Marriage of sports and gambling likely to be fatal to American sports

Gambling–not injuries, television, money or performance-enhancing drugs–is the biggest threat to sports in America.

Unfortunately, the people who run and broadcast sports are so beholden to gambling money that they don't or won't) see it. The people who should love sports the most are feeding the cancer that may kill it.

An overstatement? Nope.

Gambling and sports have a long history. Presumably, the first athletic contests (Races? Fights? Spear-throwing contests?) involved wagers. From the time people began competing, others bet on who would win.

Illegal gambling cast a shadow over American major sports since the start. The "Black Sox" scandal – the biggest sports gambling scandal in American sports history, when Chicago Whites Sox players took money to lose the World Series – took place in 1919: 106 years ago. Then came the college basketball "fixing" scandals that nearly destroyed the sport. Myriad fixed boxing matches. Pete Rose's expulsion from baseball for betting on the sport. Much, much more.

All along, those running the sports wanted to protect their games.

The specter of gambling – particularly shaving points (winning, but ensuring your team wins by less than the gambling spread) – meant that the penalties for involvement in gambling were so draconian that no rational person would consider it (Pete Rose was not rational).

Then . . . our nation embraced gambling. Decision-makers – with the blessing of NBA commissioner Adam Silver, at least – acknowledged that gambling makes sports more popular, so they largely legalized it. The blend of technology and gambling led to myriad phone apps, where gamblers can bet not only on game results, but on whether players will score more or less than a certain number of points or gain more or less than a certain number of yards. Those apps let people make real-time bets on whether a baseball pitch will be a ball or a strike or if the next football play will be a run or pass.

Bad news, right? Gambling – an addiction that so often ruins lives and jeopardizes the integrity of the games – became easy and convenient.

Even worse, those gambling apps (DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM and more) realized where their audience was: Watching games. So they began to advertise during games. Then they struck deals with leagues to be the official sponsor. They paid so much that TV broadcasts now show odds on the ticker and announcers talk about what parlay bets they'd make. Former athletes star in commercials about how easy it is to bet.

Gambling apps poured millions (billions?) into sponsoring podcasts and news organizations. Legit sports reporting outlets added betting partners and began running articles that include odds.

Now the piper is being paid. The avalanche of gambling scandals has begun.

One NBA player has been banned for sharing information (that he would fake an injury) with gamblers. At least two others and a coach are under federal investigation for the same.

Two pitchers on the Cleveland Indians face lifetime bans and decades in prison for allegedly tipping off gamblers that they would throw pitches that would not be strikes, so the gamblers could profit on specific bets.

It's chaotic and getting worse. Professional athletes now routinely get death threats because someone lost $200 on a parlay bet that required them to score 20 points or get two hits in a game. Friends of athletes sniff around for information to help them win $2,000.

The leaders of the sports and the media members covering those sports? They wring their hands. They say it's good that gambling is regulated, so they could discover these problems (ignoring that virtually all of the recent gambling scandals have involved "prop bets," which illegal bookies rarely allow). They say people would gamble anyway.

Nonsense. Granted, it's a lot of money. A lot of money.

But it's money that will ultimately kill sports because fans will question whether results are legitimate.

Sports leagues and media outlets are feeding the beast. They're killing their own sport. They're spending their time announcing gambling scandals while protecting the gambling apps that create them.

This is like deciding people will always take drugs, so we allow apps that provide an immediate free hit of whatever drug they use, all while advertising how great the drug app is and having influential people talking about how high you can get off the new methamphetamines.

Professional sports seem healthy, but they're not. The killer and the victim are the same organizations and the only way to fix it is the same thing that gambling addicts need to do. Stop. Now. Pay the price but get away from gambling.

It won't happen. There's too much money involved for everyone to see that they're killing the thing they love.

I hope I'm wrong.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

It may be time to go back to the future for baby names

Who is the youngest person named Doris? Or Marvin?

Is there anyone in elementary schools with those names? Anyone under 18? Anyone under 40?

