Huh hah hey, and the tail is wagging
On the way there, I saw a homeless guy with a cardboard sign that opened such an interesting theological can of worms that I shall repeat it here. I'm paraphrasing the sign from memory, but at least this was the gist of it:
What would God do if he walked past me? I already know what most of you will do. I have cancer and this is the only way I can take care of my kids.
Even
though I strongly suspect this sign to be fraudulent, it was somewhat
different from what I have seen the homeless people use before, and at
least it made me think. Since the omnipotent God is already everywhere
and has been thus constantly "walking past" this man, we already know
perfectly well what He would do to this man. After all, He has already
done it and keeps doing it, so we can observe His will in action, yes?
Who are we puny mortals to go against God's will?
Earlier we had
bought the newspaper to read on the subway, which was annoying since
the same papers were given out free in the festival. In the comics
section, Non Sequitur featured a cutout picture of a humongous SUV in
which in place of the engine, there was a slave galley with slaves
spinning the wheels while their foreman was whipping them. I said to my
wife "You see how the cartoonist sure was careful here not to..." and
didn't even finish the thought, since she laughed and replied that she
was just thinking the same thing.
I saw only a few cars waving
flags of their favourite soccer-playing nations, even though I guess
that there is currently some kind of big worldwide tournament going on
to see which nation on Earth can truly be called the mightiest! Now, I
can understand why soccer would be such a popular game especially in
the less developed nations, since the equipment needed is so simple,
cheap and readily available, the game scales well for different numbers
of players, and soccer can be meaningfully played in different skill
levels (although not between skill levels, but only the game of Go gets
to claim this). But I have never been into watching soccer myself. I
actually tried to watch a game a few months ago on TV, and remembered
why I didn't like it: a typical game is just one continuous failure and
frustration after another. Because there are so many players around and
you can control the ball with your feel only so much, pretty much every
single attack fails in some stupid and frustrating manner. Pretty soon
you get the feeling that the whole game is just about luck.
In
addition, the pace of the game suffers because the ball is constantly
going out of the field. The soccer field should have walls on the
sides, just like a hockey rink. Even better, make it so that if you
kick the ball over these walls, you get a yellow card. Make the goals
twice as large, and in the common case of a tie, follow the suggestion
of the essay "No more penalty shootouts". These changes would greatly improve the game for the viewers.
Comments