The Time Tax

I hate the springing forward to Daylight Savings Time. “The powers that be” take an hour of your day away from you around springtime under the auspices of giving everyone an hour of sunlight in the evening. I think it must benefit big business somehow; otherwise why would they do it?

They do give you your hour back in the fall with the end of Daylight Savings time. I love the fall back as much as I hate the spring ahead.

What do they do with all that time? I’m sure they invest it in savings account with time bank that has a high rate of interest. For several months they earn interest on all that time but you only get your hour back. Nobody knows how many years, months, days, hours and minutes of interest that they earn of how they choose to spend them.

One Hell of a Meeting

Attending:

Abraham Lincoln, 16^th President of the United States

Homer, Greek poet from Turkey

Jesus of Nazareth

Mohammed of Mecca

St. Augustine of Hippo

Moderator: Bob Mathas

President Lincoln. Slavery has existed in one form or another for thousands of years and one could argue that it still exists since people still are dehumanized, and forced to work in extreme conditions under abuse or threat of abuse. What convinced you that slavery in the United States had to stop, even if it resulted in a civil war and the loss of over 600,000 lives?

Homer: Tell me an ancient Greek story that you didn’t include in the Iliad or Odyssey.

Jesus: My Lord, tell me more about the Kingdom of Heaven.

Mohammed. I have a question and a follow-up. When God revealed His word to you through the Angel Gabriel, was His teaching peaceful? And, how would you respond to the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims today?

St. Augustine. Please tell me more about the Incident where you and your friends stole the pears from a neighbor’s tree for no good reason. I’ve read the story but tell me about it and how it changed your life?

Joe Scientist

My cell phone sounds the “Doctor Who” theme at 7:30 a.m. I press the snooze feature and, in what seems like a minute, “Doctor Who” is playing again. But, I’m ready to get up now. I drink a glass of cold water to hydrate myself, plug ear-buds into my phone, and call up the current listen for a two-mile morning walk. After a quick shower, I dress in lab casual—sneakers, jeans and satirical tee shirt. The shirt of the day reads, “All organisms are the result of an earlier orgasm.” I go downstairs to fix breakfast. I drop a banana, a scoop of protein powder, a cup of soymilk and some ice cubes into the Vitamix. I press the smoothie button and 60 seconds later I have a drink that should get me through the morning, as long as it is followed by a cup of good coffee. It is a short drive to the lab complex.

“Actually, this is not a frog. It is a toad.” I told Mrs. Montgomery about fifty years earlier. She laughed because I said “actually” a lot and it sounded so strange coming from a little boy. In my youth I collected leaves, insects, small fossils, and caught frogs, toads, salamanders, crayfish and small snakes. I built models of spacecraft and built and launched model rockets. That was the time Charles Shultz created Snoopy’s alter ego “Joe Cool.” He wore sunglasses and was generally supposed to be cool. The neighborhood kids picked up on the fad and, if you were good at baseball they called you “Joe Baseball.” If you were good at football, you were “Joe Football.” I was dubbed “Joe Scientist.” So it isn’t a wonder that I work at the lab.

The complex is an entire block of buildings that look like a small city. Some of the brightest minds literally study everything from A to Z—that is, aeronautics to zoology. My favorites are geology, paleontology, biology, and some chemistry and physics, but I’m open to anything interesting. I’m a General Scientist—the equivalent of your primary care physician. I’m never going to win a Nobel Prize for unraveling the human genome or discovering a new power source such as cold fusion. Then again, I won’t be devoting my entire life to the study of a narrowly focused problem that may or may not even have a solution. I work pretty much on my own along side of like-minded scientists.

I finished my drawings of the cardiovascular system of a newly discovered species of deep-water fish yesterday so I need to check the assignment queue. Tasks in the queue usually take weeks to months but every once in a while there are longer projects. I once took a year preparing a dinosaur egg found in China with an almost fully developed baby dinosaur inside it. I now have the reputation for artistically making fossil animals jump out of the rock from that assignment. I’ve also gotten pretty good at scientific illustration both on the computer and using old school pen and ink. But I can write a computer program, do statistics or independently duplicate someone’s experiment to verify their findings.

What on the list of a hundred jobs interests me today? Let me see. I could curate an exhibit of a thousand trilobites for a local museum, or supervise the construction of a small aquarium at a local college, or prepare a small experiment of fruit flies to fly on the space station. I remember high school biology and all the fun I had as Mr. Reese’s student assistant—especially when we studied genetics with fruit flies. They got all over the classroom! Fruit flies it is, and I’ll make sure the astronauts don’t have to “debug” the station after a prison break.

Actually, this is the best job ever!

