c-change

Commentary on the Social Network

2010-10-02T16:15:00.001-07:00

http://www.slate.com/id/2269308/pagenum/2

So, I've not seen the movie, I repost this because this is honestly the first time since "The Life of Samuel Johnson" that I've enjoyed literary commentary.

Linked In

2010-08-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

I finally joined linked in.
Kind of.
I accidentally typed my name wrong.
Ryana.
596 messages, asking people if they would like to be friends with ryana, owner of my company.
Nice.

Holiday

2010-08-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

As I get more engaged internationally, I found myself cribbing from the rest of the world and saying "Holiday" not "day-off."
Like today, I took Shannon and Anna on Holiday to the zoo.
Here's what I love about that.
Whether spiritual or not, time away from work should be time made "holy" in the most basic sense. This is special time, set aside, to be with those people and not with those other people.
It might be truly semantics, but I don't think so. In faith, churches matter because they are set aside for someone big and important. I think in our family relationships the notion of a Holiday is the same thing--the day matters and is given life because of the people with whom I spend them.
One of those people is crying now, and the other needs to write lesson plans. Good-night internet.

Back to Writing

2010-08-19T19:26:00.000-07:00

I tend to write in spurts, driven by a need to put clarity to thoughts.
I think I will be writing a lot in the coming months.

I've been reading a lot of the Acts 29 guys recently (Matt Chandler and Mark Driscoll mostly). They're fine, but I saw an interesting comment from Driscoll regarding Megachurches that bugged me.
__
The major blind spot of megachurches is that they tend to be very effeminate with aesthetics, music, and preaching perfectly tailored for moms. Manly men are repelled by this, and many of the men who find it appealing are the types to sing prom songs to Jesus and learn about their feelings while sitting in a seafoam green chair drinking herbal tea—the spiritual equivalent of Richard Simmons.
__
I have no idea if this is true for most churches, don't know what seafoam is, and am not over the moon about herbal tea, but I think this comment is idiotic.

We have megachurches for exactly the same reason we have shopping malls, big box retailers, and IKEA stores--we are used to driving places.

It's like in the Big Lebowski...
The Big Lebowski: What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski?
The Dude: Dude.
The Big Lebowski: Huh?
The Dude: Uhh... I don't know sir.
The Big Lebowski: Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost? Isn't that what makes a man?
The Dude: Hmmm... Sure, that and a pair of testicles.

But let's make sure to talk about it for a really long time.

Milgram Game Show

2010-03-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

Some guys in France just did a new version of the Milgram study in the context of a game show.
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1972981,00.html
Yikes.

Salinger

2010-01-30T13:40:00.000-08:00

I don't know much about him, but I know he spawned the best Onion article anyway:
Bunch of phonies mourn JD Salinger.
Brilliant.

Fact Check

2010-01-28T17:49:00.000-08:00

If you're interested here's a summary of Fact Check's review of the State of the Union.
Some stretching, but mostly true.
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/01/obamas-state-of-the-union-address/

Cognitive Load

2010-01-26T20:24:00.000-08:00

Check this out.
Stanford did a study on decision mechanisms.
Two groups were given a set of numbers to memorize. They were all told to walk down from room 101 to room 102 and recite the numbers.
Group A was given 7 numbers. You probably remember from Psych that this is the biggest chunk most people can remember so it sort of taxes your brain.
Group B was given 2 numbers. It's pretty easy to hold 2 numbers.
Now it gets cool.
En route everyone bumped into a lady with a tray of snacks. She said, "Hey Joe, thank you for your help in this study. To show our appreciation you can have some cake or some fruit salad."
Group A (lots of numbers) takes cake.
Group B (a few numbers) takes fruit.
The theory is something called cognitive load.
When we decide stuff there's a cage match--your emotional mind "Cake me! Cake me now!!" versus your rational mind "Have you thought of the calories..."
I'm trying to see how this factors in to the way I make decisions every day, but if nothing else it's an interesting study.

Unposted Post 2--Google Thinks I'm Gay

2010-01-17T17:39:00.000-08:00

.This is an unposted post I wrote reflecting on the Virginia Tech shooting.
Google thinks I'm gay...
As an experiment for a play I was working on I set up google ads on my site. I was curious to see how it worked. Bizarelly, google thinks I'm gay. It has for some time.
Above my posts there's a little ad. Mostly for church stuff, once for simulated cat pee (?) and recently for gay related items. This would make sense to me tomorrow, when the google crawlers will have found the word gay within the copy, but I don't know what other sign I'm giving off that makes google think I'm gay. That's now what I'm writing about...just curious. Is it the hair?
The other thing...
Some time ago I was involved in what CNN called a tragedy. They pointed cameras at me and my friends. The facts of the story were pretty simple--unpredictable, senseless, crappy thing (in this case a Tornado that killed people in Cincy). The story was a big deal because it was a slow news day. It became a story about hope because we made that happen...we deliberately and methodically stayed "on message" because if people are going to point a camera at you it makes sense to leverage the redemptive potential. It became a story of hope...but it wasn't one.
Sad things, particularly ugly, violent, senseless sad things like shootings or storms become something of a national rorschach onto which we can project our own hopes or fears. This is why the VT shooting was about community, or unity, or courage, or hope, or madness, or gun control, or liberalism, or faith, or the goodness of God, or the absence of God, or existential despair, or Korean americans, depending on where we're standing.
What I struggle with is that none of this is REAL. A wack job went crazy and the walls were ripped away from our hearts. This is fine and natural, but it becomes dangerous when we project MEANING onto something senseless. Some thing's just suck and saying otherwise is reckless.
I suppose this is kind of a question about theology (in the sense that if you believe in an active God then everything is kind of about theology) but I think some times in the church we try to answer questions before spending time to shut up and live in pain for a little while.

Unpublished Post 2: Google Thinks I'm gay...

2010-01-17T17:31:00.000-08:00

This is an unposted post I wrote reflecting on the Virginia Tech shooting.
Google thinks I'm gay...
As an experiment for a play I was working on I set up google ads on my site. I was curious to see how it worked. Bizarelly, google thinks I'm gay. It has for some time.
Above my posts there's a little ad. Mostly for church stuff, once for simulated cat pee (?) and recently for gay related items. This would make sense to me tomorrow, when the google crawlers will have found the word gay within the copy, but I don't know what other sign I'm giving off that makes google think I'm gay. That's now what I'm writing about...just curious. Is it the hair?
The other thing...
Some time ago I was involved in what CNN called a tragedy. They pointed cameras at me and my friends. The facts of the story were pretty simple--unpredictable, senseless, crappy thing (in this case a Tornado that killed people in Cincy). The story was a big deal because it was a slow news day. It became a story about hope because we made that happen...we deliberately and methodically stayed "on message" because if people are going to point a camera at you it makes sense to leverage the redemptive potential. It became a story of hope...but it wasn't one.
Sad things, particularly ugly, violent, senseless sad things like shootings or storms become something of a national rorschach onto which we can project our own hopes or fears. This is why the VT shooting was about community, or unity, or courage, or hope, or madness, or gun control, or liberalism, or faith, or the goodness of God, or the absence of God, or existential despair, or Korean americans, depending on where we're standing.
What I struggle with is that none of this is REAL. A wack job went crazy and the walls were ripped away from our hearts. This is fine and natural, but it becomes dangerous when we project MEANING onto something senseless. Some thing's just suck and saying otherwise is reckless.
I suppose this is kind of a question about theology (in the sense that if you believe in an active God then everything is kind of about theology) but I think some times in the church we try to answer questions before spending time to shut up and live in pain for a little while.

Unposted Post 1--2005

2010-01-17T17:26:00.000-08:00

Dulles
This is the first of my old unposted posts. Keith wants to read them, and he's the only person who reads this, so why not. Also, I read tonight in "Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man" that you should never throw away old writing until you've tried to improve it.

This was originally written on 5 November 2005 and never posted.

Dulles sucks. It is the weirdest AirPort I've ever seen, and my sample population has grown dramatically in the last few years.
The being said, I met an interesting person there, and I learned some things.
She is finishing up her Oncology residency at Columbia, and since we were both convention retarded (me from a Water trade show, her from a symposium on cancer prevention) we chose to talk rather than work.
First, an aside. We had an idea in college that would be a dramatic innovation in the world of conventions. The concept was a bullshit flag. It was a flag that you could hold up during the ubiquitous "Hey I don't really know you but part of the protocol is that we talk about your cat for two minutes before we get to the point" conversation. By holding up the flag you remove the lingering guilt that must be piling up somewhere in the upper middle class subconscious from 1000 plastic conversations. Also, it's more efficient.
Anyway, back to Dulles.
We talked about global water need and other stuff about my job and then we talked about Oncology. She mentioned a change in senior health benefits that will probably cost more than Katrina, Iraq, and any Social Security reform combined.
Check this out.
1. During Bush's Medicaid Reform package they did not allow the government to negotiate with drug companies. This means that we will have to pay top dollar for prescription drugs, or in other words that the Government failed to take advantage of one of the only competitive advantages available to an organization of its size--economies of scale. That's stupid.
2. The way that the regulation is written there is a huge incentive for Big Pharma to create and market oral cancer medication because those drugs would now be prescription drugs and be purchased top dollar.
3. Demographic shifts will lead to a massive growth in the market for these drugs.
Someone needs to sack up and have political will to piss people off and do something about healthcare.

Unposted

2010-01-13T20:31:00.000-08:00

Over the years I've got 40 full lengths posts that I wrote and chose not to submit.
In general before I hit "Publish" I ask the question, "Would the world be better with these words in it."
If yes I share it with the 2 people who actually read this.
If no I just hit save now.
Sometimes it comes back as more than half a thing (our current church sermon outline was a blog post about Evan Griffin from 2007), sometimes I can see why I held on to it (a 2 paragraph rant about a dog in a pink sweater), but in general I'm happy I self edited.
I think more people should say less.

Literary Criticism

2010-01-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

I read this at lunch:
http://www.slate.com/id/2240341/pagenum/2
It's a commentary about the book A Separate Peace, and it sucks.
What he says is true--A Separate Peace is gayer than we recall but also important because it speaks in a voice that's been lost in our "boy aren't we clever" post modern culture.
But the commentary is terrible because he get's so caught up in style he hardly says anything.
Look, in our Twitter World I'm all for poetry that conveys a truer sense of reality than can be conveyed through bullet points. Sometimes truth needs words. And I'm ok with throwing in elements of style. You should, that's why you learn them.
What I find annoying is trying to stretch a bunt into a homer with clever parallel structure, nifty semantic tricks, and cute inversions. Say something clearly, polish it with style, then find something else interesting.
If you're a writer please stop doing this.

