Where It All Began

When Taylor Swift announced in 2014 that she was pulling all of her music from streaming services I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand it made sense. Streaming revenues in and of themselves in 2014 were not great and by making a big public spectacle out of her departure from the likes of Spotify she was sure to boost album sales through more traditional outlets.

What struck me as odd though is that her music remained on Youtube, the largest streaming music service in the world. Youtube’s streaming royalties are far worse than Spotify’s as well. This alone should have clued everyone in that the very public departure from Spotify wasn’t much more than a marketing ploy. And it worked too. Swift was the highest earning artist in 2015.

I should also note that the reason Taylor Swift’s share of streaming revenue is so bad is because of her record deal. She signed that deal and like most artists on record labels, I assume the deal sucks. The label does almost no work to create the streaming revenue and takes most of the profit. So why would her label go along with ditching Spotify if they stood to make tons of money? Again, it comes back to marketing. They knew that Swift’s pre-teen audience would still go buy the album and they manufactured a public feud with Spotify to create buzz around the album 1989.

Streaming Revenue in 2017

Fastforward to 2016 and I wondered why they hadn’t changed course and released 1989 to streaming services. The market had shifted significantly in the 2 years since it was released and surely everyone who was going to purchase it had already done so.  But still they held back without explanation.

Then the revenue numbers for the music industry for all of 2016 came in and for the first time ever, streaming revenue made up the majority of all music revenue. That is an impressive paradigm shift from just a couple years earlier. It is the same type of seismic shift that happened when music listeners switched from buying CDs to downloading MP3s.

From the very beginning, the decision to hold her album back from Spotify felt like a backward decision from an artist and label that were looking at the future of the industry and stubbornly refused to accept reality. But that was then and this is now.

Here in 2017, two and a half years after release, they finally bowed to changing market conditions and put 1989 on Spotify and other streaming services. Will her next album be kept off of streaming platforms? Doubtful. The time for principled stands against streaming (read: marketing ploys) is over. Streaming is here to stay and Spotify is the king of the hill.

In the previous years when the album was not available for streaming, many independent artists were able to earn thousands of dollars by recording cover songs of Taylor Swift’s music. Swift might not have been interested in earning streaming royalties but that doesn’t mean other artists couldn’t profit from her songs.

My Thoughts on Taylor Swift’s Album 1989

One final thought. I never listened to 1989 until last week when it was finally available to stream. First off, I realize that I am not the target audience for this kind of music. I’m not a 15 year old girl and perhaps that has affected my opinion in a negative way.

Overall I found the album to be disappointing. The lyrics were just empty pop music lyrics and for some reason I had expected a bit more from Taylor Swift. I should give some credit that lyrically it isn’t the same low brow sex filled lyrics of the likes of Katy Perry or Meghan Trainor.  But to me it was all very uninspired and uninteresting. What do I know though? Millions of teenage girls can’t be wrong, right?

I’ve been a member of Facebook for 8 and a half years now and during that time I have witnessed the social media giant go through a number of changes. Some of those changes came from the company itself like modifications to the look and feel of the site to abrupt changes to their privacy policies (which of course led to scare tactic posts which still sometimes make the rounds).  The most impactful changes have come from the users themselves though and the social soup that is Facebook has changed quite a bit over the years. I wasn’t around for the site’s founding so I can only guess what that was like but I remember distinctly the evolutions it has gone through in the user base.

First, there was that initial period of reconnecting with old friends from high school and college and learning what everyone had been up to in the years since we had last seen each other. Oh this person never got married? This one is on marriage number how many now? That one joined the army? …you get the picture. That was fun for awhile and then we all settled into a comfortable social media existence of sharing funny stories involving our kids or cute cat videos.

Every time there was a major election, things would get tense for awhile but then generally settle down after the election back into the sharing of cat videos and girls making duck face for some reason. The 2016 presidential election was different though.  Perhaps it was the media that pushed such a divisive narrative of both candidates. Perhaps it is that the internet has matured into this untamed beast that offers an unending supply of political commentary that no one really wants but seeks out anyway. Or just maybe it is us who have changed. We’ve all been using Facebook for so long that we’ve gotten bored with what it has to offer in terms of social connections and so the only thing left is to share our opinions loudly and repeatedly as if anyone’s mind was ever changed by an internet argument.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about writing a blog post about how Facebook has become a place of zombie friendships. Not all Facebook friendship match that description but I am sure that most of us could classify the majority of our Facebook friends that way. The idea being that friendships in the real world often fade away due to life circumstances and new friendships form as our lives go in different directions. But thanks to Facebook and other social media, these friendships are kept alive in some kind of zombiefied state where we don’t really know the people anymore and probably haven’t seen most of them in years but still have this tenuous connection to them via the internet.  The result is that we often don’t move on from these undead friendships like would normally happen and so our growth as human beings is stunted because we aren’t seeking out new friendships that should have taken their place.

