Failure to sleep was eye-opening

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 17 February 2009 13:48

This week’s topic: failure.

Thomas Alva Edison is credited as saying, “We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb.”

At first, this statement seems to be a very deep, insightful and pithy rejection to the idea of failure. That was the way I had always taken it, until I got to thinking about that quote the other day after I had failed to wake up on time.

When a person sits by himself or herself for a long period of time trying to do one small, tedious task (i.e. creating a light bulb), he or she will begin talking to himself or herself until he or she thinks up a statement that he or she thinks is incredibly brilliant, and will then go around exclaiming it so everyone will know what a genius he or she is. (I usually...

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Warning: Column contains peanuts

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 03 February 2009 13:58

It was unclear whether the recent recall of peanut products caused Planters spokesperson Mr. Peanut to crack.

When the recall began—which was in response to salmonella poisoning—the Planters company stated that Mr. Peanut had been acting a little squirrelly.

Late last week, video surveillance caught Mr. Peanut entering a local bank in his usual attire of a top hat and monocle.

He a-salted the teller and told her to, “Give me all the cashew have,” and also exclaimed, “It’s Payday!”

“I was shell-shocked,” the teller said.

After the attack, police arrested Mr. Peanut and confined him to a small shell in the nut house.

The press release issued by Planters put their position on the situation in a nutshell: “We are...

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Earth science is a hard class to take

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 20 January 2009 14:07

I admit it; I did something sort of dumb.

It’s interterm at Tabor College, which means students are on overseas trips, in class, or at home being bums.

Silly me, I opted for the hardest and am taking a class called earth science.

So while fellow classmates are either international or staying home and sleeping in, I’m sitting in a classroom learning about rocks.

Let me be a bit more specific.

So far we have learned about minerals, rocks, plate tectonics, salinity, glaciers, oceans, meteorology, astronomy and, for just a few minutes, astrology.

I wish I could say earth science was easy—for example, we spent one lab period scraping minerals with our fingernails—but it’s actually fairly hard.

Harder than I expected, at...

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Ideas for a White House reality show

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 06 January 2009 13:39

With Barack Obama’s inauguration less than two weeks away, I thought I would share some ideas I have for improving the presidency. (I see you already thumbing over to the sports section. Trust me; I think you’ll like what I have.)

My ideas were sparked a few weeks back while browsing the January issue of Reader’s Digest. Toward the end of the issue, one article was headlined: “Memo to the President.” In it, the Digest staff “asked 18 statesmen and -women spanning the political spectrum” to give Obama their advice.

One piece of advice—submitted by former White House Press Secretary Michael D. McCurry—was titled “Remake the Bully Pulpit.”

McCurry advised the president-elect that what he needs most is to reinstate...

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