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.