And that is where Facebook’s slow death comes in.  Most of our social media friendships are old and tired and in a lot of cases there isn’t much holding them together anymore.  If Billy from your highschool has become a skinhead or something 15 years after graduation, it is pretty safe to say that you don’t have much in common anymore and the political view points that Billy espouses probably don’t resonate with you at all. Let’s hope not anyway.

So here we are, several months removed from the 2016 presidential election and the anger and political postings have not subsided on Facebook.  I’ve chosen to block links from overly-politicized news sources over and over again in the past few months but certain individuals just keep finding new ones to post.  So I started taking it a step further by unfollowing these folks altogether.  I haven’t unfriended them yet and maybe I should but for some reason I keep hanging on to these zombie friendships just like everyone else does.

One thing I know for sure is that if we don’t all get back to stories about how cute our kids are and funny cat videos, that Facebook will die a slow death. Maybe that would be for the best. After all, the real world certainly has more to offer.

Hello friends,

I don’t often draw comics (and by not often I mean it has been years and previous efforts were  quite poor in the art department) but I decided to give it a go again this past week and create a couple new comics. I find the work relaxing and I think they turned out pretty well.

In my continuing effort to read more books this year, I give you my February Bookshelf post (a few days late). February didn’t feature anything that I felt was as profound as January and there is less here to recommend unfortunately but they can’t all be winners.

The Rise of Nine – Rating 2/5. This is the third book in the Lorien Legacies series that was made popular by the first book I Am Number Four which was made into a major motion picture a couple years back.  The Rise of Nine was an okay read but with each installment of the series, the writing just gets a bit more ridiculous. If you aren’t familiar with this series from Pittacus Lore (a pseudonym of the two authors who write the books), the basic premise is that a bunch of teenage aliens from another planet are here on Earth trying to fight off some bad guy aliens who are from a different planet from them.

The problem with The Rise of Nine is that it just felt like every time the main characters got into a jam they would miraculously at that moment develop a new Legacy (super-power) to contend with whatever the situation is. The action sequences in the books are also starting to get rather repetitive and I feel at this point that I might not continuing reading the Lorien Legacy series unless I am truly desperate for something new.

unPHILtered: The Way I See It – Rating: 3/5. The latest book from Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson is UnPHILtered. I would not normally pickup a book that is from a celebrity but from what I have watched of the Duck Dynasty show, Phil Robertson’s nuggets of wisdom are my favorite part. The unscripted antics of his boys can get a little old after awhile but Phil usually has something worth listening to. So with that in mind, I decided to give UnPHILtered a shot.

While Phil’s straightforward commonsense world view is present throughout the book, much of it felt like preaching to the choir. I have no doubt that some readers will gain a new perspective on some subjects by reading UnPHILtered but I just didn’t feel challenged by anything in it. I read books to be entertained or to grow as a person. It is hard to do the latter when you already agree with much of what is being said.

Perhaps my biggest gripe with this book is a chapter in which Phil discusses what he would do if he were president. The chapter reads like the wishlist of a child who has no understanding of the workings of government. It would be more aptly titled “What I would do if I were dicator,” because that would be the only scenario where his wishlist would become a reality. Which feels very much like what our current president is actually doing.

The Time Paradox and The Atlantis Complex – Rating: 4/5 for both. I continued my consumption this month of the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. The series is an ongoing tale of main character Artemis Fowl, a mastermind Irish teenage boy who has entangled his life with elves and dwarves and other thought-to-be mythical creatures. The Time Paradox and The Atlantis Complex are books 6 and 7 respectively in the series and both books in their own way deal with Artemis working through the consequences of some of his past actions and battling old foes. There is a bit of a sense of treading over old territory in these
books, especially in The Atlantis Complex, but Colfer is as always an excellent story teller. He does unfortunately ratchet up his “humans are terrible and destroying the planet” rhetoric in these books which is present to some degree in all of his books but to a larger degree here. Even so, it isn’t enough of a distraction to not recommend the Artemis Fowl books as they are an excellent read and I am almost sorry that I have just one book left in the series to read.