It seems likely, but who knows? Popular names change over time and we tend to have group think about them. Do you know someone named Ashley or Justin? They were probably born in the 1980s. Someone named Barbara or Dennis? They're likely old enough to receive Medicare.

But wouldn't it be great to go into a kindergarten class and meet a bunch of 5-year-olds with throwback names? Betty. Shirley. Beverly. Ralph. Norman. Earl.

I'd want to meet those parents and congratulate them for either being traditionalists or being the first wave of parents who use those names again.

The thing is, there was a time when kindergarten classes were filled with Shirleys and Normans. It was the 1930s and 1940s, but still . . . names that we associate with seniors were once given to newborns. As time passed, names changed and many returned. Consider the renaissance in the past decades of girls' names such as Abigail, Emilia and Lily – all popular names a century ago. But where are the Ethels and Gladyses and Mildreds?

(It's always risky to make gags about names, because just when you ridicule a name, you find out that a friend named their child that–because it's the name of someone who made an indelible impact on their life. So I apologize in advance. When I say that it would be funny to meet a 5-year-old Doris or Marvin, I don't mean that your child or grandchild has a goofy name. They're different.)

Along with everyone reading this, I'm sensitive about this subject. I realize I have the most white bread name possible – both my first name and last name sound like the entitled son of a wealthy country club member in a 1980s teen movie (which might be the case. Or maybe not). My sons' names ranked 76th and 133rd in the 1990s and my three granddaughters all have names that rank in the top 150 for the decades in which they were born.

In other words, I can't blame people for running with the herd on names. My kids and granddaughters are the Marvins and Dorises of their generations.

By the way, according to the Social Security Administration (your source for baby names and retirement benefits), the five most popular names in 2024 for girls were Olivia, Emily, Amelia, Charlotte and Mia. For boys, they were Liam, Noah, Oliver, Theodore and James. One hundred years ago, the most popular among those names was Charlotte (78th in the 1920s) and James (still third!).

So if you're getting ready to have a child and want to be a forerunner in the what's-old-is-new movement of baby names, allow me to make some suggestions among names that were popular 100 years ago and are ready for a return (although it may be difficult to find a bicycle license plate with that name, if that's a thing anymore).

Here are five suggestions for girls' names: Betty, Gladys, Hazel, Gertrude, Bertha. For boys: Howard, Clarence, Herbert, Elmer, Harvey.

The classics are classics for a reason.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

A gratitude list, from Thanksgiving football to flush toilets

I've been writing newspaper columns for nearly 40 years. I've been writing this column (not this specific one, but the Sunday Daily Republic column in general) for nearly 25 years. For nearly a half-century, I've been able to do one thing: Read a calendar.

There are 52 Sundays per year and it's difficult to come up with 52 good column ideas (which won't surprise anyone who regularly reads what I write). There are, however, some obvious choices: Holidays.

Some are better than others. It's hard (but not impossible) to find a clever topic related to Arbor Day or even Valentine's Day (I've written the "I hate Valentine's Day" column and the "Mrs. Brad loves those awful chalky heart candies" columns).

The next holiday on the schedule? Fairly simple. Thanksgiving is not only one of the greatest holidays in America (ranked No. 2 by your intrepid author in yet another column, 10 years ago), it's a great time to express gratitude. And the Sunday before Thanksgiving is a great time for a columnist to reflect on gratitude and offer up some things for which we should be thankful.

