Signs of the Times


mikbone
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13 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

That is a totally fair question.   I remember I used to look for rainbows for exactly this purpose.  It made for a fun conversation while driving. "Oh - there's the rainbow!  I guess we're good for another year."   

I stopped paying attention to rainbows years ago though.  So I honestly don't remember.

13 hours ago, The Folk Prophet said:
11 hours ago, mirkwood said:

I did, I got to spend Covid out in the public the whole time.  Good times.

Thanks for the responses -- especially the pictures of the rainbows.

My main point was that most people tend to make the interpretation that we will have a year-long world-wide drought. I'm not sure if that is correct.  It could be.  But I was offering an alternative.

Quote

An age is called dark, not because the light fails to shine, but that men refuse to see it.

The state of society is such that it invokes an awful lot of pessimism.  We aren't taking time to appreciate the little blessings that the Lord has for us.  Obviously, if there was rain followed by sun anywhere on the planet, then by the laws of physics, there will be a rainbow.  But what if no one sees it?  (tree falls in the forest).

When it rains, we run indoors.  How many go to the window to look for the rainbow that follows?  No, we're stuck looking at our devices.  We spend time on social media (hello! here we are!).  Expand that to all the distractions and stresses of modern life that seems to suck us in and tend to move us away from the covenants of the Lord.

So, my alternative interpretation is more about the worldwide zeitgeist rather than atmospheric conditions.

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1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

So, my alternative interpretation is more about the worldwide zeitgeist rather than atmospheric conditions.

Maybe you forgot this viral clip.

Not gonna lie.  Had to look up the word zeitgeist.

Zeitgeist is a word that comes straight from German — zeit means "time" and geist means spirit, and the "spirit of the time" is what's going on culturally, religiously, or intellectually during a certain period. Think about how something like Woodstock symbolized the 1960s: 

Dude right on.

People will stop everything to check out a rainbow.

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44 minutes ago, mikbone said:

Maybe you forgot this viral clip.

I couldn't forget something I've never seen. 

While I appreciate the aesthetics of the phenomenon, I simply don't get as excited as this guy over a rainbow.  Was he on drugs or something?

Edited by Carborendum
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6 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

While I appreciate the aesthetics of the phenomenon, I simply don't get as excited as this guy over a rainbow.  Was he on drugs or something?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Rainbow_(viral_video)

And

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/double-rainbow-guy-paul-yosemite-bear-vasquez-sober/story?id=11133337

 

Edited by mikbone
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28 minutes ago, zil2 said:

I saw a double rainbow last July, and noted something I'd never before noticed about them - which you can see from above video thumbnail - the colors are inverted on one of them. :)

Yes, the secondary rainbow tends to be slightly dimmer than the primary rainbow.  And the color order is always inverted because it is a reflection of a reflection.

When I was young, there was a special name for the secondary rainbow.  But I can't seem to find that terminology anywhere.  I guess they're just "primary" and "secondary" nowadays.  Too bad.  It was a cool term as I recall.

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37 minutes ago, mikbone said:

In other news, am I the only one disappointed that they felt the need to "revisit rainbow basics"?  I mean, how does a person get to the point where they can read this text and not already know rainbow basics?

Also, how does one get qualified to write this article and not know the difference between "boarder" and "border"?

<big sigh>

(But thank you for the link anyway - the "supernumerary bows" photograph is gorgeous!)

Edited by zil2
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2 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

I can't decide if this comment makes me like you more, or less.

Would it help if I said I already hate the fact that one can no longer use a graphic (as opposed to a photo) of a rainbow as anything other than a celebration of perversity?

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2 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Would it help if I said I already hate the fact that one can no longer use a graphic (as opposed to a photo) of a rainbow as anything other than a celebration of perversity?

I absolutely DESPISE this fact. Particularly in that I have a little girl who loves rainbows, as all little girls do.

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5 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Also, how does one get qualified to write this article and not know the difference between "boarder" and "border"?

In graduate school, I was a TA for physics, which basically meant that I taught the first-, second-, and third-semester students how to solve basic physics problems. One thing I always told my classes at the beginning of the semester was that physics was an English course, just like every other course they would take on campus, even foreign language courses. Their English needed to be correct, with complete sentences, good punctuation, appropriate word choice, and so forth. Many of them disliked that, but more than a few conceded by the end of the course that I was right about the necessity of good English. Too bad that's not our society's current zeitgeist. :)

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18 minutes ago, zil2 said:

how does one get qualified to write this article and not know the difference between "boarder" and "border"?

For the record, that one's on my list.

accrual a cruel a crewel  
accrue a crew    
accrued a crude a crewed  
afraid not a frayed knot    
air heir ere  
aloud allowed    
ate eight    
aught ought    
b be bee  
bare bear    
beer bier    
berry bury beary  
birth berth    
bite bight    
bizarre bazaar    
blew blue    
bolder boulder    
border boarder    
bought bot    
Bree's breeze Bries  
build billed    
buy by bye bi-
can't cant Kant  
canter cantor    
canvas canvass    
caught cot    
cereal serial    
chorea Korea    
chute shoot    
cite sight site  
clod Claude    
coo coup    
crude crewed    
cruel crewel    
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11 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Would it help if I said I already hate the fact that one can no longer use a graphic (as opposed to a photo) of a rainbow as anything other than a celebration of perversity?

This caused me to pause and ponder.  I wonder if we have confused the rainbow with the “sign” of the rainbow?  Perhaps we have missed what exactly the prophesy is telling us to watch for?

 

The Traveler

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