Winning Words 4/15/13
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”  (Niels Bohr)  70 million Americans read their horoscope every day.  I’m not one of them, although I’m curious about what the future might hold.  In the Fusco Brothers comic strip Axel, the wolverine, introduced me to the word…tyromancy…telling the future by looking at the coagulation of cheese.  Now, who can tell me that they’ve done that before?    ;-)  Jack

 FROM WALMART REV:  Not I, Jack...we had Sunday lunch at a Chinese's restaurant yesterday...I asked for my money back for I had no "fortune" in my fortune cookie...He smiled and said. "That's miss-fortune-ate!  " I left him with my Chinese name: "Hey You!" Smile, Jack! Smile! 0;-)////JACK:  Someone at church yesterday asked about Walmart Rev (she reads the blog).  I had a chance to tell her about your ministry in Michigan and now in Northern Minnesota.////REV:  It is unique...it's validity would be in the eyes of the beholder...some churches would have a hard time justify something like this...others like the one I'm with have seen an increase of attenders because of it...by far, more people ask and talk in favor of its uniqueness as something they wished their pastor would do something like this.

 FROM JACK:  I just came across this quote from the Nightengale website.  "Change your life today.
Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay."  (Simone de Beauvoir: French writer, intellectual, philosopher, activist, feminist, and social theorist)

 FROM RI IN BOSTON:  "Witty" isn't the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the name Niels Bohr, but it seems he was, in the true spirit of the Danes.  Looking into it, I found that he saw humor in his work and people around him.  Niels was a Bohr...but not a bore.////JACK:  Each of us is more than appears on the surface.  Creating a "scratch" to reveal what is underneath is not always a bad thing to do.

 FROM LF IN FLORIDA:    I saw Niels Bohr  in 1959 or 1960 when I was working at CERN near Geneva.  I was in the audience when he gave the speech at the inauguration of the proton cyclotron.  Werner Heisenberg also spoke.  At the reception afterward they were just a few steps away.  Oppenheimer also spoke.////JACK:   I could imagine a quote like this coming from a scientific lecture.  A friend of mine, who worked with the NASA project of putting (and retrieving) a man on the moon, introduced me to the acronymn, UNK-UNK (unknowns).  When they'd came to some problem that had no obvious answer, they'd refer to it as an UNK-UNK.

 FROM LG IN MICHIGAN:  Hee hee : )////JACK:  When photographers want people to smile, they'll call out..."Say, cheese!" or "Say, Hee, Hee!"

 FROM PH IN MINNESOTA:  If you are reading the future through a mess of cheese,  you have definitely gotten ahold of some bad weed!!////JACK:  FROM PH IN MINNESOTA:  If you are reading the future through a mess of cheese,  you have definitely gotten ahold of some bad weed!!////JACK:  The only weed I know about is the dandelion.////PH:  We used to make dandelion salad in the boy scouts.  True story.  Luckily no body died from it.  I think we used a LOT of dressing…

 FROM FACEBOOK LIZ:  it is interesting to look at your horoscope at the end of the day. uncanny sometimes. leo. you?////JACK:  LEOS are good at being warm hearted, generous and kind. Ruled by the Sun, they love to shine and are great extroverts. Leos enjoy company and love to spoil everyone and share their own good fortune. Their pride and dignity makes them the kind of person others naturally look up to, and are always first to offer advice and counsel. Like the King of Beasts that is their zodiac symbol, Leos like to be the boss, and expect everyone to defer to them.  The trouble is, Leo pride refuses to admit that it is ever wrong about anything. When that advice is offered, Leos expect it to be followed to the letter. Make sure you really have the other person's best interests at heart, and don't just want to dominate them. Things can get downright ugly when Leo pride ignores someone else's right to a mind of their own.  VIRGOS are good at organizing stuff. Ruled by Mercury, they are neat, tidy and thoughtful people who always remember how their individual friends take their coffee. They actually have organized workshops with a place for everything and everything in its place. They are good at things like gardening and healing, because they care about details and make sure that measurements are correct to the merest gram.  Analytical Virgos tend top pick everything to pieces, even their relationships, to see how they work. They tend to worry about things that other people don't even notice. This leads to panic attacks and stomach pains that could turn into ulcers.
The trouble is that Virgos can become so hung up on details that they drive everyone crazy. Make sure you stop and just smell the roses now and then, because it just gets ugly when you turn into a nit picking pain.

 FROM PLAIN FOLKS CHESTER:  Now we all know that the moon is made of cheese. And the future is directly related to the phases of the moon. SO, ask the man in the moon about your horoscope.////JACK:  A policeman recently told told me that when there is a full moon, they get more calls about people acting in a wild and irrational way.////PFC:  Hospitals report the same thing. "Loonies"////JACK:  Loonie and "lunatic" come from the belief that the moon can cause "madness."  The Roman goddess, Luna, was said to be the personification of the Moon.  I guess, more correctly, it should be the Woman in the Moon.  

 FROM OUTHOUSE JUDY:  Oh my, my cheese doesn't usually give me any messages except perhaps....it will give me high cholesterol.  It's hard for me to accept predictions from anyone because, as you know, daily we have predictions from our learned meteorologists and they are correct one out of four times.... so...I predict no one can correctly predict anything.////JACK:  You must like the song, "Que sera, sera."

 FROM BLAZING OAKS:  I'D HAVE TO SAY, I HAVE NOT, BUT  PROBABLY COAGULATED CHEESE IS AS ACCURATE AS SOME OTHER WAYS!  I'VE HAD A WEEKEND OF CELEBRATIONS FOR MY 83rd, OLDEST SON'S 61st, G.DAUGHTER'S 23rd, AND "GREAT'S" 3rd  BIRTHDAYS. ALL THE FAMILY CAME IN FOR FOUR DIFFERENT B.DAY VENUES,  AND I MUST SAY I PRAY FOR A DECENT FUTURE FOR THOSE WHO WILL BE ALIVE TO ENJOY IT!!  I WONDER UNDER WHAT SIGN OUR FEARLESS LEADER IN NORTH KOREA, FALLS??! :-(  A CONCERN.////JACK:  It looks like life presented you with some pretty good birthday presents.  BTW, Kim Jung-un was born 1/8/84, and his sign is Capricorn...and that seems to fit...

 FROM PEPPERMINT MARY:  it's out 35th wedding anniversary.  i'm hoping the future holds many more! ////JACK:  A "2nd Honeymoon" in Ecuador was a pretty exotic way to celebrate.