So, here goes. Here are 15 sometimes-overlooked things for which we should be thankful in 2025:

• NFL games on Thanksgiving. We're now in the three-game era, but for most of our lives, Thanksgiving featured two games: A morning game in Detroit, and afternoon game in Dallas. How many other holiday sports traditions are there? Maybe NBA games at Christmas. Maybe the final round of the U.S. Open men's golf tournament on Father's Day. Thanksgiving is better. When I was 10, the Lions hosted a Thanksgiving morning game, the Cowboys hosted the afternoon game. When I was 60, same thing. A great tradition.
• We can stream music and podcasts on our phones  A music service gives us access to a library of songs that is 10,000 times greater than any of us – even the most devoted musicophile – could collect. I often take this modern miracle for granted.
• We still listen to the same 100 or so songs, because as much as we'd like to say we have diverse tastes, most of us have narrow tastes. That's fine. Enjoy what you enjoy.
• Grocery stores have virtually every food you need. Fresh vegetables. Good meat. Canned foods, boxed foods, snacks, healthy food. They also have paper plates, pens, shampoo. And we can put all those things in carts with wheels that we dutifully return to their corrals after using. We may (and do) complain about costs, but think how life would be without a grocery store nearby.
• Even when we have something wrong with us medically, the other 99.99% of our body  functions correctly. How does my leg know how to step onto a sidewalk without me thinking about it? How does my kidney know how to function correctly? How does my skin repair itself when I get a cut? It's amazing.
• Cars last decades now, not just 100,000 miles. I expect my cars to go 300,000 miles, which was unfathomable even a generation ago.
• Showers.
• Egg cartons haven't really been improved. They work perfectly.
• Winter and summer last just long enough that many of us are ready for a change when it comes.
• Flush toilets exist.
• We can wave our credit card by a machine and it somehow works.
• Our body sleeps daily and keeps functioning when we're unconscious. Isn't that amazing?
• We can communicate with medical professionals by our computers. There's still plenty wrong with medicine, but being able to ask our doctor a basic, non-emergency question via a website is a tremendous step.
• Top Ramen, the most reliable food ever.
• When I need a column idea for the Sunday before the fourth Thursday in November, I can write about gratitude.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Simpler times, when Northern California had just five area codes

If you told me your phone number area code in the 1980s, I knew generally where you lived. Because there were only five such codes in Northern California.

I grew up in the northern end of the 707, as we say now, which made it remarkable when Mrs. Brad and I moved to Fairfield and were still in the area code of our births. We were 707 for life!

However, we were aware of the other area codes (especially during my sports editor days, when I made and received calls daily from coaches): 916 was for Sacramento to the Oregon border, 415 was around San Francisco, but encompassed most of the Peninsula and East Bay Area; 408 was around San Jose; 209 was Stockton and south around I-5 and Highway 99.

That was it. That's all we'd ever need. Your area code mattered.

It was a simpler time, when we had three TV networks (before Fox arrived) and two colors of clothes (black or white).

We also had other oversimplifications to explain our childhood to people born decades after us: Life was simpler. We were happier. Our mothers were depressed and our fathers drank a lot, ignored us and often had affairs (Wait. That didn't happen to everyone?). But dang it, the world was better! There were only five area codes in Northern California!

It turns out area codes were relatively new when many thought they were permanent. Area codes began in 1947, which is a long time ago now, but wasn't that long ago in the 1960s. California originally had three area codes–213 for Southern California, 415 for Central California (which included the Bay Area) and 916 for Northern California (including my hometown of Eureka). In fact, the entire nation had 76 area codes, covering all 50 states (well, 48 states in 1947. Alaska and Hawaii were standing in the lobby, so they didn't get area codes).

The 707 was created in 1959 to commemorate the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper (Editor's note: That is not confirmed. In fact, it's wrong) and things stayed the same for decades and decades.

The Big Five area codes remained in place until the 1980s and the arrival of more phones, fax machines and girls whose hair was really tall in front (perhaps not related to phones). The volume of phone numbers grew quickly and new area codes came. The East Bay spun off the 510 area code in 1991. Six years later, the Peninsula became 650 and the northern part of 916 became 530. The next year, the 925 area code split from the seven-year-old 510. In the past decade or so, it's grown on steroids: a bunch of new area codes were "overlaid" to existing area codes. You may not realize this, but Northern California now has area codes 279, 341, 350, 369, 628, 669 and 837.

But . . . my hometown (Eureka) and Fairfield-Suisun are the OGs. They remain 707. An area code, a famous airplane, a lifestyle.