Charlie Weis

2009-11-29T15:55:00.000-08:00

Charlie Weis is about to be fired, and I'm OK with that because I've been anti Charlie since the beginning but let's be honest.
Charlie struggled for lots of the systemic reasons that will get him fired (lack of discipline, awful defense, fundamental breakdowns, awful defense, etc.)
But that's not the only reason they lost this year. They lost close games because most of their best players were injured down the stretch.
Floyd, Tate, Allen, Rudolph, Clausen and a few others were injured for some or all of the season. I don't have an obvious list but I know there are a few hobbled defensive starters.
What needs to be done eventually should probably be done immediately, so fire the guy, but stop the uninformed pile-on.
A few years ago I actually used Weis as an informal case study in how to lose with talent for my lacrosse players.
Weis lost because his teams were undisciplined and unsound. Herbstreit made a comment during the broadcase of the Stanford game--"These fumbles and offsides penalties are a symptom of the off field distraction." Nope. They happened all year, and have for the past several, and that lack of ability to do things that don't require talent is why ND lost.
I don't have a vote for a replacement, but it's got to be someone like what's described in the Good to Great books--quiet, personally disciplined, hard working, and fundamentally sound.

Consumer Spending

2009-10-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

We should stop worrying about consumer spending as a bellwether of the long term economy. We spend less because we all realized that our debt driven lifestyles in the middle class were not sustainable. We need to get back to worrying about big things like trade balance, GDP, per person productivity, metrics that mean we're doing work.
There's profit in labor, not just consumption.

McChrystal Report

2009-09-23T05:55:00.000-07:00

Here is the (redacted) text of McChyrystal's Report to Obama.
Lots of people will now way whatever they planned on saying before they read it, but if you want to read for yourself check it out.
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf?hpid=topnews

Hooray for Common Sense

2009-06-22T12:19:00.001-07:00

So I've long been a pretty big hater of Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The ad agency behind burger king, the weirdest of the VW ads, and pretty much any other frat boy, low brow, d-bag ad campaign you can think of.
Apparently they just realized that the BK ads aren't working. You can read about it here
http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/daily-bread/2009/06/22/burger-kings-freaky-problem

Madmen

2009-06-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

For the second time in the last few weeks someone espousing traditionally conservative causes has walked into a room and killed people.
I have no idea if this is statistically relevant. It just seems to me there is starting to be a trend.
I'm a pretty conservative guy. I don't smoke, don't get drunk, go to church, I'm crazy about the free market, I own a business, etc. That said I'm seeing increasingly un-wackjob conservative friends believing things that are disconnected with reality. Obama was born in the US. He's not a secret muslim. We don't need to "Get our guns while we still can" etc.
I don't know what right wing talkers and bloggers are saying, but if you get lots of your news from those sources that's cool I guess. Just make sure you're checking stuff against reality. If reputable sources that should hedge in the nut balls are spouting crazy junk, then the nut balls will continue to go nuts in dangerous ways.
I read a book about the US during the early Kennedy Administration and that's what this feels like to me. I'm a little scared.

Annoying Semantics

2009-06-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

Obama had a group of people from both sides of the abortion debate looking for common ground. A lady from the Pro-Life said said (echoing Obama) that a reasonable mutual goal was to reduce the "number of abortions" at which point a lady from the Pro-Life side said, "No...we need to reduce the need for abortions."
Her point is that if they concede that reducing the number is a good thing it puts abortion somewhere on a graded scale of morality. If this thing is wrong than why would it need to be reduced.
BS.

Cornell

2009-05-25T20:05:00.000-07:00

You've gotta use the time out there.

10 Year Anniversary

2009-04-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

Lots of people have asked me my thoughts on the coming 10 year anniversary of the tornado that killed my parents.
I wrote this in response, it's being read at a thing on Sunday. I'm posting it here because it might speak to some people who read this blog.

_______

As we're approaching the ten year anniversary of the tornado I'm reminded of the fundamental goodness of our community. In a hundred ways that I saw, and a thousand ways I don't even know about, the community came together to rebuild.

Even today I learn of new stories of people acting boldly, even heroically--the business owner who paid for families to live in
temporary housing, the churches that did all they could, the people who rushed into damaged houses because maybe there was someone in there who they could help.

I look back on April 9th 1999 with (of course) a deep sadness, but also with a profound hope about what it means when a community joins hands and moves. Life has moved on for me. I have a business, a wife, a beautiful daughter, but I know that for me personally, and in a broader sense the community at large--things would be much darker if some people didn't wake up ten years ago Thursday and decide to be great.

Fiduciary

2009-03-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

I was reading a report analyzing the Iraqi Banking System on account of a project we're working on.
There is lots of problems, but I thought there was an interesting piece of irony in the summary.
[After talking about massive failure of the system]...The most critical shortcoming is the failure of the banks to perform their principal function as financial intermediaries--to attract deposits and lend funds to credit-worthy enterprises throughout the country.

Interesting.

Discussion

2009-03-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

At Home Group Wednesday I led a discussion on places where we've blown it in faith. Times we could've done something big for God and didn't. What made it weird was that this concept is novel.
What other endeavor to we engage in where we don't occasionally have a frank and earnest discussion about how we got whooped. That's silly. We should excellence in faith more than commerce or sport.
Another thing I've been pondering. Our church has dome some pretty cool stuff recently. We've helped some families who lost their job, helped out some kids, helped out lots of sick people, and done the regular stuff churches do. A buddy of mine is very consistent to point out, "It's not us, it's God."
I'm not convinced that's biblical.

Hear me, I'm not saying that his broader point--"we're not deserving of the Glory, god is" is fine. His other point should be "none of our stuff is really ours, we're given stuff by God and told to steward it." Also a biblically unimpeachable point.

My problem is that at some level EVERY resource owned by us or anyone is God's. I don't know if his approach WORKS as a matter of practical ecclesiology. The line of scrimmage for transformation is desire "I want to" and choice "I choose to." Therefore when the Church acts like we're supposed to I think we celebrate that as directly as possible by saying something like "God transformed our hearts so that we wanted to" not merely make ourselves the direct-object of some spiritual abstraction.

There are like 8 debates total...

2009-02-06T18:10:00.000-08:00

So I jumped from Steve Fuller's blog over to that of a guy named Nathan Bransford. Bransford wrote a brief post basically asking the question "Are all opinions of literature valid, who gets to decide what's good" at which point 311 people commented.

Here's what stuck me; this type of debate is really common and happens daily across fields. In fact twice today I heard some variation of this expert v populist debate.

It seems to me there are like 8 debates total:

Structure vs Flexibilty
Expert vs Populist
Discipline vs Passion
Stuff vs Spirit
Bullet Points vs Stories
Research vs Instinct
Individual vs Collective
Lucky vs Good

I'm sure there are other archetypical debates but these come to mind as I type.

Here's why I think it matters.
As you live life you make choices. And however we get there (add nature/nurture above) I think that our inclination toward these debates colors how we choose. Of course it does. The trick is I'm not so sure we spend that much time introspecting on how we approach these archetypical debates. I tend to be disinclined toward naval gazing like this in favor of a more nuts and bolts focus, but failure to recognize these built in biases creates a blind spot in my thinking.

I know this was boring, just a little external processing

Trapped in Hell

2009-01-30T18:04:00.000-08:00

My wife is watching "America's Next Top Model" and it makes me want to throw a chair.

Rush Limbaugh

2009-01-29T21:16:00.000-08:00

I'm not a Rush Limbaugh fan, but he wrote this in the journal
I disagree with his economic theory, and obviously it's Rush Limbaugh so this isn't fair scholarship, but it is an interesting piece.
My Bipartisan Stimulus
Let's cut taxes, as I want, and spend more, as Obama would like.

By RUSH LIMBAUGH

There's a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.

I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed. I don't believe his is a "stimulus plan" at all -- I don't think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party. This "porkulus" bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades.
The Opinion Journal Widget

Download Opinion Journal's widget and link to the most important editorials and op-eds of the day from your blog or Web page.

Keynesian economists believe government spending on "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects -- schools, roads, bridges -- is the best way to stimulate our staggering economy. Supply-side economists make an equally persuasive case that tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs and cause an economy to rebound. That happened under JFK, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. We know that when tax rates are cut in a recession, it brings an economy back.

Recent polling indicates that the American people are in favor of both approaches.

Notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, according to a new Rasmussen poll, are skeptical. Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much. Only 17% worry they will cut taxes too much. Since the American people are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go, it seems to me there's an opportunity for genuine compromise. At the same time, we can garner evidence on how to deal with future recessions, so every occurrence will no longer become a matter of partisan debate.

Congress is currently haggling over how to spend $900 billion generated by American taxpayers in the private sector. (It's important to remember that it's the people's money, not Washington's.) In a Jan. 23 meeting between President Obama and Republican leaders, Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) proposed a moderate tax cut plan. President Obama responded, "I won. I'm going to trump you on that."

Yes, elections have consequences. But where's the bipartisanship, Mr. Obama? This does not have to be a divisive issue. My proposal is a genuine compromise.

Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let's say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.

Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.

I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate -- at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations -- in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. There's no reason to tell the American people their future is bleak. There's no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There's no reason to insist that recovery can't happen quickly, because it can.

In this new era of responsibility, let's use both Keynesians and supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy -- and if elements of both work, so much the better. The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, independents and moderates, but our economy doesn't know the difference. This is about jobs now.

The economic crisis is an opportunity to unify people, if we set aside the politics. The leader of the Democrats and the leader of the Republicans (me, according to Mr. Obama) can get it done. This will have the overwhelming support of the American people. Let's stop the acrimony. Let's start solving our problems, together. Why wait one more day?

Stimulus

2009-01-26T17:38:00.001-08:00

I was in the car today so I was unusually plugged in to politics.

Obama Today:
Geithner: OK. Tax stuff is annoying but he seems smart. Wanting the job means he's either brave or stupid.

California Emission Standards: I'm torn. Federalism is good. Local higher standards fuel innovation in NY and CA that informs national and international markets. On the other hand we have a similar issue--different standards in different regions or states--in some provisions of the Clean Water Act. It's hard as an entrepeneur, particularly if you are in an industry of a scope where economies of scale matter.