The Lesson

The hardwood floor of the old German house creaked with each footfall as Herr Hitler walked into the room where his son played. Young Adolf quickly stood up like a soldier at attention, straightened his blue-grey sailor suit, and stammered in a cracking voice, “Good morning, father.” Uncertain of his father’s temperament he thought, “Now what could I have done?”

Alois Hitler, Sr. said, “I see you are playing with your toy horse.” Young Adolf’s posture relaxed a little. He didn’t seem to be in trouble. Then his father suggested something that young Adolf would never have imagined when he said, “Do you want to play a game of chess against your father? I know you have been practicing your chess moves for weeks. It is time you put that practice to good use. Put away your horse and set up the chessboard in the kitchen. You can play white.”

Herr Hitler smoked a cigarette then walked into the kitchen. He saw the chessboard set up on the kitchen table, sans two pawns, and young Adolf standing with his arms out and fists clenched. “All set up Father. Queen’s are on color. And, I want to play like a grown up.”, he said. He had a white pawn clenched in one fist and a dark pawn in the other. “Pick Father.”, he said. Alois smiled and picked the right hand. Young Adolf opened it and it was a white pawn. Young Adolf so wanted the advantage of making the first move with the white pieces, but he thought, “I can play the dark pieces and win!”

Alois played pawn to king four. That was the classic white opening and young Adolf expected it. Young Adolf also played pawn to king four since it was the classic countermove. Father played bishop to queen bishop four. Young Adolf countered with the same move, bishop to queen bishop four. The chessboard showed symmetry. Alois played queen to king rook five. Young Adolf stopped for a few minutes. Father deviated from the standard opening. Young Adolf placed his fingers on his knight and moved it two spaces forward and one to the left. The knight stood on the king bishop three space and was threatening his father’s queen. Young Adolf kept his finger on the top of the knight as he surveyed the board, rolled the knight a bit, then he released his finger and completed his move. Alois played queen takes pawn on king bishop three and said, “Check and mate!” Young Adolf looked at the chessboard for several minutes, his mouth dropped and his eyes started to tear.   Alois picked up his queen and knocked young Adolf’s king over by flicking its base against the top of the king. The king fell, rolled a bit, and then stopped. Alois repeated, “Checkmate!” Young Adolf winced.

Adolf stood up, pounded his fist on the table and said, “You cheated!”

“No I didn’t,” said his father.

“Then you tricked me!”, shouted Adolf.

Alois yelled, “Adolf, sit down!” Adolf sat as if he were obeying an order from a commanding officer. Father said, “And what have you learned today?”

Adolf replied, “I learned you are a cheater and a trickster.”

Herr Hitler said, “No, you learned a valuable lesson. First, will you ever make that error again?”

“No father.”, Adolf replied.

Alois continued, “You see that you have to plan your moves in advance and test your enemy. I placed my queen in some danger to see how you would react. And, you reacted badly. So, you lost.”

Adolf asked, “So what was the right move?”

Alois answered, “Adolf, there is no right move. You have to play each move to test your opponent and also protect yourself. You have to set up situations where your opponent thinks they have the advantage, but they do not. Finally, you must always protect your pieces.”

“But father!”, Adolf said.

Alois replied, “There will be nothing you can’t accomplish if you follow these simple lessons!”

Hitler pounded his fist on the table and screamed, “How can this be?” He looked at the map pinned in the map room with his black troops concentrated close to Berlin. It looked like a chessboard. White pieces were moving in from all directions. His pieces were lost or ineffective. His queen, Eva Braun, was sacrificed by cyanide. On 30 April 1945 in his Führerbunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler put a gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, and committed suicide. His last thought was, “I won’t let you knock my king down!” He never did learn the lesson from his first chess game.

Job 1:6-12

A few months ago I was reading about William S. Burroughs’ cut-up technique of creating writing.  Today, I was spending an hour in Church at Eucharistic Adoration.  I felt compelled to read Job and stopped at Job 1:6-12.  And, I cut it up as shown below (in my amateur approach to Burroughs):

Job 1:6-12

6 God fearing Job, this day you, and your family, presented themselves blessed? Satan came with his livestock but to be presented to the Satan.

7 The Lord commanded, “You have surely been patrolling the Earth. Come forward Satan!”  And the Lord said to the Satan, “There is no one on the Earth like Job. Lay a hand on him and he will show you he is upright, fearing God, and filled with the presence of the Lord.”

8 Then Satan answered, “Job is nothing without the sons of God who surround him with your protection.”

9 The Lord said, “The work of his hands has spread across all of the Earth.”

10 The Satan said, “He will curse your face, turn away from you and turn toward evil, if you call back your sons of God who protect him.”

11 “Very well. I will recall the sons of God that protect him and you may touch all that he has. But, do not lay a hand on him.”, said the Lord.

12 Then, the Satan went forth.