there were a bunch of people on the subway trains. The boys enjoyed the whole process, especially getting to stand and hang onto things in a moving vehicle.

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We took a week to visit famous places in Pennsylvania and New York (specifically Philadelphia and Manhattan).

Day 4

Woke up and went down to the main floor for breakfast. The breakfast had a lot of options, including a few microwaves so you could heat things to your own satisfaction.

Then we got ready for the day. The plan was to pack up and head out of Philly, spend the day at Diggerland USA, and end up at our hotel in NYC for dinner.

It took a few trips to the parking garage to get the van loaded. Kids were well-fed from the hotel breakfast, and it was only 30-45 minutes away, so we were in good shape.

Only problem – it was about 100 degrees out.

When planning the trip, I saw that walk-in prices were $37 per person, but $32 if you buy online. I waited to buy online and was going to do it on the trip, since I could show them my phone or whatever instead of having to print out tickets. But while we were in Philly, we grabbed a brochure for Diggerland and it had a $27 admission coupon. So I grabbed 5 more, in order to get the whole family’s tickets for that price.
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