Updating Spectrum Policy: I don't really understand that much but smart people seem happy about it. This seems like an area where coordination and efficiency should win the day, the kind of wonky stuff that Obama could make as the poster boy for some of his "efficiency" stuff.

Overall fuel efficiency standards: Good. High standards require smart, creative people. This is the competitive advantage of our nation.

Actual Stimulus Package: Stupid. I haven't read the whole thing but condoms and national mall at 1/2 billion are just dumb strategy.

Good writing

2009-01-21T08:16:00.000-08:00

We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

The advice of many...

2009-01-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

Today I went to a thing for owners of green energy companies. Good times, but I left the meeting super jazzed about the WilderHill Clean Energy ETF. An ETF is kind of like a mutual fund that trades like a stock. Again, me...super jazzed.
I log on ready to jump in, google for general information on ETF-s, and read this on Motley Fool:

Before investing in this mutual fund you need to ask the 3 basic questions:
1. How diversified is it? Very, in one sense: The 37 stocks are spread over diverse industries, but quite a few of these companies, including perennially unprofitableBallard Power (Nasdaq: BLDP) and strugglingPlug Power (Nasdaq: PLUG), are small and bleeding money. It also ignores one of the world's largest wind energy technology companies in General Electric (NYSE: GE). Hmmmm.

2. What will it cost? The PowerShares WilderHill ETF is relatively cheap in that it charges only a 0.60% expense ratio annually. That's decent, and not far off from other low-cost, broad-market index funds. Let's move on.

3. Is it run by someone you can trust? Probably, but there really isn't any way to tell. I mean, yeah, the prospectus (which you can download here) mentions that portfolio manager John Southard has been in the business for at least 13 years and with PowerShares since 2002. But it doesn't say whether he's had any success investing in speculative small caps or in the clean energy industry. His returns as a fund manager don't appear to be mentioned either. Uh oh.

I can't find a good reason to invest in the PowerShares WilderHill ETF, especially when I know so little about the manager. Remember: When you buy an ETF or a mutual fund, you're spending good money to hire an expert who will make you more cash than you could have made on your own. Buying for "exposure" to clean energy or any other sector is like spending money on the lottery because you want "exposure" to gambling. Neither makes sense -- unless, of course, your only aim is to lose money. Again, no thanks.

My point isn't that you should or shouldn't buy an ETF, it's that I do better when I sit down and shut up and learn before doing stuff.

Resolved

2009-01-04T17:24:00.000-08:00

Apparently this was one of JFK-s favorite anectdotes:

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon...

I don't mean to sound bubble gum, but so much of doing great stuff is starting to do great stuff.

One of the most important things that's ever happened to me was the Agincourt Project. In essence this was a curriculum designed to aggregate micro-level entrepeneurship to help people in a developing nation. I'm confident it will impact the world in a signficant way.
Two things:
1) It hasn't helped many people yet.
2) It wasn's about any of the stuff I just said when it started.
My point isn't "Do as I wish I did..." it's that things have to start. There's a little line in "Good to great" about how Good is Often the enemy of the best, sure but I think sometimes Good is Better than perfect because we twiddle our thumbs looking for perfect when we should jump in with a good idea and then get better in the fight.

So here are four things somebody needs to do:
1. Work with me to bring Agincourt from concept to full execution.
2. Develop a micro-entrepenurship program aggregating church, university, and private parties in _____________ (insert Central city or depressed rural area here).
3. Some backround: Many central cities are enacting policies leading low SES populations out to the suburbs. Nice in concept, but in practice there is lower capacity in the suburbs and the low SES populations are falling behind and thus creating a new low SES cohort in their schools. This is obviously bad for many reasons. You can start a tutoring program with your company helping these students get up to par.
4. Organize people you know to support Asia's Hope.

Start.

Purpose Driven

2008-12-20T09:54:00.001-08:00

Obama tapped Rick Warren to give the inagural prayer. I think it's a pretty good choice, Warren definitely has his Evangelical bona fides and was one of the first big name evangelicals to speak out about "liberal" issues like the Environment and AIDS in Africa.
Aside: The fact that it wasn't until a few years ago that Evangelicals started calling the earth and dead Africans "moral issues" makes me want to throw a chair, but for now I'll go with "better late than never."
Lots of people will talk about what this means. They will be shrill and super annoying. I hope it simply means that part of an inclusive policy is including people you disagree with.

2008-12-16T20:20:00.000-08:00

Slate ran an article on William Kauffman. I'd read a thing he wrote back in college but it didn't really stick. Basically he was a leader in developing America's cold war nuclear strategy, left that gig, and when he was out of the Pentagon-RAND loop changed his opinion dramatically. His life tells us a lot about the problems with decision making in pressurized, homogenous environments.

Every subculture, especially every bureaucratized subculture, has a set of unquestioned assumptions—bits of "conventional wisdom...The key to preserving one's sanity and wisdom is not to fall prey to their assumptions, not to fear sounding stupid by questioning them—to stay an inside player without losing a common-sense outsider's perspective.

Good stuff.

I Literally Died...

2008-12-14T18:14:00.000-08:00

Shannon and I were driving yesterday and being unbelievable nerds the conversation turned to stuff people say that drive us nuts. I'll start the list, if you read this and want to add on please do.
1. The use of literally when you mean figuratively. Some idiot on ESPN Radio said "He's literally carried the team on his shoulders. He didn't. That's wrong."
2. Varying degrees of unique. My senior english teacher (Tom Graler) brought this to our attention and it's bugged me since.
3. This is specialized but super annoying. In the weight room you get some guy spotting another and saying "it's all you" while helping. That's stupid. Of course it's not all him.
4. The term optics for anything other than the science of the behavior and perception of light. "Obama has an optics problem because of his association with the Illinois Governor." What the hell? No, he has a perception problem, or an appearance problem. I don't know what a pretentious word for douche bag is but that's what I think of when someone uses optics to mean appearance.
5. Wa(r)sh (i.e. George Warshington) Why? Where does Scotch-Irish + Appalachia=Warsh.
6. Dropping infinitives (i.e. The car needs washed). No. It needs to be washed. Maybe it needs washing. Come on.

Which ones bug you?

My first ever environmental and energy policy post

2008-12-11T20:47:00.000-08:00

Obama taps Chu. Hooray!
Science is good.

Follow Up

2008-12-11T20:35:00.001-08:00

Sort of a follow up on last nights post on Good to Great to Bad...
Most business books suck and betray the weak "magic solution" approach too prevalent in our culture at large.
Organizations that perform well exercise sound judgment most of the time.
That's all.
The problem is that it's hard. We do dumb stuff because of panic or group think or selection bias or faulty assumptions of causality or failure to be rigorous in analysis or tunnel vision or a lack of sound counsel or failure to measure results or selection of poor metrics or...
My point is that there are no seven bullet points.

Good To Great to Bad

2008-12-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

I sat down with our banker today and after a walk through of our processes I was picking his brain on practical improvements he'd seen in other clients.
One thing he mentioned was that he was a big fan of the book "Good to Great."
The book was written about ten years ago, and because of that it suffers from the "In Search of Excellence" curse--someone has a theory, projects that onto your business, the macro-economy changes or your management leaves or you start to suck or something and now you're in trouble.
The thing is that I'm not so sure it's fair to judge the book based on the future success of the companies profiled. Theoretically if whatever principles make a company excellent or great or whatever nice word is in the title REALLY worked the companies would still be doing well. I'd be interested in a continuation of the longitudinal study after the book was published.
On another thing I'm not drinking coffee tomorrow.

The Wizdum of Crowds

2008-12-08T20:06:00.001-08:00

Me and google have been tight for a while.
It was there for me early in college when I used it to try and outpace other students on lycos and dogpile (suckers!)
It was there for me late in college when I began using it as a verb.
It was even with me as I was building my company and learning from their growth and management struggles.
It's with me with adwords, blogger, google apps.
Our deal is this know everything about me...cool; don't be evil.
But part of my implicit contract with google is in jeopardy.
Now there's wiki search within google and I hate it.
Google was supposed to be based on some brilliant algorithms indistinguishable from sheer magic by the likes of unwashed me .
The idea that my input (even aggregated across a massive network) could factors into google search (it doesn't yet, but I think it will) is simply not the deal me and google have.

Upside Down

2008-12-06T20:10:00.000-08:00

We did a sermon at our church a few months back looking at how jacked up the american suburban church can be. We stole a note from the onion and did some fake headlines about our goofy suburban life.
I think the church at large can do better.

2008-11-30T19:30:00.001-08:00

At our Church some time ago we did a series called more. Basically what we said was that the fundamental pursuit of the average american was more something. More stuff, more money, more sex, more power. Too often the church provides a heavy handed response--no! not more! You need less of all that stuff. That's wrong.
Of course this is fundamentally a question of lordship--who owns my money, sex, and power and to what purpose these are given. It's also (and I think this gets missed) a little bit about we need more passion, more dreaming, and THIS IS NEVER SAID more discipline.
Lots of people (myself included) have talked a lot about the difference between "training and trying" or how a tree doesn't strain to produce fruit, or one of a dozen other cute ways to say "transformation is the overflow of life in Christ." That's true, but there's more to it than that. Hard work matters. Delaying gratification matters. Manning up through pain matters.
People say that the de facto God of the suburban church is stuff. I used to think that, but I don't anymore. We bow down to the God of comfort.
There's a scene in Laurence of Arabia when he is asked of the declining England.
Fafas: [England,] Is it a desert country?
Lawrence: No. It is a fat country. Fat people.
We need to work harder. There are not 200 easy ways to go green or fix our schools our save our cities or (insert cause du jour here). There is one way--work our ass off for things bigger than us.

Why Bubbles Rock!

2008-11-15T14:48:00.000-08:00

This isn't an original thought to me, but it's an important one:
Bubbles are good.
We tend to think of bubbles as a market failure. It's an irrational overallocation of money in one area. Yeah, that's true.
Some guy who crapped on a log in 1998 and thought he would make a fortune with craplog.com was an idiot. Same with someone who paid $450K for a ranch in Columbus, OH or the guy next year who sinks a ton of note into some BS "green company" with poor management, planning, and vision.
The moral of that part is "don't be stupid."
Bubbles rock because bubbles bring a ton of money into a sector. That money goes to fuel innovation, form infrastructure, and develop technology from a white piece of paper to the production scale. And then it does it again, and after the eight time this happens we're back at the craplog.com stage, and it repeats again and then again and then someone says "Hey, the emperor's naked" and everyone swears and cries.
But in between the true arbitage and the craplog stage the innovation, infrastructure, and development are real. Look 5 years after any bubble and you'll see that there is some pretty cool companies making real profit and being run by grown ups. Global commercial networks that allowed flat earth interaction were a function of the Asia bubble, Web 2.0 was a function of the tech bubble, etc.
So in review, bubbles rock.