That was it for February. I’m hoping that my March book report of sorts will be a more positive report. I’m starting The Road To Serfdom tomorrow.

Growing up in a Christian home and church and attending a Christian school meant that the consumption of alcohol was looked upon as a sin and something that good Christians didn’t partake in. The only time it was really discussed was in relation to Jesus turning water into wine (John 2:1-11). The teacher or pastor discussing this miracle would often feel obliged to include the caveat that wine in Biblical times had much less alcohol content than modern wine. All of us good little students accepted this caveat without questioning what Biblical or historical evidence was used to reach such a conclusion. Biblically there is no evidence to support this and I will get to that point shortly. Historically there are references to diluted wine in ancient documents but I will also show how this doesn’t support the “weak wine” argument used by modern day Bible teachers seeking to hold onto their view that Jesus couldn’t possibly have created a strong drink at the wedding feast.

The Bible tells us not to be drunk with wine (Ephesians 5:18)0. It is pretty straightforward and something that Christians pretty universally agree on. This verse was also referenced a lot growing up to support the “drinking is okay but not to the point of getting drunk argument.” Fair enough but this most often led to the ancient wines had lower alcohol content argument. The implied lesson here for the student was that the reason all alcohol consumption is viewed as bad is because our modern wines are so much more potent. But are they really? The very admonition from the scriptures to not be drunk with wine would seem to be in contrast with the view that the wine of Jesus’ time contained hardly any alcohol. After all, how do you get drunk on something that has very little alcohol?

It is also rather silly to suggest, with no evidence, that Jesus would have turned water into wine that was of a much lower alcohol content than what the wedding guests had already been drinking. As if Jesus, being God and therefore omnipotent, was aware of our modern day Protestant sensibilities about alcohol and made wine that was only 3% alcohol. Is that really the best argument that can be made?

I would suggest that the strongest argument against the low alcohol content in ancient wine point of view came from Jesus himself and not in a passage that is often thought of when alcohol consumption among Christians is discussed.

The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) that Jesus used to communicate helping your neighbors contains one piece of text that destroys the “weak wine” argument. After the priest and the Levite pass by the man laying beaten along the road the Samaritan man comes along and offers assistance. This is the important part: He treats the man’s wounds with wine and oil. Why would he do that? Ancient peoples knew nothing of bacteria but they could certainly see the affects of it. The alcohol in the wine was able to kill bacteria and someone must have figured out that pouring wine over an open wound could help keep a wound from festering and becoming infected. This must have been common knowledge to Jesus’ contemporaries, otherwise it would have made no sense to reference it.

The really important part though is that it takes a high percentage of alcohol content before bacteria starts to die. Modern wine only has about 12 – 15% alcohol and would take 2 to 3 days to kill bacteria. Once the alcohol content of something reaches about 50%, bacteria begins to die within 30 seconds. So the argument that ancient wine didn’t contain much alcohol falls flat when you consider that ancient peoples were using it to kill bacteria. Evidence for this extends beyond the Bible as references to using wine to treat wounds can also be found in texts of the Roman Empire.

So it is pretty clear that the wine of Jesus’ day was likely just as strong as present day wine and quite possibly much stronger.

By this point in my blog post some of you are probably imagining that I am some kind of raging wino trying to feel better about the amount of alcohol I consume. Actually, I don’t drink at all. I have no interest in consuming alcohol but that is a personal choice and not one that I would try and contort into a sin issue for others. I would recommend that others do the same and the next time someone tries to tell you that Jesus turned the water into wine that wasn’t much different than grape juice, feel free to challenge them to find a historical or Biblical reference to support their claim.

I decided that I want to be more intentional about reading more books this year. I guess you could call it a New Year’s resolution but that just seems like setting myself up to fail once you start calling it that. So don’t and I won’t either. I should note that some of these were “read” as audiobooks. I do quite a bit of commuting to work and audiobooks help keep me awake and alive.

A Glimpse of Jesus by Brennan Manning, Rating: 5/5. This was the first book I finished this month but I didn’t start it this January. Actually I started it in January of last year after my wife had purchased it for me for Christmas. Taking a year to read such a short book seems a bit ridiculous but I feel like theological and self-improvement books are best consumed slowly. So you can savor the words and let them impact you over an extended period of time. After all if you were attempting to learn how to play the guitar you wouldn’t go through an entire instruction book in one day and expect to know how to play the guitar would you? The same is true of books that deal in matters of faith and just better living in general .