Who knows what will happen next? Will we continue to split area codes or will technology make it needless (mobile phones exploded but fax machines went away, partly offsetting the increase, I presume).

Sometimes I look back at the good old days when there were just a few area codes. When all we had to do was dial 11 numbers (one, plus the area code, plus the number) to make a long-distance call, which was expensive. Dialing such a number incorrectly resulted in a charge on the phone bill. Back then, your parents urged you to talk quickly to grandma because it was a long-distance call (made on a Sunday night, when rates were allegedly cheaper)!

I think back to when we had stickers on the phone with the number of the fire department, since there was no 9-1-1 system. When life was . . . 

Wait a second! That doesn't sound simpler, that sounds harder. Our phones were attached to our kitchen walls, long-distance calls cost a lot of money, you had to dial numbers, there were no answering machines and there was no 9-1-1 service.

Let me change my story. Back when I was a kid, life was so much harder. We had to dial numbers, our moms were depressed and there were just five area codes in Northern California . . .

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

The Dictionary.com Word of the Year is 6-7, which is so 6-7

If you ever forgot that teenagers want to be different, you're probably 6-7.

Don't know what that means? Neither do I. But of course, neither do tweens and teenagers who made that term so ubiquitous that it's Dictionary.com's "Word of the Year" for 2025.

Forget that "6-7" isn't a word. Forget that there's no definition. Consider it an exhibition of the power of teens.

That's so 6-7.

To the uninitiated (which is most of us), 6-7 became a common (overused) phrase this summer among school-aged kids, launched by its repetition in the song "Doot Doot (6 7)" by Skrilla (fun fact: Skrilla's real name is Fred Skrillakowski and he's a 54-year-old truck driver from Iowa. Fun truth: That's not true).

Dictionary.com wrote that 6-7, "is a viral, ambiguous slang term" that is largely nonsensical. Some say it means "so-so" or "just OK," or "maybe this, maybe that."

In other words, if kids wanted to be clear, they could say "so-so," "just OK," or "maybe this, maybe that." Or maybe not. There's a mystery to the meaning – and as always, there's a suspicion among adults that it has to do with drugs or sex.

That's so 6-7.

However, there's a possibility – maybe a likelihood, if you're a sports nerd and know players' heights – that 6-7 really grabbed people's attention when the Skrilla song was used frequently on video clips of LaMelo Ball, a player for the NBA's Charlotte Hornets who stands . . . are you ready? . . . 6 foot 7.

LaMelo Ball is 6-7! Although I'd suggest he's more than "so-so" or "just OK." LeMelo Ball has a reasonable chance to be an NBA All-Star.

But there are other possibilities.

The official Wikipedia entry says, "Some have connected it to 67th Street in Skrilla's hometown of Philadelphia or to 67th Street in Chicago. Linguist and African American English expert Taylor Jones has speculated that it may refer to '10-67,' the police radio code used to notify of a death. ... Skrilla himself has stated, 'I never put an actual meaning on it and I still would not want to.'"

After saying that, Skrilla got back into the cab of his 18-wheeler, called his wife Judy back home in Iowa, and asked if she could cook meatloaf for the first night when he returned. (This is called "continuing the bit," which is 6-7.)

Ultimately, the "Word of the Year" award holds up about as well as the Heisman Trophy in terms of predicting the future. Just go back 11 years, for instance: The Word of the Year was "exposure" and the Heisman Trophy winner was Marcus Mariota. The best you could do to suggest either had a lasting impact is to say, "Marcus Mariota seemed OK until he got exposure and we realized he's a 6-7 quarterback."

Is 6-7 worth remembering? It depends on who's in your life. If you are around a group of 13-, 15- and 17-year-olds, maybe. If not, it will probably fade into obscurity, only to be revived in 20 years when they're in their 30s and complaining about how kids are dumb.

Kids aren't dumb. They want to be different than adults. They want their own thing.