11:01

2008-11-04T20:01:00.001-08:00

Pray for Barack Obama.

Vote Obama

2008-11-02T17:19:00.001-08:00

It's no secret that I'm an Obama supporter, but I've not come right out and made the case for why I believe that Obama is the proper vote for an evangelical. I will do that now. In no particular order:
1. I like his tax policy. Middle class liquidity and specific tax abatements for factors driving job growth yield a strong economy. Supply side economics is either a "failed economic theory" or probably more accurately a strong response to Keynesian excess, it's bad policy for now. It's fair to say there's a little bit more gray area on cap-gains taxes, which is why I was pleased that Obama's tax plan included cap gains cuts for small businesses and start-ups.
2. I like his general approach to foreign policy. Some background--A group of thinkers included then academic Condoleeza Rice began writing about how, basically, it was OK for the US to act in its own interest. They felt like the multilateral, internationalist approach in old europe signaled a breakdown in the role of autonomous nation states or, put in more real terms that Europe banded together because they were kind of pussies and had to. It's easy to sit in Norway or France and talk about humanitarian rights knowing that if need be you'd have some Americans go in and kick some ass and then after you could...I don't know...write a poem. This set up a debate between the idiot right (i.e. the current administration) and the idiot left which felt like compromise and "it's americas fault" were the only right answers. Both of these are obviously stupid, but I think Obama's approach to foreign policy issues tends to lead to the right answer and tends to be more mature.
3. I like his reconciliation of faith in the public square. Find his speech from Call to Renewal. I've seen the cock up version they talk about on Fox News. Read the whole thing. It's excellent.
4. I think he is a legitimately transformative figure. At the risk of sounding like a Successory part of the problem with America right now is that we don't dream enough, and I think Obama asks more of us than McCain.
5. I like how he thinks. He's smart and brings an intellectual rigor to issues that's rare in people, let alone politicians.
6. I like Joe Biden. I think he would be a good president if Obama were to die.
7. I like his books.
8. I like the legislation he's proposed. He's not been in the senate long, but he's been fairly prolific while there. It's wonky disciplined things that get stuff done--transparency, nuclear non-proliferation--not sexy but good.
9. I think his policies will limit the number of abortions performed. I really do. I think abortion is wrong, I also think it's become a political football. I don't think either party would successfully overturn Roe, so for now the debate is over limiting the number of abortions performed. I believe Obama's policies would be better for this.
I like John McCain, it was actually his 2000 Campaign that really sparked my interest in politics. I've written before about the sad dissonance between that McCain and this one, and I won't do it again.
If you're still undecided (and I know I've got friends who read this that are) please consider these reasons.

Advice

2008-10-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

I'm in Canada at a thing.
There is salesman for my client who is a devout Christian. I was talking about Anna. He politely asked me if I went to church, I said yes, and he gave me the following advice:
Teach your daughter what's worth dying for and you won't have to worry about what she's living for.
It's good advice, but I also like the fact that he gave it to me.

Why I Write About Politics

2008-10-25T15:48:00.001-07:00

I've had some friends push me on writing about politics.
The question is basically this--you are most interested in faith, your family, and your company isn't it a ______________ to write about politics.
The blank is alternatively filled with:
1. Waste of time.
2. Threat to ministry.
3. Potential conflict of interest on certain projects.
Each of these arguments has merit.
To point 1, yeah but writing is fun.
To point 2, yeah but it shouldn't be, God is not a democrat or a republican and helping my Christian friends think more thoroughly about faith in the public square is a net positive.
To point 3, absolutely which is why I hardly ever write about environmental or energy policy.
These speak to the concerns, but there's one big reason I write about politics; I have a politically diverse group of friends, lots of them love god and people, lots of them are smart and hard working, and that's the club I want thinking about policy.
That's all.
Incidentally, if you can find one pick up a transcript of McCain's recent stump speech. There's some red meat that I think is crap, but there is also one of the most beautiful calls to action I've ever heard. Beautiful, well crafted writing.

Joe The Plumber

2008-10-16T04:01:00.001-07:00

So as lots of pundits are saying, Joe the Plumber was the star last night. I've been pretty busy today so my guess is that by the time I'm done writing this 1000 other people will say the same thing.
This guy would get a tax cut under obama's plan.
A buddy of mine sent the Joe Video over to me.
Here's what I struggle with:
He says he wants to buy a business for $250K. Cool. Unless plumbing has 100% margin he's making less than that.
Obama's plan gives a tax cut to income under $250,000 each year, and increases the marginal rate for taxation for taxes above $250,000.
There are some variations in how businesses are set up, but typically any entity (LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp) flows money to the personal income tax through salary/owner withdrawals (i.e. take home money). Profit is also flowed back to the personal income tax. These entitities are the types of small businesses that create jobs.
So back to Joe:
If his new plumbing business would make $250K each year total, his take home might be good, and he'll have the pride of ownership, and blah blah blah. He would NOT be making over $250K each year.
Now, if on the other hand he's talking about profit than yes, if he owns a $2 or $3 million dollar plumbing business and walks away with $250,000 profit he'll be taxed more. That said, come on--you're making $250K in flowed through profit (presumably after paying yourself some salary) you're kind of rich.
Maybe there's room for a purely philosophical debate over taxes (I say purely philosophical because the preponderance of evidence points to a vibrant middle class as the driver of our economy) but some notion that Obama's tax plan would stop this guy from buying a business is nonsense.

Super Spiritual Faith-O-Matic

2008-10-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

This is a video we did for church discussing a life of action rather than faking it.
Forgive the production value. We're still at the camcorders and living rooms phase.

Quo Vadimus

2008-10-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

Before The West Wing and after A Few Good Men Aaron Sorkin wrote Sports Night. This was a show about a show about sports.
There's a scene from when the (real) show was pushing toward cancellation where this VC guy is talking to the Executive Producer.
He says
"Dana, I'm what the world considers to be a phenomenally successful man. And I've failed much more than I've succeeded. And each time I fail, I get my people together, and I say, "Where are we going?" And it starts to get better."
I love that.
In the last few days I managed to piss of my wife, mess up my engine, screw up a meeting with a friend, and marginally a flub a project of national scope that I can't talk more about (but will someday--it's fascinating).
We get pretty excited about success. Head to Amazon and count books within "Winning" in the title.
I'm not so sure success begets success. I think that on a spiritual level the call of Christ was "come and die with me" but even on a management level I'm pretty sure we do best when we evaluate based on process best practice, and line incentives up to encourage risk taking. For risk taking to be anything more than a bull-crap poster on the wall it means we have to be cool with the occasional failure.
And I hate that.
That's why the little Sports Night quote speaks to me.
Good Night Moon is calling.

Evan

2008-10-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

There's a kid who used to be on my lacrosse team.
The other night he was out with some friends, walking home from a thing.
A guy came out and demanded their money.
Evan stepped in front of the girls he was with, tried talking down the shooter, helped them get away safely.
He got shot in the shoulder and the hand. I think he'll be OK; I worry for his parents, he'll probably get PTSD, his prognosis is good.
This sounds bizarre, but I think there's one thing that's great about this for Evan:
Lots of times in his life he'll have to decide how much he is. Sometimes knowing the full measure of his humanity will count big; he will be in situations where he needs to be taller than fear.
So he'll have a wicked scar, and PTSD, and he'll probably never be quite the same when people clap, but he'll also know that one time he stood in front of a gun.
Heroes are made in such ways.

Obama and Ayers

2008-10-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

I've had a few friends ask me something like "You can't really be pro-Obama, right?" in the past few weeks so sometime soon I'll probably write an argument for why I support Obama and why I believe that's a sound vote for Evangelicals.
That won't be this post--for now I'll just say if you don't want to vote for Obama because you disagree with him on policy, cool. Just know that the guy doesn't "Pal around with terrorists."
Three points:
1. Obama is not friends with William Ayers and never has been. They last had contact 4 years ago and were never close.
2. Ayers has not been in the Weather Underground for a long time. That sounds funny (it's been a long time since I quit terrorism) but I know a fair number of 65 year old guys who did stupid, even detestable things 40 years ago.
3. Ayers has turned into a leading thinker on teaching social justice. I'm not a fan of his work, but his thinking has influenced teaching methodology for decades and is used in teaching everyone from poor kids to corporate training and culture programs.

1. Obama on Ayers (responding to a question from George Stephanapalous on his relationship with Ayers:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.
Here's how they know each other:
They lived in the same neighbor.
They taught at the same school (I think--although now Google tells me Ayers is at University of Illinois at Chicago and Obama taught at UC--maybe he was an adjunct?)
Both were part of two charities, the Woods Foundation and the Annenberg Trust.
Ayers held a house meet and greet for Obama to introduce him to other liberal friends when Obama was planning to run for State Senate.

2. Ayers is still a left wing nut ball, but now he's the normal kind. He's also a leading thinker on progressive education and most education students read his work on teaching poor kids. He is a leading member of "society" in Hyde Park where they both live, a prolific writer on co-constructed pedagogy (student and teacher co-create learning), and on all kinds of boards for causes like better public schools, poverty cessation, and social justice.

3. The third point isn't so much about why the Palin comments are silly, but more about how you can be wacko, and wrong, and still have something to offer to a discussion. I tend to think lots of silly crap gets bundled up into books like Ayers "Teaching for Social Justice," or "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" which tends to be taught with it, but they are worth a look. I think lots of his stuff is stupid in practice (i.e. unlike Ayers, I firmly believe that kids need boundaries, kids need to receive evaluation, kids need both cooperation and competition to name a few things I think he gets wrong.
I also think that some of his writing on the transforming role of the teacher in pedagogy in general, and on teaching people in poverty in particular, is innovative and frankly works. Notions like the "ownership culture" at Fortune 500 companies have roots in Ayers work on co-constructed pedagogy. I also find this quote inspirational:

Committed and aware teachers," Ayers observes, "are engaged in the struggle to understand the moral contract of teaching and must endeavor to accomplish two crucial tasks: to convince students that there is no such thing as 'receiving' an education as a passive receptor or vessel, and that all education is self-education. The other task is to demonstrate to students that they are valued, that their humanity is honored, and that their growth, enlightenment, and liberation are the teacher's core concerns."