But about the book itself…I had never heard of Brennan Manning until he passed away on April 12th, 2013 when a couple of my Facebook friends posted some thoughts on how he had impacted their lives. That led me on a search to figure out who Manning was and when I read a couple paragraphs from A Glimpse of Jesus on Amazon, I knew that it was a book that I needed to read. I was not disappointed either, Brennan Manning had such a simple and effective way of explaining Gospel truth and God’s love for His people.

The God of All Comfort by Dee Brestin, Rating: 1/5. Due to some tragic circumstances within my family I decided to seek out a book about dealing with personal tragedy from a Christian world view. Unfortunately this book didn’t connect with me at all. It is more of an autobiography with excerpts from Dee Brestin’s journal that jumps back and forth in time as she attempts to adapt the journal into a product with commercial viability. I don’t often give up on books but after forcing myself to stick with it 3/4 of the way through, I finally gave up. Perhaps others could find value in it but it wasn’t for me.

Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, Rating: 5/5. I also read 3 books from the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. The books are aimed at young adults but are a good enough read for adults to enjoy as well.  Specifically I read The Eternity Code, The Opal Deception, and The Lost Colony. The books follow the adventures of Artemis Fowl, an Irish teenager with suspect morals whose life becomes entangled in the affairs of elves, dwarfs and other mythical creatures. I highly recommend these books as a fun quick read.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner, Rating 4/5. I had never heard of this book until seeing the movie title at a Redbox and decided to check out the book first. I enjoyed The Maze Runner but have to acknowledge that the subject matter of the book definitely stretches the limits of what my mind is willing to accept as a plausible scenario for the characters to be in. Still, it is enjoyable and I look forward to watching the movie and reading the other books in the series.

Wow 6 books in one month! I can’t imagine that I will continue that pace all year but it is a good start anyway. I’m not sure what books will be in February yet other than the first couple that I am getting a jump start on.

Yes money talks, or more accurately for this post, currency does. I began thinking recently that there was a lot of wisdom in the founding fathers of this great country and several of those founding fathers have their faces on our paper currency.

As time marches on and the history of our country lengthens, the history books used in schools have less page space to dedicate to early American history. In addition to that, there is a very small but very vocal minority of educators and agitators that take joy in tearing down this country’s heroes of old and make sure we all know how awful they were or how awful they would like us to believe the founders were. No one is perfect of course and the founders of the United States were flawed people just like you and I. But to focus solely on the flaws is to miss the amazing things they accomplished and the wisdom that they can teach us.

To that end I began to wonder if perhaps writing a short quote from the historical figure pictured on whatever currency note is in my grasp might be a way to share some of that wisdom. I should note here that the US government has a law in place in regards to defacing currency in such a way as to make it unusable or not able to be reissued and you should read it entirely before proceeding. While I would not presume to offer legal advice to anyone, I’ve never heard of the government going after any of the Where’s George people.

The point of what I am trying to say is that much of America seems to be bent on moving forward without care to what direction is being chosen by elected officials or what the final destination might be. It also seems easy enough to assume that for the majority of Americans, money and the pursuit of it is very central to their world view. Whether the pursuit of it takes the form of working hard to obtain it or hardly working and getting it from the government. Either way, money is the one thing left in America that we all still have in common.

At a time when politicians and the media take great joy in creating uncertainty and anxiety and separating us by beliefs, by color, by gender, or whatever else the current hot button social issue is, money, the idea of obtaining it, is the great unifier.

With that in mind, why not let the wisdom of great Americans like Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant impart some small nuggets of wisdom to your fellow Americans? Ask yourself, is it the type of wisdom that they are likely to find in many other places in current society?

Want to get started? It is pretty simple, just type the name of the person on your currency in a search engine followed by the word “quotes.” There are many quote websites available to choose from.

If someone were to start marking their currency, even after reading the law mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, a good rule of thumb might be to choose quotes that are short enough to fit on the bill without obstructing anything important to verifying the bill’s authenticity. Perhaps on the back side in an out of the way place.

There is a wealth of wisdom hidden in the pages of history. Perhaps through this small idea, some bits of that treasure can come to light and spur an interest in someone to dig deeper.

