Imperfect vision

Technical difficulties haven't kept the Old Dog away although I expect hardware failures may be forthcoming.  Rather, it is my difficulty in formulating suitable commentary, especially in regards to Mr. Beagle's discussions on biblical matters.

As Uncle Ken knows, I have had the benefit, or curse, of more than a dozen years of Protestant Christian education.  This has been of the Lutheran type, Missouri Synod initially and then the Lutheran Church in America, or maybe it was the American Lutheran Church; the different synods always confused me but the Missouri Synod was the old school German type and the most conservative.

There was Sunday School, too, and although I remember a lot of the stuff I was taught I'm not sure what I actually learned.  Consequently, I am hesitant to pop out a quick reply.  Some discussions require a bit more gravitas than others and I don't like posting just for the sake of posting; I don't want my comments to return to bite me in the ass at some future date.

That having been said, I heard an old NPR broadcast about the Gospels in an interview with Bart D. Ehrman, the guy who wrote a book called Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them).  There is a transcript available online, and one of the more interesting bits of info was the description of Jesus as an apocalypticist, a word I had to look up.  Lots of contradictions in the Gospels, and the influence of St. Paul is greater than I had thought.

The discussion of the Gospels got me thinking about the Old Testament.  So, were Adam and Eve complete idiots?  They were told not to eat of the tree of "knowledge of good and evil."  Fine, rules are rules.  But there was another tree, the "tree of life."   Presumably, they could have chowed down on its fruit and had eternal life, but no, they had to  eat the fruit of the wrong tree first and never got the chance to have eternal life.  But what would human life be like if we lacked the knowledge of good and evil; would we just be another primate in the savanna?  There are ape societies but nothing I would call a civilization.

I've never been part of a Bible Study Group and I wonder if they discuss such matters or just follow the party line of their denomination.  What about the people who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, how do they resolve the many discrepancies?  Maybe they just don't talk about them.

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I recall those small glasses, the ones you guys call shells.  When you asked for a short beer, that's what you got, maybe six ounces but very cheap.  I think its primary purpose was a chaser for a quick shot of red eye, to cleanse the palate, perhaps.

Schooners I remember from my college days in Wisconsin, more of a goblet than a glass.  They looked big, but I don't think they held a lot more beer than a regular beer glass.  Bars used to use glassware that was unusually thick; that beer stein looked like it would hold a lot but actually didn't.  Uncle Ken probably washed a lot of them; they looked like they had false bottoms.

The glass you use depends on whether you are drinking beer or drinking beer.  There are particular glasses for pilsners, lagers, ales, chimays, weissbiers, you name it.  In fact, the Samuel Adams brewing company has designed a  glass especially for their beers; it's supposed to let it breathe better for the aromatics, or some such nonsense.  I don't know if I could tell the difference, but the glass sure looks swell even if it is a little hoity-toity.

One beer container not mentioned is the growler, which is gaining in popularity in certain areas.  You can buy a growler and get it filled pretty cheaply with some very fresh beer.  The Half Acre Beer Company does this, and they are only a fifteen minute walk from my apartment.  But sadly I am not in the habit of drinking at home, otherwise I would gladly be quaffing one of their pale ales; they make a tasty product.

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Last summer my nephew bought a car, a nice little Mazda 6.  I was told that it was blue, but when I went outside to look at it I didn't see a blue car.  I saw a slate gray car, not blue.  Everybody else was calling it blue but I figured it was due to the ambient light; early evening on a cloudy day.  At a later date, on a sunny day, it looked a little more blue but still a slate gray, to my eyes.

So I just happened to find an online test for color blindness; you've seen this test, a number on a background, all comprised of little dots of different colors.  Depending on your vision you will see a certain number and with color blindness you will see another number, or no number at all.

Online tests are always suspect, but I don't doubt this one.  It turns out I may have a certain color blindness: Tritan-type color blindness is characterized by a loss of color discrimination for shades of blue and yellow.

Well, this was an eye opener but I still know a blue sky when I see it, even if the damn car is gray.  This color blindness will throw many of my observations of objective reality out the window, chromatically speaking.  But to Uncle Ken's relief, Cubby blue is not Cubby gray.

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Here's a meaningless bit a trivia, going back to the discussion of feet, inches, meters, etc.  The early Russian unit of length was the archine of 28 inches, divided into 16 verschoks (in case you were wondering).