I actually found this quote inspirational when I was developing Agincourt, a Christian (and microlevel entrepeneurship) based program to help students understand social science while impacting people in the developing world. I think Ayers is wrong about lots of stuff, but he has thought deeply and thoroughly about how to use education for healing poverty stricken areas. We should listen to him, even if we have to hold our nose about his past.

Debate is good, discourse is good, intellectual rigor is good. If you're dumb surround yourself with smart people. If you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you and present a true diversity of ideas.

One more thing (more to the original point of this post)
I've got some conservative friends who are claiming that "the media" never talks about Obama "falsely claiming he was a member of the Senate banking commitee." They do this to refute Democratic claims of Palin's inexperience. "Oh yeah, while your guy lied and said he was on a commitee he wasn't."

The reason it's not being covered is because it's not clear that he lied He said, of a bill he helped, "The Senate banking commitee, which is my commitee, just passed bill XYZ." He later clarified through a spokesman that he misspoke--he meant to say "my bill." I've transposed words before too. Had he left the transposed words to stand it would be lying, but following up with a clarifying press release means he misspoke. Maybe he intentionally lied, but transposing words seems as likely.

Facts are the basis of decision making.

Past Tense Part 2

2008-10-04T18:21:00.000-07:00

I posted earlier this week in "Past Tense" about checking out a facility that is going under. At the time my focus was almost entirely about this guy and his company.
I also did my best to isolate the sadness and try to do a little "forensics" on what caused this company to fail. Three things I noticed:
1. He had lots of stuff. There were a number of pieces of heavy equipment that probably cost around $100K each, but that seemed to have no strategic connection. This probably meant that he bought stuff he thought was a bargain and then the tail wagged the dog as he focused on capacity utilization.
2. He spoke only in the past tense. Initially I thought of this as the sad symptom of his failure, but after a bit of follow up I'm not so sure it wasn't also the cause. There's bunch of social science research that points to "locus of control"--one's self perceived ability to influence their environment--as a strong predictor of overall success. I think the past tense thing is a function of not knowing what drove his business when things were good, thus he couldn't modify strategy when the economy slowed.
3. There was no conspicuous effort toward selling. I don't mean not lots of sales, that's obvious, there was no system in place, nothing that looked like there once was. This is the one that scares me the most, because with our new shop I feel a big draw toward the nuts and bolts of running the shop; schedules, sweeping the floor, buying consumables, etc. This is one of the situations where the good is the enemy of the best; a disciplined approach to the whole project stream is important, and should be obvious when you walk in the room.
About a year ago we did a project where one of our products failed. I can't go into detail, but it turned out the problem was a goofy scenario that nobody envisioned during initial design. We modified the design to account for the new issue and ended up having a great relationship with the client. The cool (in retrospect) thing for us was that we brought in a team of outside experts and tried to figure out everything about our design that we might have screwed up. One of the consultants commented, "You can learn a lot looking at a dead body."
I think the same is true here. Monday I think we're going to pull in the leadership team and run through a hypothetical autopsy--if we fail what would be the cause.
There's a line that the founding fathers said to each other when the circle wasn't holding--We cannot guarantee success, but we can deserve it.
Good stuff.

John McCain and Cats

2008-10-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

When I was in college I didn't care about politics. I felt as if the most important focus for Christians was the spiritual transformation of our friends, to the total exclusion of interest in political life. I don't believe that now.
Four things changed (These aren't in chronological order):
1. I took a class on Social Justice taught by Father Fitz at UD. This was the first time I considered the notion of structural sin.
2. I did an internship that became a job looking at Predatory lending. This was 2002, long before Predatory lending became a topic on the news at all, but it lent credence to the notion of structural sin.
3. 9-11
4. John McCain's maverick run for the Presidency in 2000.
I loved McCain, he spoke truth, he was candid, he was a little bit rough, he was what I felt like great leaders should be.
Watching McCain run this campaign makes me sad. It's like when you saw a beautiful girl across the room, and you start talking, and she can't stop about how much she loves her 8 cats.

AdWords

2008-10-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

One time I went to an event at a Church, at which some dude began speaking in tongues and telling me I needed healing. I like Jesus a lot, but that crap weirds me out still, and really weirded me out then. The conversation was like this:
Him: I'll pray for you.
Me: Thanks.
Him: Come here.
Me: Why?
Him: To pray for you.
Me: Yeah...OK (Touches my shoulder; begins gibberish)
Him: You need healing.
Me: I'm good.
Him: No, you need spiritual healing, you need to meet Jesus.
Me: Umm, I don't want to debate theology but I really kind of feel like I know him.
Him: Nope.
Me: Have a nice day.

That guy probably felt like he was reaching out to help my heart. At the time I thought he was a douche. Now I think he was just looking for significance and trying to be edgy.

I was reminded of this experience by google today. As an experiment for a play I was writing, I stuck ad words on my blog. It's always an interesting snapshot into what google thinks I care about. Google was like the guy.
Today's words (likely to change because of something in this post) sell me jockey underwear and the opportunity to meet mormon men.

I hope google doesn't know something about me that I don't.

Past Tense

2008-10-02T06:12:00.001-07:00

My company is opening up our new shop. It's been an exhausting, fun, captivating thing.
Yesterday I went shopping at a fabricator down the way who's shutting down. He's old, and hurt, and business is bad, and his wife has cancer.
It was hearbreaking.
We walked through this guy's facility looking at welders and forklifts and bandsaws and a thousand other industrial gizmos that he referred to only in the past tense. We did, my guys used, that thing was...
I don't know what went wrong; I have some theories but who cares. I'll probably buy some of his stuff, we'll put it to work and I guess that's how this is supposed to happen. That doesn't make it not suck for this guy and his wife.

Lipstick

2008-09-10T12:40:00.001-07:00

It's an expression.

Liberatarianism

2008-08-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

I've got lots of friends who are getting high for liberatarianism.
It's stupid. Great lines to knit on a pillow, fine for discussions over coffee, and unsustainable for governance.
Rather than a line-by-line critique, here's why:
1. Externalities are real and cannot be accounted for merely as a contractual arrangement among individual property holders.
2. There are very few victimless crimes.
3. Global trade is going to happen and requires strength. Being anti interventionist, or more broadly anti global is simply not realistic.
4. Isolated parts of the world breed resentment and let bad guys control stuff.
I think it's good to have a healthy discussion, and I think that different ideological perspectives are a prism to cast different colors on the debate over sound governance. That said any political "platform" that doesn't lead to actual policy is just some people talking.
Don't come to the world with half a thing. Come up with a real alternative that can actually be implemented in real life and then we'll talk.

Katie Reider

2008-07-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

http://500kin365.org/

To All Young and "Emerging" Christian Writers

2008-07-25T06:13:00.000-07:00

This
is not
style.

Buy Strunk & White

Zimbabwe

2008-07-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

If you own a TV you're probably aware that the President of Zimbabwe (a former revolutionary hero named Mugabe) is a monster.
The other day I got an e-mail from a friend of a friend doing ministry in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe's thugs (he calls them police but there's no rule of law) were terrorizing them because the administration saw their ministry as a threat to his ability to win last weeks sham election.
This is at least a moral values issue.
Now in real life there's not much to be done about Mugabe without the support of the African nations, most notably the cowardly administration of South Africa. That said if you pray, pray. If you write letters, write letters. If you write a blog, do that too. Things are bad there, and they're probably going to get worse. Pressure, even informal pressure from American consumers, will help the African street to man up and let Zimbabwe heal.

A Long Obedience

2008-05-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Someone said this:
"Following Christ is a long obedience in the same direction."
I heard it from a guy named Evan Griffin who was talking at a thing.
I'm a little concerned with one thing that the "blog culture" has done to young postmodern Christians like me and all my friends.
It goes like this:
I like to write. I like to write with passion. I like to write about transformation. I will always write about my most recent breakthrough.
Stop it.
Everything isn't a breakthrough. Most stuff isn't. Most of the time you go to work, or hug your wife, or eat some cheese, or have a conference call, or lift weights, and then you do the next, and then you do it again.
And that's ok.
I'm not saying we should live boring lives devoid of adventure and that we need to burn our copies of The Barbarian Way, I'm saying that transformation is a process. If every single day we are radically re-making who we are and recasting our vision of what we should be it's a problem. There are times for renewal, but there are also times for sticking to our knitting. When you're 19 living your life on the ragged edge of our emotional transformation is intellectual (and frankly developmentally appropriate). When you're 25, or 35 it's self indulgent.
Obey in the same direction.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

2008-03-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

My friend Lindsay wrote:
Sometime pre-November, we should have an election debate. I don't consider myself democrat or republican, but I think Obama is the scariest thing that could happen to America...and my reasons for that include both international and domestic concerns. Anyway I won't flood your blog with my opinions, but it'd be fun to talk about some time :)
Please tell.
I love smart people that disagree with me.
Also if anyone can tell me how to get rid of my robo-comments.