All the way back in March of 2014 my wife bought me a Pogo water bottle from Target. Unfortunately this water bottle from Pogo was defective and the water spout that pops up would separate from the straw down in the bottle, rendering the water bottle useless.

We had lost the receipt for it so I contacted Pogo directly about my concerns. That was many emails and 10 months ago.  Below is a transcript of those emails. I left out my mailing address and the auto-responses that annoyingly arrived in my inbox every time I replied to an email from Pogo. It all starts out pretty normal but as the amount of time became more absurd, so did some of my emails.

03/26/2014
To whom it may concern:

A couple weeks ago I purchased one of your 24 oz Pogo drink bottles. Unfortunately, it has been nothing but trouble since the second day. The part of the cap that pops up to drink out of pulls up a little bit when you open it which creates a gap that lets air through and not water.

Consequently every time I open it I have to push it back down if I want to get any water out. Last night was the worst. As I tried to push it back down it flew off the top entirely and nearly hit me in the eye.

I can’t imagine that all of your products behave like this but this particular bottle has been completely useless for me. I would appreciate a response and replacement or a refund.

Thank you,
Tim Yordy

Pogo’s Response on 03/30/2014:

Greetings from Pogo!

Thanks very much for your purchase and for contacting us! I’m sorry you are having trouble with the flip straw. Let me see if I can help. Is the straw fully and firmly attached pressed into the lid? Sometimes if the straw is not fully engaged the suction is weak.

If this does not help let me know and I can send you a replacement.

Best regards,

Jordan

My Reply on 03/30/2014:

That is the problem. Every time I open the bottle it comes up a little bit and I have to force it back down to be able to get any water at all out. So yes, if you could replace it, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you,
Tim Yordy

Pogo’s Response on 04/02/2014:

I’m sorry to hear you’re having problems with your straw. I’d love to replace it, and I’ll be sure to notify our engineering team of this issue so we can get it resolved right away.

Please let me know what color you need, your full name and address.

Thanks so much,
Jordan

My Reply on 04/04/2014:

I don’t care what color it is.

Thank you.

I allowed several weeks to go by before contacting them again on 05/01/2014:

Hello, it has been nearly a month and I still have not received my replacement water bottle. Can you tell me when this item was shipped?

Thank you,
Tim Yordy

Pogo’s Response on 05/01/2014:

Hi there – Thanks for checking in! Sorry for the delay – we are waiting for replacement parts to arrive at our office. Once they do, I’ll make sure yours is shipped.

Thanks for your patience,
Jordan

My Reply on 06/22/2014:

Hi there,

It has literally been 3 months now since I originally contacted you about the problem with my water bottle. Seeing as we are in the heart of summer right now, I am getting rather thirsty and fear that I might be suffering from dehydration soon since to this day you have done nothing to remedy the problem with your product.

When can I expect a resolution to this?

Pogo’s Response on 06/22/2014:

Hi Tim –

Please accept my apology for the delay on this. I will make sure to put you on the list for a replacement lid this week. We send it via U.S. mail and it can take up to 5 days to ship.

Thanks so much for your patience,
Jordan

And then my response TODAY:

Dear Jordan,

I finally received my replacement water bottle today and I really appreciate it. You may remember from our last email exchange back in June of 2014 that I had begun to suffer the affects of dehydration due to my lack of a functioning water bottle. As you can tell from my emailing you right now, that I managed to survive the Summer. Squeezing sweat out of my socks to drink might not have been the most tasty, but it got the job done.

Once Fall arrived I survived off of the juice inside some crab apples that were scattered around on the ground. Winter in some ways has been easier as I’ve been able to stay hydrated by eating snow. You do have to eat a lot of the stuff though, what with the way water expands when it freezes. Not much water content in each snowflake.

Anyway, just wanted to thank you again for getting this sent out. I look forward to using my new Pogo water bottle.

When I got home from work today I could see the mailman’s footprints in the snow leading away from our mailbox and up onto our porch. I got a little excited knowing that this meant some kind of package had been delivered. When I saw the box said “Pogo” on it, I thought to myself, “Why does that company sound familiar?” Yep, it had been that long that I couldn’t even remember who they were anymore. Imagine my surprise when I opened the box to find my shiny new Pogo water bottle. I can only hope that they have been using the last 10 months to improve the design. Hopefully I won’t nearly put my eye out again.