The last thing they want to be is 6-7, if my understanding is correct.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

My most miserable academic experience was a college science class

Always do your homework, even before enrolling in a class. I learned that in the most humiliating educational experience of my life.

I was midway through my college experience. I didn't live on campus (I lived in town). I had few friends who were in college with me (most of my friends were co-workers, from church or from high school). And then there was Mrs. Brad (who wasn't yet Mrs. Brad).

I was on my own to pick classes. I was a journalism major, but unfortunately, I was required to take other classes. I liked history. I tolerated psychology. I enjoyed radio.

We were required to take multiple science classes. I was terrible at science. It made no sense to me. In high school, I survived because it was a general class and I could memorize well enough to regurgitate facts for a test (while not understanding the subject).

It turned out that strategy didn't help in college. I registered for botany.

Confession: I had no idea what botany was and in the pre-internet age, the only way to find out would be to look it up in a dictionary or encyclopedia. Or ask someone who knew. I didn't do either: I needed a science class and the botany class fit my schedule. How hard could it be?

Very hard, it turns out.

I walked into the first day of class and got a sense of impending doom. I attended Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt!), which had a large forestry program. Most of my fellow students were wearing flannel shorts, boots and had beards. And that was just the women (rimshot)!

Botany is the study of plants, it turns out. The class I was taking was a general education science class, but it was also required for those forestry majors who loved science and plants and flannel and beards.

I'd figure it out, I thought.

The botany class was three days a week at 8 a.m., which was a terrible time for someone who worked until midnight several days a week at a pizza parlor. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'd get to class, sit in a massive lecture hall with 100 other students and the teacher would turn off the lights to show slides. The next moment, the lights came back on, it was 9 a.m. and I'd slept through class. Oh no.

The worse part? There was a lab requirement of two three-hour sessions a week, which seemed impossible. I didn't know what to do, other than to use a microscope to shatter a dozen cover slides (slide covers? Who knows?) per session. I couldn't figure out how to make the microscope work, while my fellow students were talking about chlorophyll and cell walls and nuclei. While wearing flannel shirts and stroking their manly beards.

The most memorable part of the class may have been the persistent gag by Paul, of my co-workers at the pizza parlor. He would occasionally ask me what class was giving me problems. When I'd say, "botany," he'd say, "not lately."

It was dumb, but the fact that it was the highlight shows how terrible the class was.

By the midway point of the quarter, I was failing miserably. My average was in the mid-30s and the lowest D required a score in the 60s, so I went to visit the professor. I could talk my way through this. I was trying! It wasn't my fault! I went to high school with his daughter! (I hoped the last point was the tiebreaker.)

He listened to me, then said there was a great way to ensure I passed the class: Get my score up to a 60 for a D-minus. 

For me to raise my average to that point, I'd need to average an 85 or something the rest of the quarter. How was that going to happen?

I thought I could dig my way out. I'd pay attention in class. I'd solve the broken cover slide problem. I'd understand what chlorophyll was and maybe even wear flannel. Well, not that extreme, but maybe I'd figure it out.

The rest of the quarter was . . . more of the same. I went to class, fell asleep and woke up an hour later. I went to the lab hours and continued to shatter cover slides. I took tests and failed miserably.

I failed the class badly. I wasted an entire quarter by getting up early three days a week. I spent six hours a week learning to hate microscopes. I realized that people with beards and flannel shirts are smarter than me.

The most important lesson? Don't sign up for something you don't understand.

Ultimately, I compiled my science units by taking what were still casually called "bonehead" classes, those intended for students like me, rather than the whiskered, flannel-wearers.

The final class? Biology, taught by a professor who acknowledged that most of us were there for the credits, so he tried to make it interesting to us. And I had a friend who went to college and took the class with me: Mrs. Brad. We were engaged by that time and it was our last quarter of college. A biology class seemed perfect. We both passed.

Decades later, my main memories of college science, though, are of being tired and breaking cover slides.