The New Moderates

2008-03-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

I think there is a new type of moderate emerging. This isn't scholarship, just thinking out loud.
Barack Obama is performing very well with college students and voters under 30. Conventional wisdom is that this is because people my age tend to be more liberal. That might be the case, but I think we're seeing something bigger, a changing of American political thought.
Lots of ink has been spilled over the transformation of American politics between the 60s and today. For much of that time we saw the calcification of a discrete political left and political right. Following that calcification (Kennedy and Goldwater were ideological opposites and personal friends) the logical next step is a villainization of the opposition. It's easier to fit a caricature for a black hat. During this period the political moderates were typically the kids in the back of the room with their arms crossed.
Inherent in political independance was a fundamental suspicion that the major parties a) did not have your best interest in mind; b) were more interested in fighting each other than solving problems; c) were probably people who couldn't hack it in a regular job OR loved the money-sex-power that politics offers in a way that other endeavors don't. This is a fine opinion to hold, but it makes it difficult to impact policy.
I think there has been a change in the last few years on what it means to be a moderate. I don't think Obama has driven this change but in some ways he is the image of this change. He is a man of faith who in his writings has a distinct preference for personal resposibility, yet he espouses largely liberal policies.
Those on the old left don't talk much about what he says about personal responsibility because this feels too conservative. Those on the right will say that his talk is mere rhetoric and when it comes to making decisions he is an old-fashioned leftists. They're both wrong.
What independants see in Obama is deliberation, a Constitutional lawyer thinking deeply about the law, someone who thinks thoroughly through issues. It's the kind of thinking you're supposed to learn at the University of Chicago, and the kind of judgement we'd like in a president.
Again, I'm an unmitigated Obama fan, but the broader point of this entry isn't "I want to kiss Obama on the mouth," he's got his flaws, is inexperienced, and his campaign has screwed the pooch for the last few weeks. My point is that there is a distinctly new way of viewing policy that is attracting young, college + educated people to Obama, and it is a legitimate change in what makes a moderate.
The politics of hope is not that hope is a strategy, rather that if we set big vision and then fill a room with smart people who think deeply about big things problems will get solved. Inspiration gives energy, but making change requires a thorough, fair, and accurate accounting of things like cost:benefit and an openness to smart people who disagree with you.
Obama's position on healthcare is an example of this type of thinking. The conservative position is idiotic because although conservatives are dead-on that the current system gives incentive to development they imagine away costs that we're already paying for. We do have universal healthcare, and it sucks. Primary care is delivered at emergencies rooms and by EMT-s. Unless we decide that our policy is to let uninsured people die (and trade in our definition of America) we will bear the cost of univeral healthcare in a sloppy and inefficient way. If we are already in essence paying for universal healthcare the real question is how to maximize on our ROI. As any business consultant worth his salt will tell you the job is about framing problems as questions and then working hard to answer them.
This same approach lends credence to the seemingly contradictory position of stronger border control and drivers licenses for undocumented workers. It also means that we think about illegal immigration not just as a legal or human rights issue (which of course it is) but as the manifestation of a labor market and the unintended consequence of US Latin-America policy.
The new moderate is searching for answers that won't fit on a fortune cookie, for intellectual rigor dedicated to problem solving rather than sophistry, and for an understanding that personal responsibility and community are intrinsically linked rather than opposing values.

My Wife's Dream

2008-03-02T09:30:00.000-08:00

I woke my wife up and she said the following:

I forgot to bring my clarinet. McCain and Obama need to finish the choreography for the librarian.

Either this is some sort of Nostradumian vision that will make sense in posterity or my wife is a bit too into POTUS 08 on XM, worried about her play, and needs to learn the clarinet.

Apparently in her dream McCain and Obama came together to campaign in Ohio to show that they would have a civil but vigorous campaign. They would demonstrate solidarity by jointly choreographing the dance performed by Marian the Librarian in her High School performance of The Music Man. And for music...my wife would learn and play the clarinet.

She's cute.

Birthing Class

2008-02-24T17:24:00.000-08:00

We went to our birthing class yesterday.
It is stunning how much I didn't know about the process. I took really good notes to keep my mind from wandering, but here were some thoughts that crept past the linebacker of my cognitive impulse control:
--These breathing exercise are just like on TV
--Shannon is in the wrestling down position. Work the half.
--They measure uterine pressure like we measure pressure in the water industry. Is that awesome or gross?
--Gross.
--Oh dear God.
--My wife is the hottest one here. Is "AMILF" a thing?
--What the hell is a doola? Am I a doola?
--I wonder what we'll forget when we go to the hospital.
--I hope Anna likes my dog (and vice versa).
--Breast feeding is awesome.
--That is a lot of blood.
--I bet a vacuum is better than forceps.
--Bill Cosby is really funny.
--How do you time a contraction. I wonder what Shann's 40 time is?
Other than these thoughts I was pretty well on task. This will be my most important coaching job ever. I'm so excited.

Water

2008-02-07T17:06:00.000-08:00

For my job I do stuff with water.
I forget therefore that water is life.
The Red Cross says more people die each month than were killed by the Tsunami a few years back. Each month. Because of water.
Thing is...I've known that for a few years. And done nothing about it.
My friend Keith has an Idea.
Congress just voted that we all get a check. I think I get almost $600.
What Keith is putting together is this:
The logistics aren't done yet, but what matters is this--He's currently setting up an organization you can donate some of that money to, and we're going to get water to some people who would probably die if we didn't.
This won't change the world, but it's a step.
So if you're in, say you're in at Keith's blog:
http://musicbykeith.blogspot.com
and say you're in. If you have a blog, write about it. If you have a radio show talk about it.
Somewhere in the history of everything it was an idea.

"Yes We Can"

2008-02-06T10:53:00.000-08:00

Whatever you feel about Obama (I happen to support him) this elevates the level of art and political rhetoric way past what's typically seen. This is, in my opinion, a forward move for the marriage of art and politics significantly greater than "A man from hope" in '92.

Just For The Record

2008-01-30T06:02:00.000-08:00

My prediction of the final ticket (made before SC, blogged today)
GOP:
McCain Huckabee
Democrat
Obama Richardson (I Hope)
OR
Clinton Harold Ford Jr.

Heart Beat

2008-01-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

In about as long as it takes to get a passport my wife is going to have a baby.
I'm going to be a dad.
Duty sublime and mighty name...
My friend Chris and I talked about this yesterday. The amount of stuff I don't know, that dad's are supposed to, is just chilling.
I found out just yesterday that I prefer a stiffer toothbrush, I don't like white reeboks, I don't know knots, I forgot to shave on Satruday, sometimes I end business conversations "cool man" and occasionally I'll say dog referring to people. I don't care if it's ironic...dad's don't do irony.
I kind of hate golf. I don't know any dad jokes. I don't know magic tricks. I told a toddler to "man up" the other day.
And it's a little girl.
I don't know anyting about little girls. My wife has a color wheel that I'm practicing with to learn matching colors (I just know that my ties match with my shirts), but I just know that Anna will be pink and warm with large eyes and will mostly smell like soap.
I'm going to have glitter put in my hair. She'll throw up on me. She'll have a favorite story that I read best. I'll probably have a nickname for her, and I'll still use it to her embarassment when she's 15, and it will make her smile when she's 25 and I'm 53 and think of myself as young and she thinks of me as old.
It's incredible.

Lying

2008-01-23T05:16:00.001-08:00

I want to punch Bill Clinton.
I know lots of people (my fairly liberal parents included) found the Clinton's to be spooky sleazeballs.
I get it.
In the past week one Clinton or the other has said of Obama:
--Obama worked for a slum lord (Not really, his firm worked for a guy as part of a community construction project, Obama billed 5 hours, and it wasn't until much later that there were allegations that he was a "slum lord."
--Obama praised Reagan & republicans as being the ones with all the good ideas--Not really, he gave an accurate civics lesson on developing a functional majority through crossover appeal
--Obama said that he agreed with Bush about the war in Iraq--No, Obama said in 2004 that it was now our responsibility to move towards an effective resolution of the war with the minimum loss of life. This is more akin to Powell's "you break it you buy it" line, but Clinton is lying and saying it's tantamount to wholesale support of the war.
This is to say nothing of the robo-calls about "Barack Hussein Obama" or the ridiculous crap about Obama's drug use when in college (pot. kettle. black.) It makes me want to throw a chair.
I think Obama would be a pretty good president. Not as good as McCain, not as good as he could be if he waited and gained some national experience, but good. That's not what pisses me off, what pisses me off is that the former President of the United States goes on tv with the full force of his job title and as the leader of the party and lies to score cheap political points.
It's absolutely disgusting.

Mitt Romney is a DB

2008-01-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney is a temendous tool.
He won Michigan primaries partly by being a native son, but mostly by pandering to the auto industry for which fundamental transformation is required if there is to be any legitimate job creation.
There's a fair debate over whether globalization is a net positive for states like Michigan ("Yes" it is but there should be sound public policy moves to retrain displaced workers and an improvement of capital access to middle small businesses which drive entrepeneurial growth. That said, wherever you fall in that debate saying that "hard work" will bring blue collar auto jobs to detroit (or textile jobs to SC) is lying.
Also--why the hell do we think Hillary Clinton should be president? I actually think she's a neat lady. I'm about to have a daughter and when I do I want her to grow up in a world hedged in only by her dreams, so yay, go lady president. But why Hillary Clinton? Without trying too hard I can think of a half dozen compelling women with legitimate executive experience that would be great at President. I really don't understand what makes us think Mrs. Clinton would be good at that job. Even if she is qualified, I think we should expect her to provide concrete examples of her qualifications. I'm experienced...trust me is a ridiculous argument. Show me an actual record of affecting change at the highest level you've played at...then we'll talk.

John Edwards

2008-01-06T16:25:00.000-08:00

Sounds very much like Kenneth on 30 Rock.
Close your eyes and listen.

Republican Debate

2007-11-29T10:41:00.000-08:00

I watched a bit of the Republican YouTube debate.
Why in the world is John McCain not leading. He's intelligent, experienced, and has stones the size of Alaska.

Duty Sublime and mighty name...and my water heater.

2007-10-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

My water heater has been broken for many, many days.
This has a bit to do with me being bad at fixing water heaters and a little bit to due with my water heater being a piece of crap. That's not important.
Something funny has happened...as I still have to engage in commerce and not disgust my wife I've been showering at the gym. I feel skeezy showering at the gym and not lifting, thus every day for the last nine of worked out hard.
I'm a volunteer coach and I preach discipline and hard work to my team as well as the people who work for me in my real job...but there's something troubling if cold water moves me more than a pep talk. It reminds me of Kant's book "A critique of Practical Reason."
Emmanuel Kant wrote this...'Duty! Sublime and mighty name, that embraces nothing charming or insinuating but requires submission and yet does not seek to move the will by threatening anything that would arouse natural aversion or terror in the mind but only holds forth a law that of itself finds entry into the mind and yet gains reluctant reverence (though not always obedience)...
In essence he's saying that Duty is a higher type of motivation than others like fear, discomfort, or even just "hey I feel like it."
The question put to me, therefore, as a leader of stuff and as I guy who wants to live with excellence is twofold...why is cold water a more powerful motivator than an intrinsic desire to be excellent; likewise how can I get the people that I try to lead (be they my team or my company) to buy into a higher sense of duty.

Avery Labels

2007-07-19T20:52:00.000-07:00

Somebody who works for Avery put the following address on their Matte White labels:
Tyler Durden, 420 Paper St. Wilmington, DE 19886
This is Ryan's meta-thinking about everyone's favorite nihilist.

Gap Kids

2007-05-09T10:54:00.001-07:00

Watch this.