Whenever I am fortunate enough to take a vacation from work I often make time to work on some of my musical pursuits. This is of course fit in around family activities. That wasn’t the case this time around however. On my first day of vacation I got an idea for a simple strategy board game for my son and I to play. It only took about 15 minutes to make but I enjoyed it so much that ideas were quickly filling my head for a more complete game based on the concept that I had introduced with my son.

Over the last couple weeks I’ve added things, removed things, tweaked and reworked elements of the game until what has emerged is a pretty complete strategy game.

While ideas for board games have crossed my mind in the past, this is the first time I have had such a complete idea and actually turned it into reality. Below is a picture of the first paper prototype of the game that I played with my son. It’s not much to look at and the board design has come a long way. And of course the game won’t actually use plastic army men.

I’ve playtested the game a handful of times and that’s what has led to most of the changes that were implemented so far. To give you an idea of the gameplay: It’s a two person game wherein each player is given 12 soldiers and some of those soldiers are given random special abilities. On each players turn they are able to move or shoot based on a limited number of allowed actions per turn. There are also several different types of terrain in the game that change each time it is played and this also affects what strategies each player may try to use. Similarly there are random events that are activated by specific squares on the board. These Events can either be a positive or negative thing and so players must choose wisely whether they want to chance putting a soldier on one.

Ultimately, I hope to find an avenue to release the game publicly. I’m still a long way off from that however. The next steps are to continue to test and tweak the gameplay, continue to work on the graphic design of the final board and of the Event and Ability cards, and to design the play pieces themselves.

Once all of that is done I will need to have a professionally made prototype to allow me to promote the game for public release when the time comes.

It feels a little early in the development process to be discussing all of this in a blog post but I need an outlet for my thoughts on the game other than people who are close to me, because I’m sure a couple of them are tired of hearing about every little update I make by now. 🙂

There’s a very sad story coming from Perryton Independent School District in Perryton, TX in which students in a 10th grade history class each year were given red ribbons to wear and wearing the ribbon signified that those students were Jews. The purpose of this activity was to learn about the holocaust and this was to be achieved by allowing all the non-Jew students and faculty to do what they pleased with the ‘Jewish’ students. Things like picking up trash, being taken outside and sprayed with a hose, crawling across a hot running surface, and carrying other students.

That last one is where this innocent game of school sanctioned bullying gets ugly. One former student, Andrew Yara,  allegedly suffered some pretty serious injuries including a dislocated hip after being forced to carry students much larger than himself. That student is now suing the school district for unspecified damages.

There’s something bigger here though that is just waiting to be recognized. That something is this: Given the opportunity, people will gladly act like Nazis. In spite off all the history lessons, stories from our grandparents and WWII documentaries the simple truth is that if a governing body (in this case the public school district) makes it legal to mistreat and harm another group of citizens (the ‘Jewish’ students) then there will always be a segment of society that will gladly due so. I think we sometimes tend to look back through history’s various atrocities and think that the people involved must have been so completely evil. But here in this little town in Texas we have a glowing example that the potential for evil resides in all of us, it’s our choices in the face of that potential that determine who we become.

Yes, some of the students may have learned that life as a Jew under Nazi rule was pretty terrible, but how many more students learned how gratifying it was to be a Nazi? How many learned that being a bully is fun when the people you are bullying don’t dare fight back? In Germany the Jews faced death, these students faced a failing grade if they didn’t comply with everything the ‘Nazis’ wanted them to do.

This is of course just a very small example of government sanctioned mistreatment of one group in favor of another. There have been real world examples in our country in the past and there are still some today as well as some even worse around the world. I don’t really know what this public school had hoped to accomplish by giving students the ‘Red Ribbon’ assignment. But I do know that it illustrated just how depraved humans can be, all anyone has to do is give us permission. The choice of right and wrong is always available though and I’m sure that many students at Perryton high-school didn’t participate in the bullying. Then again, the Nazis highest level of votes in German elections never even managed to get above 44% and even with less than a majority, their power was mighty indeed.

The little town of Perryton, TX has given us some insight into the human condition that modern society doesn’t like to acknowledge: Deep down inside, without the arresting influence of divine grace, we are very likely to choose evil over good. One good thing that has come from Andrew Yara suing the school district: The Red Ribbon assignment has been killed. Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit, at least more students won’t have to take part in this ridiculous be bullied or fail project.