Botany? Not lately.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

The good old days, when reaching 18 was considered 'old age'

Be grateful you're living in 2025. While there are plenty of problems, it could be worse. If you were living in 50,000 BC, you would likely have died decades ago (well, 52,025 years and decades ago). The same for living in 1200. Or even 1900, for that matter.

Here's why: According to a 2011 report included in an article that estimates how many people have lived in world history, the average life expectancy in 50,000 BC was 13. Thirteen! Forty-two thousand years later, all the way to 8,000 BC, the average life expectancy was . . .  still 13. That explains why so many parents in that era didn't invest in braces for their kids. It was unlikely they'd benefit. (That trend was so significant that there is no evidence of orthodontists in 8,000 BC.)

Over the centuries, lifespans got a little longer, but only a bit. By 1750 (when we were only 16 years away from the Declaration of Independence), the expected lifespan was 28. By 1900, it was just 38.

That's right. The average person in 1900 would barely make it to their 20th high school reunion. Or, more accurately, to the 30th reunion of third grade, when they quit school to work in a mine.

Now? The average lifespan is 73 and rising.

So yeah, these are the good old days. Being a 20-year-old now isn't old age. Reaching 40 isn't a time to have people toast your longevity. As they say in some 50,000-year-old hospitals, 73 is the new 13.

How short lifespans have been over the eons was a takeaway from an article that challenges the assertion that about 117 billion people have lived. (You've never heard that assertion? Neither had I.)

Those estimates vary greatly. The author points out that some people say that about 170 million people were on earth in C.E. 1 (formerly known as 1 AD), while others say there were about 300 million at that time. The author uses a complicated math formula (more complicated than figuring out a batting average!) to include the fact that you and I being alive now was predictable 20 years ago. Calculating the population in Earth's history isn't as simple as figuring the population each decade and adding them all together, since people live multiple decades (also, census data from 45,000 BC is notoriously inaccurate).

His estimate is that 93 billion people have lived, a significantly lower number than the standard. Beyond that, there's one big takeaway for me.

The world's population has grown dramatically in recent years not because the birth rate is high, but because the death rate is low. Even as late as 1750 or 1900, people died dramatically earlier than they do now, so the world population didn't grow fast despite the fact that families often had six or 12 or 15 kids.

A point of evidence: Between 7% and 10% of all people aged 65 or older who have ever lived are alive now. 

So today, you're smarter. You know three things:

1. It's reasonable to think about 100 billion people have ever lived.

2. Nearly 10% of all people 65 and older who have ever lived are alive now.

3. If you're 30 or 40 or 50 or older, you would have been a remarkable survivor in 50,000 BC. Or 8,000 BC. Or even 1750.

Had you lived centuries ago, you would have been considered amazing, although you'd also be susceptible to the Black Death or malnutrition. So there's that.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

National Shame: Many Americans don't know lyrics to the 'Happy Birthday' song

  

I want to know who I know who is included in the 27% of American adults who don't know the words to the "Happy Birthday" song. Twenty-seven percent!

According to a survey by the folks at YouGov, if you're in a room with 99 other people, 27 of them don't know the words to the best-known song in America.

Do they think it's too complicated? ("Do I sing, 'Happy birthday to you' two or three times before saying 'Dear'?") Do they get confused by the words? ("Is it Earth Day or birthday?") Have they never been to a birthday party? Are they Jehovah's Witnesses?

Confounding. But if you're the songwriter of the "Birthday Song," take solace (which may be difficult, because the writer of the song – which is part of the public domain – surely died decades ago): It's the best-known song in America in terms of people being comfortable that they know most or all of the words, edging out "Jingle Bells" for that honor.

Third place? "The Star Spangled Banner," followed by "Amazing Grace" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

If you're looking for a pop song, the tune at No. 6 is "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and if you're looking for a pop song that's less than 50 years old, No. 7 is "Hotel California." (Which is nearly 50 years old!)

