{"id":864,"date":"2010-09-16T07:37:16","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T12:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=864"},"modified":"2010-09-16T07:37:16","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T12:37:16","slug":"exercising-our-gray-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/09\/exercising-our-gray-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Exercising Our Gray Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday, 11 September 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

As previously noted, today I delivered a presentation in front of the Maple Grove Critical Thinkers\u2019 Club. The turnout was good; the club\u2019s president told me there\u2019s typically about 15 people at their meetings, but today there were 21.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny, whenever I give a presentation, I\u2019m never quite sure what sort of questions people are going to ask. Perhaps I\u2019m just not used to this; after all, when I performed public speaking at Witness meetings, the audience was not permitted to ask questions. So, you know, it throws me off guard a little bit.<\/p>\n

For example, one woman asked who Jehovah is. Oops. I guess I should\u2019ve mentioned that during my presentation. Someone else asked about how the local congregations are arranged and funded, and what sort of schooling the ministers have. There was particular interest about voting and birthdays.<\/p>\n

I casually mentioned that Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays and, in mid-sentence, I was cut-off by someone asking, \u201cWhy don\u2019t they celebrate birthdays?\u201d My response was: \u201cYeah, that\u2019s a great question. And I\u2019m gonna answer it by saying that if any of you ever comes across a Witness that gives a coherent, logical reason why they don\u2019t celebrate birthdays, then please tell me. Because, in all my years as a Witness, I could never find a reason.\u201d I even admitted to being embarrassed about this rule back when I was a Witness.<\/p>\n

But then a man raised his hand and said: \u201cYou know, my daughter\u2019s been a Witness for a few years now, and she told me why they don\u2019t celebrate birthdays. She said that they don\u2019t want to draw attention to the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

I tried to respond to this as tactfully as I could. Specifically, I said, \u201cYes, I\u2019ve heard that one, and it\u2019s complete bullshit.\u201d I explained that Witnesses hold graduation parties, funerals, wedding receptions, retirement parties and even baby showers\u2026so his daughter\u2019s reasoning is only effective on people without the ability to reason.<\/p>\n

At another point, I noted that Witnesses shun their ex-Witness relatives, and a woman (the only person in the room younger than me) said: \u201cWell, one of my patients is a Witness and she talks to her gay son.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeah… I said she probably does\u2026but I guarantee she keeps the matter secret. And, besides, if her son was never baptized, then he\u2019s technically not an ex-JW since he never was a JW in the first place.<\/p>\n

All in all, a good time. Some of the questions were very thought-provoking, and there were some laughs, particularly when I reviewed \u201cWhat to say and What not to say when a Witness comes to your door (assuming you don\u2019t want them to come back)\u201d.<\/p>\n

A few people came up and thanked me for my presentation, a professor of religious studies at St. Cloud State gave me his email address and we\u2019ve been in correspondence. Another man said I was doing the world a great service, and another man said that when Witnesses came to his door he asked them if Jesus ever got an erection. When the Witness woman said: \u201cOh, of course NOT!\u201d The man asked her, \u201cWhy, was he impotent? Then he wasn\u2019t perfect.\u201d Ha!<\/p>\n

The club\u2019s president, meanwhile, enjoyed my presentation so much, I\u2019ve been invited to speak again in January. Stay tuned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sunday, 12 September 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the deal with the word \u201cgrey?\u201d Or is it \u201cgray?\u201d See what I mean. It\u2019s a conundrum that, normally I would simply find interesting for academic purposes, but now my wife is creating a birth announcement (did you hear we had a daughter a few weeks back?) and she wishes to quote from a song. Problem is, the song uses the word gray\/grey.<\/p>\n

I called up the lyrics to the song online, and the site spells it G-R-E-Y, but I don\u2019t know how trustworthy lyrics sites are. For one thing, they always get lyrics wrong. For this song in particular, they misspell \u201cyourself\u201d as \u201cyoutself\u201d and the put an arbitrary apostrophe in \u201cgets.\u201d They also put the word \u201cor\u201d when clearly the singer says \u201cand,\u201d which happens to be grammatically correct as well.<\/p>\n

THIS SITE<\/a> says to remember that grAy is American and grEy is European. Very clever. Even cleverer is THIS SITE <\/a>which says that \u201cgray is a color, while grey is a colour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, both of my dictionaries (American through and through) do contain entries for \u201cgrey,\u201d but only to direct the reader to \u201cgray.\u201d They also have entries for \u201cgrayling,\u201d \u00a0\u201cgray matter,\u201d and \u201cgray wolf.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

That seems to settle the matter; but Wikipedia directs all inquires regarding \u201cgray\u201d to their \u201cgrey\u201d page<\/a>. And those dictionaries? They both have entries for \u201cgreyhound.\u201d Meanwhile, though the song was written by an American, it wsa performed by a Brit for a film that was created in New Zealand. Hm. Further, Jennifer is using the lyrics as they were performed live at the Oscars back in 1999, and not as they originally appeared in the film\u2026so it\u2019s not as if the booklet that accompanies the CD soundtrack is the end of the matter. Also, I don\u2019t own the CD soundtrack, so I don\u2019t even know what the booklet says.<\/p>\n

I think I\u2019ve convinced my wife to stick with \u201cgray.\u201d After all, we laugh at wedding invitations that \u201crequest the honour of your presence.\u201d Sorry\u2026my presence as no honour; only honor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday, 11 September 2010 As previously noted, today I delivered a presentation in front of the Maple Grove Critical Thinkers\u2019 Club. The turnout was good; the club\u2019s president told me there\u2019s typically about 15 people at their meetings, but today there were 21. It\u2019s funny, whenever I give a presentation, I\u2019m never quite sure what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions\/866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}