Gap Unveils New 'For Kids By Kids' Clothing Line

Google thinks I'm gay...and another thing

2007-04-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

This is an unposted post from a few years back.
Google thinks I'm gay...
As an experiment for a play I was working on I set up google ads on my site. I was curious to see how it worked. Bizarelly, google thinks I'm gay. It has for some time.
Above my posts there's a little ad. Mostly for church stuff, once for simulated cat pee (?) and recently for gay related items. This would make sense to me tomorrow, when the google crawlers will have found the word gay within the copy, but I don't know what other sign I'm giving off that makes google think I'm gay. That's now what I'm writing about...just curious.
The other thing...
Some time ago I was involved in what CNN called a tragedy. They pointed cameras at me and my friends. The facts of the story were pretty simple--unpredictable, senseless, crappy thing (in this case a Tornado that killed people in Cincy. The story became a story about hope because we made that happen...we deliberately and methodically stayed "on message" because if people are going to point a camera at you it makes sense to leverage the redemptive potential. It became a story of hope...but it wasn't one.
Sad things, particularly ugly, violent, senseless sad things like shootings or storms become something of a national rorschach onto which we can project our own hopes or fears. This is why the VT shooting was about community, or unity, or courage, or hope, or madness, or gun control, or liberalism, or faith, or the goodness of God, or the absence of God, or existential despair, or Korean americans, depending on where we're standing.
What I struggle with is that none of this is REAL. A wack job went crazy and the walls were ripped away from our hearts. This is fine and natural, but it becomes dangerous when we project MEANING onto something senseless. Something's just suck

I'm like a grandma...

2007-04-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Inasmuch as I heard myself say "Oh Dear" the other day.
Not in an ironic way.
My natural reaction to a non-calamitous but troublesome development was "Oh Dear."
When did I become a guy who says "Oh Dear."
Is this the gateway drug for other Grandma sayings?
Will I begin saying "Good heavens" referring to young people as sweetie as I pinch their cheeks and offer them flapjacks as they sit-a-spell, their fannies squeaking on my plastic encased-vaguely gross smelling davenport!
Perhaps I should make old friends (not lifelong...actual old people.)
Oh dear.

Heroism

2007-04-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

Steve Fuller wrote this:
I really wish someone at NBC would have just thrown away the video Cho Seung-Hui made. I wish he would have been forgotten - instead, he will become someone we will never forget. And because of this, I fear others like him have been encouraged to duplicate his heinous crime.

Luckily, we will also have copycat heroes - men and women like Liviu Librescu, a 76 year-old Holocaust survivor who barricaded himself against his classroom door while students escaped through open windows. Librescu was killed by Cho, but every single student survived because of his courage.

May each of us live every day of our lives with that kind of courage

I'm Not Complaining...But

2007-04-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

I'm taking two minutes to vent.
Every parent in the world who has ever complained about playing time for their kid begins like this:
"I'm not usually one to complain (false) and I'm not even really complaining now (false) I'm just trying to understand (false) why little Billy isn't playing even though he works so hard (false) and is always at home practicing (false) and really should have a chance to play."

If you're a parent, don't do that. Say this:
Coach, I really love my kid and I think you're missing something. He's a bit behind but more experience will help him. What can we as parents do to help him get better, and are there any ways you can get him on the field to build more comfort and field IQ?"
The latter is honest and proactive, the former is just annoying.

Very few coaches are holding a grudge, and almost every coach rewards hard work with playing time. I wasn't good at football, but literally played every position but quarterback and tight end (tall positions) in High School because coaches wanted to put me on the field.

Something is Missing

2007-04-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

Our creative team is working on a supplement to an upcoming Sermon series: Something's Missing. The point of the series is this:
“We are the wealthiest, best resourced nation in the history of the world, our freaking pets are fat. We’ve got books on how to be rich, thin, successful, have great kids, great jobs, great sex, and great big bank accounts. These books are best sellers. Yet most Americans will say they have a profound sense that at the end of the day something’s missing. From there we'll identify some possible causes of this longing for the transcendent.

With this in mind I'm riffing on the sermon topic.
The last time I can really remember feeling like something important was missing from my life was a long business trip away from Shann. I did the same stuff I would, but was somehow less than...
I felt like Mega-Man when he was blinking.
It sucked.

Sometimes I dream that my dad's still alive and able to give me advice...mostly on work but also on other things. My subconscious, I suppose, is responding to something that my waking mind avoids. I can't say that I feel adrift, but there are definitely times when I wish there was more guidance and someone built into my corner.

The weird thing is that I have built in hope. This is why for me the idea of trying to do work, marriage, sex, friendship, or really anything...without God...would be a heavy existential burden.

That's why I care deeply that God responds directly to the missing pieces of our life.

Since I'm supposed to help teach a lesson responding to "Something is missing" I'd love the thoughts of others on this topic...
When have you experienced something missing in your life. Define the qualitative experince.
What fundamental rules do you go by for work, friendship, sex, personal finance, etc.?
If you think Christianity is crap (or misguided) what is your source for hope. I don't need a lame straw man--there are lots of smart people who I dearly love who don't find hope in God--where do you find it?

I'd love to hear input on this.

Cynicism and Orthodoxy

2007-04-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

G.K. Chesterton Wrote:
I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back -- his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag. Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.

He's smart.

2007-02-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

I didn't write this. A guy named Mike Lee who plays at a church and writes a blog did.
I'm not wild about his writing style, it's a bit too much like a freshman literature student or a first date. I do like what he has to say.

In the church we view lots of stuff on a "person v program" continuum when the real answer is that excellence comes from developing passion and heart organically.
I'm sure Mike Lee writes other stuff, so you can check out his blog here.
http://addisonrd.com/WordPress/2005/07/30/an-open-letter-to-music-pastors/

An Open Letter to Music Pastors

Dear Music Pastors,
This is a difficult letter for me to write. I’m not the sort of guy who easily admits that he’s more a part of the problem than the solution, but sometimes you just have to come face to face with reality. I’ve mined the gold of the Orange County Megachurches, I’ve been the goto guy for startup ventures, and I’ve filled more than a few 401(k)s up with the ill-gotten gains of my lurid exploits. I’ve been a mercenary. A hired gun. A musical “lady-in-red”. A ringer. Simon the Sorcerer to your Apostle Peter.
My name is John Doe, and I did a paid gig at your church. Look, neither one of us is to blame here. I’m sure it started innocently enough; your church made the switch to contemporary music, and you struggled through it for a few months, knowing that you didn’t have the players in your congregation to really make it work. So, you pulled out your little black book, and thought, “Just this once. Just this one time, I’ll call a few guys, I’ll squeeze a little cash out of the choir budget, and I’ll put together a service that just rocks.” So you did it, just that once, and it was like pure Havana Snow on a straight mainline to your groove jones. It rocked. You tasted, just for a second, what things could be like. Then the next week, you went back to your old players, but the luster was gone. You couldn’t look them in the eye. You had tasted the sweet goodness of solid time, tonally appropriate guitar fills, and bone shattering B3 grinds, and anything less just wouldn’t cut it. So you made another call. You shifted the budget around. You snuck another hit. And before long, every weekend service was filled out with pro players, dropping salty chops all up in the Lord’s hizzy, as the kids say.
And think of it from my point of view. I got my first call when I was just 19. I wasn’t old enough to see the consequences of my decision. I needed the cash. I thought that if I just did it this once, I could still look myself in the mirror the next morning. So I took my first church gig. Then my second. Before I had reached the tender age of 25, I was being passed around from megachurch to megachurch like a tawdry girl of low repute at a Sailors’ Ball. I could read. I could improvise. I could groove, I could hang with your soloist when he dropped 3 beats on the way out of the bridge. And more importantly, I had all of the unspoken requirements of the job, things you couldn’t ask a guy over the phone, but were every bit as important; I had no visible tattoos, and looked good in khakis and a polo. My dance card was full, baby.
But now look at the mess we’re in. I have too many friends to count who have “professional musician” on their business cards, but the truth is, all they do are church gigs. I know of churches that would have vibrant and thriving artistic cultures if their musicians would hang around, but they can’t afford to turn down $150 a service from the church down the block. New church plants have to budget for pro players to get their program up and running, because they believe that people won’t show up if the music isn’t amped to 11. People who, with some experience and some training, could blossom into good players don’t get the chance, because the bar to get on the team has been raised too high. And maybe worst of all, it costs you $1200 every single week to put 4 guys on the platform to drop their sticky funk juice all over the tunes. Twelve hundred dollars! Do you know how many World Vision goats you could buy for that kind of dough?
So this is the mess we’re in, and nobody expects the solution to be easy. I know we probably can’t go cold-turkey, because you would lose your job if your music program went from Jarvis Church to Jr. High jam band in one week. And the reality is, as long as you keep calling me up, I’m going to keep taking your calls and showing up. Let me make a modest proposal for how we extricate ourselves from this mess.
Step 1: stop paying “church pros”. I know you have guys on your roster who knock out 3 European tours in a year, and who paved their driveway with platinum records. I’m not suggesting that you cut those guys off at the knees. But the guy who works 9-5 as an insurance adjuster, and the only time he draws a paycheck for playing bass is when he shows up on Sunday at your joint, stop treating him like a pro. If you stop paying him, he’ll go back to his home church, and start investing his abilities back into their program. And who knows, maybe the guys you’ve lost along the way to other paying churches will start to show back up when they shut off the tap, ready to be part of the team again.
Step 2: take that money that you saved by not paying the “church pros”, and start investing it in building up the ability level of your players. Take a cue from Guitar Center: start hosting clinics for your players, Saturday workshops with hardcore session and touring pros who will be a straight adrenaline shot in the arm to your guys. You remember that $1200 you used to pay for a weekend band? You’d be shocked at the guys who would get on a plane and fly out to spend a day with your band for that kind of dough. We’re talking the Modern Drummer centerfolds here, and you don’t think that’ll inspire your guys to practice more? What if, instead of paying a pro $300 for one weekend, you offer to split the cost of private lessons with your volunteer players for 6 months? Things like that.
Step 3: use ringers intentionally, and strategically. Pick a Sunday, and just pack the stage with monsters, I mean sick and vicious. Invite the rest of the guys on your team to show up and be a part of the midweek rehearsal, to sit next to the guy playing their instrument, and to see how they do it. If it works, they’ll learn a lot about what professionalism looks like - inking up a chart, making a mistake and then correcting it, asking questions when charts are confusing, playing with ears wide open. Use ringers to raise the tide of the whole team, not just to pull off one great Sunday service.
I don’t know how this things ends. Maybe I need to just not answer my cell when I know it’s you. Maybe your elder board needs to hold an intervention. At this point, all I know is this: we’ve built some kick-ass services, but no real artistic communities. We’ve produced some monster musical moments, but very few seasons of corporately maturing worship. We dropped some disgustingly hip soul vaccinations on your funky pox, but we … ok, I lost my train of thought on that one.
In all seriousness, this is what breaks me. My friends are slowly dying from lack of a spiritual community, because they spend every Sunday at a different church, and they won’t quit until you stop hiring them. And your friends desperately want to worship in an authentic community led by people who are invested with their trust, but you keep throwing them ringers.
-ml

This Will Be...