You can argue with the findings (Mrs. Brad still insists that a lyric in "Hotel California," is, "She's got a lot of pretty, pretty boys that she calls men," although I've pointed out multiple times that the word is "friends," which rhymes with Mercedes-Benz in a couplet), but the survey reveals what we already know: Each generation is different. Women and men are different. And the differences aren't surprising.

If you know most of the words to "Let It Be," (No. 10), you're likely older and might not know the words to "Baby Shark" (No. 17). If you know the words to "Piano Man," (tied at No. 17 with "Baby Shark,") you might not know the words to "Old Town Road" (tied for No. 31).

One perfect example, from which you can draw all kinds of (likely wrong) impressions: More than 80% of people 65 and older know most or all the words to "The Star Spangled Banner," while only 36% of people 18-29 do. That seems outrageous to a typical 70-year-old and obvious to a 25-year-old (who is probably humming "Old Town Road.")

There's also no surprise that men and women are different. Some of the biggest gaps are for "Baby Shark" (known by 28% of women, 16% of men) and "All Star" by Smashmouth (known by 21% of men, 15% of women).

Maybe the best way to interpret this is to see songs for which you know the lyrics, but are an outlier for your age or gender. If you're under 30 and know the words to "American Pie," you're rare. If you're 65 or older and know the words in,"We Don't Talk About Bruno," you're . . . well, you don't exist, according to the survey, which said 0% of people in that age group know that song. If you're a man and know "Love Story" by Taylor Swift, take a bow. If you're a woman and know the lyrics to "Pokémon Theme," you're unusual.

Of course, some songs follow a predictable decline or incline as the respondents get older. The younger you are, the more likely you know the words to the song from "SpongeBob SquarePants." The older you are, the more likely you are to know the words to "America the Beautiful."

And then there's the age of my sons–people 30 to 44. They are disproportionately knowledgeable about the lyrics to "I Want it That Way," by the Backstreet Boys, "All the Small Things" by Blink-182 and theme song to "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," by Will Smith.

It all goes to show that few songs are eternal and each generation has special songs. Some are by the Beatles or Billy Joel, others are by whoever is responsible for the "Baby Shark" song.

But ultimately, the data presents this disturbing question: Do any of the 27% of Americans who don't know the words to the "Happy Birthday" song know the lyrics to "Bohemian Rhapsody" (which ranks ninth)?

Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go. Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

Mrs. Brad is smarter than me in most ways. She's an engineer, so she knows how things work. She's more sensitive, so she's attuned to how others are feeling. She can cook, so she knows that macaroni and cheese has more ingredients than macaroni and cheese.

In my defense, I know more about the 1970s and 1980s San Francisco Giants and I remember song lyrics better.

However, there's one area in which she is far behind me and has plenty of company with younger people: When Mrs. Brad sees an analog clock (the circular kind, with two hands on it), it takes her a few moments to know the time. She doesn't automatically realize that it's 4:15 p.m. or 6:35 a.m. She has to calculate it.

If you're like me and you can tell the time immediately when you see a clock, congratulations. You're in the majority. You're also likely eligible for AARP membership and you probably also know who Ed Sullivan was.

A survey by YouGov showed that 71% of Americans surveyed can tell the time on an analog clock instantly, while 23% say it takes a few seconds and 3% say it takes more than a few seconds. The other 3% are "not sure," which I presume means they don't know what the word "clock" means.

However (and there's almost always a "however"), the numbers change based on your age. Of those 65 and older (hey! Newspaper readers!), a full 95% can tell the time instantly on an analog clock. Of those aged 18 to 29, 43% say they can do it instantly and the rest say it takes some time (or again, "not sure," which in this case means they've never seen an analog clock).

This all makes sense, of course. If you're 25 years old, you were born in 2000 or later, meaning that you've always had access to digital devices with clocks that show numbers, not a pie chart. There's been no need to watch what we call a "real" clock. People under 30 have never sat in a classroom, watching the wall clock tick slowly, slowly, slowly to the end of a boring teacher's lecture. They've never had to learn what their uncle or grandma meant when they said the time was "half past three" or "quarter to six." What would those terms even mean if you were looking at a digital device that said 3:30 or 5:45?

