{"id":50613,"date":"2020-02-11T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=50613"},"modified":"2020-02-10T20:52:36","modified_gmt":"2020-02-11T01:52:36","slug":"if-it-makes-you-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2020\/02\/11\/if-it-makes-you-happy\/","title":{"rendered":"If it makes you happy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s your open thread for February 11, 2020.<\/p>\n

Happy 58th birthday to Ms. Sheryl Crow:<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nCrow is exactly half as old as Lucille Randon, who celebrates her 116th birthday today.<\/p>\nNatalie Dormer and Sarah Palin, both of whom became famous playing conniving villains on TV, share a birthday today. It\u2019s also the birthday of Burt Reynolds, Leslie Nielsen, Tina Louise, Jennifer Aniston, and Damian Lewis. Jeb Bush turns 68 today (please clap).<\/p>\nThomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847. He won a Grammy Award 163 years later. It just goes to show that it\u2019s never to late to start chasing your dream.<\/p>\nThat extremely posthumous Grammy was for Edison\u2019s technical contributions to the recording industry, one of many fields his many inventions helped to create. I went to school just a few miles from his laboratory in Menlo Park (now Edison), but schoolchildren all over America learn all about Edison\u2019s inventions. Because he was American.<\/p>\nThis is a weirdly parochial aspect of American education. Ask any American fifth grader \u201cWho invented the lightbulb?\u201d and they\u2019ll know it was Edison. What about the airplane?<\/em> They\u2019ll tell you all about the Wright Brothers.\u00a0Good job, kids! Now, who invented the automobile?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nThere\u2019ll be an awkward pause before eventually they\u2019ll tell you that Henry Ford invented the assembly line. Because that happened here in America. But the automobile itself? They don\u2019t know. They were taught it doesn\u2019t matter. Some foreigner, probably. Not an American, so it ain\u2019t in our fifth-grade textbooks. Weird. And also, I think, consequential.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_50619\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50619\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-50619 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2020\/02\/BenzVelo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"411\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-50619\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Not invented here so it won\u2019t be on the test.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lydia_Maria_Child\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Lydia Maria Child<\/a> was born February 11, 1802. She wrote \u201cThe New England Boys\u2019 Song about Thanksgiving Day\u201d which caught on and lives on. You\u2019ve probably sung it yourself at some point \u2014 \u201cOver the river and through the woods \u2026\u201d More importantly, though, Child was an abolitionist, an advocate for women\u2019s rights, and a proponent of justice for Native Americans. So most of what she wrote didn\u2019t catch on and still hasn\u2019t caught on.<\/p>\nOn this day in 1790, the Society of Friends (the Quakers) petitioned Congress for the abolition of slavery. Congress opted to ignore that. You\u2019ve probably been told at several points that we mustn\u2019t judge Congress for doing so because, after all, they were \u201cmen of their time.\u201d But the Quakers were people of their time too. And so were all the people who were enslaved in 1790. Sufficient moral evidence was readily available for anyone who wasn\u2019t working ferociously hard to ignore it. Still is.<\/p>\nTalk amongst yourselves.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here’s your open thread for February 11, 2020. Talk amongst yourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>If it makes you happy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here's your open thread for February 11, 2020. 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Talk amongst yourselves.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2020\/02\/11\/if-it-makes-you-happy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-02-11T11:00:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-02-11T01:52:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2020\/02\/BenzVelo.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2020\/02\/11\/if-it-makes-you-happy\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2020\/02\/11\/if-it-makes-you-happy\/\",\"name\":\"If it makes you happy\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-02-11T11:00:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-02-11T01:52:36+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"Here's your open thread for February 11, 2020. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"If it makes you happy","description":"Here's your open thread for February 11, 2020. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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