There's a popular, but false, Ben Franklin quote: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." I've had to sort out a bunch of false Franklin and Lincoln quotes the last few days for a little story I'm working on in my creative writing class. The real quote is: "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."
Not so different, besides swapping wine for beer. There's another beer story I want to talk about a little today, and it's short enough that I think I'll just drop it in here. Feel free to skip to the line if you've suffered through it before.
During a time management course, the teacher places fist-sized rocks in a wide-mouthed glass jar until no more rocks fit into it.
The teacher asks the class, ‘Is it full?’ The students shout ‘yes!’
Unceremoniously, the teacher adds smaller pebbles to the jar, carefully shaking the jar so the pebbles work themselves into the spaces between the big rocks.
The teacher asks again, ‘Is it full?’ Most of the students tentatively answer ‘yes.’
Smiling, the teacher adds sand the jar which fills the spaces between the rocks and pebbles.
‘Now, is it full?’ the teacher asks. ‘Probably not,’ one tentatively answers.
With a flourish, the teacher pours water in the jar filling it up to the brim.
‘What’s the point of this experiment?’ the teacher asks.
One eager student raises his hand, ‘The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, you can always fit some more things into it.’
‘No,’ the teacher replied, ‘that’s not the point. Imagine if I had put the water or sand in the jar first. There would be no room for the big rocks – the important things. Prioritization is deciding whether to start with big rocks or the sand.’
This is, as far as I can tell, the original version, as presented by Stephen Covey of "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" fame. Like most of Covey's writing, it's not so much wrong as just terribly written. UNCEREMONIOUSLY! he adds the pebbles. Ugh. Also, not an experiment. Also, the big rocks could push out the water! Also, sometimes you want to dump out the whole jar and start over, or shake it up! DIDACTISM!
Anyway...
Most versions stop before the water and replace it with beer so we can get the "there's always room for beer" sometimes with friends if it's a particularly sociable version. At some point, I would like to read a version that brings in the end of the Navy SEAL copypasta.
"Now, is it full?" the professor asked, holding up the jar.
A Navy SEAL got up, grabbed the jar, dumped out the rocks, and shoved it over the professor's head.
"Yeah, full of hot air," he said.
The students applauded and all registered Republican that day and accepted Jesus as their lord and savior. An eagle named "Small Government" flew into the room and perched atop the American Flag and shed a tear on the chalk. The pledge of allegiance was read several times, and God himself showed up and enacted a flat tax rate across the country.
Somehow, a 4chan post is at least as well written as a best selling self help book.
All that said, "Big Rocks" is a useful classification system for my plan for the next blog project.
Rocks= Long pieces that will take more than a couple days to read and write about. For example, Volume 10 is just The Wealth of Nations. That'll probably take at least a week, even if I go over the old 15 Minute guideline.
Pebbles= Pieces that will take a day or two. I suspect most of the essays will fit in about this length.
Sand= Short enough that I can do several in one day. A lot of the poetry will go here.
Beer= Anything that isn't really particularly valuable, but that I blog about anyway. Star Wars Classics counts here, the DooM stuff, and anything else that I do just for fun. The DooM stuff will move onto a new blog going forward. My plan is to work my way through T5FSOB more or less in order (I might, for example, put the two Darwin works together) with occasionally supplements. Between reading Rocks, I'll occasionally take breaks for Pebbles and Sand. This is both to help me not get burnt out on giant books, and also to save me from a month long poetry marathon. Beer will be limited to not more than the combined days of Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand in a week. I don't want to wind up like I did earlier this year again. Maybe some occasional special events.
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