So Mrs. Brad is like the youngsters – a scenario that makes her feel much better than she did as a little girl when they taught how to "tell time" in school and she couldn't really grasp it. She could and can tell the time, but it takes some figuring before she's sure of it.

This woman is an engineer. She can read blueprints. She looks at leaky plumbing and figures out what's wrong, all while I tell the time instantly and inform her that Mike Ivie hit a grand slam to beat the Dodgers on Memorial Day weekend 1978 and that Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" tells post-World War II history in chronological order. Speaking of chronology, look, it's quarter past seven! (That's 7:15 for you kids out there.)

But really, like the Chicago song, it comes down to, "does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?"

The answer is yes. And younger people are more likely to need a digital device to instantly know what time it is. Especially, to use another Chicago song, if it's 25 or 6 to 4.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.

Stone-skipping world rocked by latest sports scandal

You think the steroid era of baseball in the late 1990s and early 2000s was bad? This is like substituting a superball for a baseball. This is worse. 

You think the gambling scandals that rock college basketball every 30 or 40 years are bad? Consider if the NCAA champions were cheating by shooting at a bigger hoop. This is worse. 

You think it was terrible when Lance Armstrong used blood doping to win seven straight Tour de France titles? Just think if he also had a motor on his bike. This is worse.

You think it was terrible when the New England Patriots deflated footballs? No? Neither do I. I'm not sure how it helped them and it's confusing. But they seemed guilty. This is worse.

One of the world's great sporting events was rocked by scandal this summer (just wait until you hear what sport! Me using "rocked" is funny!). It's a sport you've undoubtedly tried, but I suspect you didn't know involved a world championship. I fact, you probably didn't know it was a sport.

You probably think you're pretty good at it.

Stone-skipping, the "sport" where you see how many times you can make a rock bounce when you throw it across water, faced the greatest scandal this year since the first caveman tried to see if he could bounce a rock across a river inhabited by dinosaurs and dragons (my history is shaky. Some of that may be wrong).

During the world stone-skipping championship on the island of Easdale off the west coast of Scotland, several competitors were found to have ground special rocks to make them skip better.

Oh. No. Is nothing sacred?

There were more than 2,000 competitors in this year's event and the rules were simple:  The winner would be the person whose three tosses (each having to skip at least twice) covered the greatest distance. The stones thrown were required to come from "naturally occurring island slate."

Simple, right? If you've skipped stones at a river or lake (or stream or bathtub or ocean), you've undoubtedly looked for the perfect skipping stone. The best ones are medium-sized, flat and circular. At least I think those are the best ones because they seem like they would skip best. 

The officials require the rocks to be no more than three inches across, so they have a wonderfully named "ring of truth," which they use to ensure the stones are no wider than that.

The officials said that the "ring of truth" was used to note the size, but no one noticed that many of the stones were almost perfectly round.

How many rocks are perfectly round? After some special grinding, enough, apparently.

Fortunately, the guilty admitted it. Or some of them did – we have to take the word of the event organizers, who have a built-in incentive to minimize reporting of cheating: Who knows how many stone-skippers were like Rafael Palmiero or Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens and didn't admit what was obvious?

We'll never know, but the winner of the event was an American named Jonathan Jennings, who won the event by skimming his three stones a cumulative 177 meters. That is roughly 580 feet, which is also the circumference of Barry Bonds' head after he "allegedly" used human growth hormone.

I jest. It was only about 400 feet around. No. Just kidding. Maybe 4 feet? It definitely was large.

Anyway, organizer Dr. Kyle Mathews told the BBC that lessons had been learned and they would "move on to an even greater event next year."

In other words, he was like the leader of every sport in which cheating is discovered: He vows that stone skipping will rise above the cheating.

I'm not sure I believe him. My faith in this sport is shaken, even though I didn't know it existed. Maybe next year, I'll skip it. Get it?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.