2007-01-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

In a weird number of ways God's pushing me to a bold act of faith.
As I've chronicled here over the past few weeks God's been talking to me through scripture, visual art, literature, musics, and experience.
The fundamental assertion--My life of quiet courage is too little for the God of the universe.
The action step--I have no idea.
Tonight I'm going to take a guitar and stand in front of lots of people and ask them to sing that God is more than enough for me.
The problem is I believe in that academically, but not all the way.
Frankly the way that I spend my time and money does indeed indicate that I believe in Jesus Christ and want to see his hope spread. This isn't a "damn I'm a hypocrite" kind of post. I love Jesus, have for some time, and have been blessed inwardly and outwardly in this relationship. I'm not coming to my senses.
That said, almost everyone I look to as a hero in the faith was killed prematurely because of their faith.
If Bonhoffer is right, that the call of Christ is to "come and die with me" I don't have that kind of faith.
I don't know where this will take me, and I'm increasingly sure it might be a bit uncomfortable, but a simple application is that everywhere I am now, including my work, I'm going to get more serious about lifting up the saving message of Jesus.

A Penny for the Old Guy

2007-01-25T11:19:00.000-08:00

I've got friends who are investing themselves beautifully, and in beautiful things.
I've got other friends who press forward through monotony, say "boy I'm stuffed" and move forward hollowly through winter in Ohio.
I heard a sermon once drawing a comparison between the full bodied Christian life and surfing. Those living with passion were the white water people, and they were fundamentally different than "Legions of the unjazzed" who splash and play in the low, safe water and lack the courage and passion to commit their life to the adventure and danger of deep water.
I'm afraid of water at night.
I'm changing.
My dad was an engineer, my mentors have always been bullet-point guys. Propositional truth was what counted.
But I'm not so sure that's right. Knowing about something does not fuel transformation of life like truly knowing something. Conocer kicks the crap out of saber any day of the week. Passionate, full bodied, white water kind of lives resonate, and give hope, and give life.
It's trickier than that in real life, do we sound our Barbaric yawp, pin our ears back, and live loud lives only to ride back (but not the 600). To loudly say nothing? Proposition matters.
I feel like I'm standing too close to a Seurat and the colors haven't taken shape yet. But this is an exciting time.

Mr. Kurtz he dead

2007-01-16T03:03:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a book right now called "Beasts of No Nation."
It's about child soldiers in an unnamed African nation. It is heartwrenching.
The story follows a little boy who is dragged from safety, beaten near death, and becomes a monster. Maybe he gets better. I'm in the middle.
What is so heart wrenching is that he is a little boy.
We see Darfur on the news and we see monsters, we see genocide, command and control and industry twisted towards pain.
The story of Agu is different. He is afraid and scared and likes it where "it is warm, and I am feeling safe, and it is not loud from the screams of people as we are killing them."
One of his victims yells, "You are of the devil" and he cries and says to himself over and over, "No, I am a good boy...I am a good boy...I am a good boy."
I don't know if he's redeemed at the end. I don't know if he ends a monster.
I know that he lives a life where daydreaming of the missionary Bible with the shiny golden letters and sunshine and school and friends can happen within thirty seconds of killing somone by jumping on their chest until they stop yelling.
This book is heartwrenching. He is a modern day Screwtape channeled through a little boy; a child stumbling violently through an existential wasteland of his (and our) making.
He kills people with knives.
I don't know what to do with this. I know that I love the rule of law, and I love that for me being moral is pretty much expected. I love that my life involves choosing the moral right or wrong in relative safety and peace.
I need to process more, but I know two things:
I am deeply blessed to live where I live when I live.
Some part of my life needs to be dedicated to helping knock this stuff off.
Much more to come.
Help me O God to become who I am.

Mr. Gray Tiger

2007-01-08T22:16:00.000-08:00

It's Tuesday January 9th, my Birthday ended 1 hour and 15 minutes ago.
I just got done praying.
For a cat.
Mr. Gray Tiger
I watched the Buckeye's game at a buddies house.
Come home.
Have an odd feeling.
Things have been moved.
A very small burglar with little forethought or need for money has been here, and has played with our candles.
Check the house and all is well.
Meow.
What?
Meow. (beat) Meow.
There's a cat.
Under my bed.
But I don't own a cat.
Yet I have one.
We play. I don't want to scare him or hurt him.
We play cat games as he decides if I'm cool.
We play cat games with me on my stomach and him under the bed. Cat patty cake. Meow staring contests.
I give him milk because children's books teach us that cat's like this.
I come up with a name for him (Mr. Gray Tiger but mostly I just call him Kitty Cat).
I'm not very cool.
I pick him up and pet him.
I begin to carry him to the door.
He's obviously someones cat, he's playful and declawed and likes milk.
But maybe that parts not evidence.
I carry him some more.
He freaks. Makes weird Pet Cemetery noises and twists and wiggles and claws as I pet him and then just hold on as loose (not to squish) and tight (not to lose him to run around) as I can.
I let him out the door.
Hides beneath my car.
Bolts out the garage door.
free
That was weird.

Sophistry

2006-12-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

I was listening to a thing on the radio about racism.
It was pretty solid, and the guy laid out a very damning history of the federal governments intentional complicity in creating a geographically racist society. It was good scholarship, gave insight to public policy, and taught me a lot. It was everything I love about liberalism.
Then a lady called in. She explained that she was a white woman in a mixed race marriage and asked a blunt question--Do you belive that it's possible for a black person to be racist?
In response he questioned the underlying assumptions, redefined the term, sidestepped, and then moved on. He wasn't as absurd as he could have been and he said some good things, but he still refused to respond to a direct and simple question from a woman who had obviously experienced personal pain. It felt like nuance being used as a dodge. Like sophistry.
It was everything I hate about liberalism.

We do this in the church too.
Ask Christians who've been leading anything for more than a week about hell, or temptation, or fear, or sex, or money and we provide a sound bite answer. We dodge the pain and paradox and replace it with a smug superiority that lasts until the Panera leaves our breath. It is an intellectual reach around.
Here is my challenge to the three people who read this blog:
Take a look at some major question that keeps dreamers up at night and refuse to accept a sound bite answer. Look for evidence. Really look at the bible for answers. Gauge human experience. Be rigorous.
I believe that the church and only the church can rescue the broken heart and world, but we need to renew the evangelical brain to get there.

Sex

2006-12-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

Within the last year 6 pastors in Pickerington and surrounding communities have resigned because they were doing sex or something sex-like with women under their counsel.
With this in mind I wanted to give some counsel to local pastors:
Do not have sex with parishioners.

The Body...Politic

2006-11-29T14:27:00.000-08:00

"My position is, unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we're not carrying out the full message of Jesus. ... They began to think this might threaten their base or evaporate some of their support, and they said they just couldn't go there."

This is a quote by Rev. Joel Hunter. He was going to be president of the Christian Coalition but resigned after realizing he would be unable to broaden the organization's focus to include issues such as poverty and the environment. (Source: The Washington Post).
I'm cheering for Joel Hunter.
This is beautiful.
I'm a marginal Christian. I do my best, but I fail more than I succeed. I don't speak from a position of moral authority, but I do love the voice that the church can be. If the body of Christ were to pursue the moral values he seemed so passionate about in his earthly teaching and healing ministry it would be earth shaking and beautiful.

Pride

2006-11-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

I am so proud of my wife.
Her school opened the Diary of Anne Frank tonight.
It was absolutely beautiful. I felt more human.
If you can come, do.

Studio 60, Championship Lacrosse, and Bad Leadership (alternative title: The Limitation of Talent)

2006-11-15T06:43:00.000-08:00

Every Monday night I catch up on paper work and flip to Studio 60. I'm like the Joads without the quest, but with the same milky dissapointment.
No. Not at all. What a horrid analogy.
The whole show does what I just did--bend over backwards to try to showcase some trite literary or cultural knowledge without actually saying or doing anything. Any story, to actually be a story requires conflict, and motion, and action. Each scene requires a drive shaft. Lit crit wonks can go nine rounds on the elements of style, but the bottom line is that if you say something it should actually say something. People watch verbs.
In addition to the rancor with which it blows what pisses me off about Studio 60 is that it has some potential to be awesome. There is an unbelievable level of talent and a writer who I truly believe has a once-in-a-generation mind for narrative and style. It then proceeds to piss that potential down its leg. It's fine merlot used to cook spam.
My JV lacrosse team was dissapointing last night. They didn't hustle. They are not displaying skill. They are not displaying unity. I was ashamed and expect much more.
At heart the team and the show had the same problem.
Champions do the stuff that doesn't take talent. In writing that's defining a broad vision, working on character development, creating scenes that are cohesive and have a drive shaft, and editing until the prose is what it needs to be. In lacrosse that's hustle, and skill development, and film study, and discipline.
In High School they find kids with nice hair who can spell and they call them leaders. They then define leadership as the ability to paint broad vision. That's part of it, but it's not what makes leaders fail or succeed. Teams of any kind win when they get people to buy in to the stuff that doesn't take talent.
I failed at that a little bit the other day. That was bad leadership.

Kierkegaard

2006-11-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

In addition to being referenced in Cantonese on Wayne's World Kierkegaard was brilliant.
He wrote, "The comes affliction to awaken the dreamer."
I don't understand that but it feels important.

A book about wine

2006-11-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

I once read a small book about wine.
It was something like they sell at the bookstore below the Playboy and Maxim and Better Homes and Gardens on the rack--above The Economist.

The book told me the definition of words and places like Merlot and sommelier and which kind of corkscrew to buy.
I bought it because it let me say that I knew the definition of Merlot and sommelier; I bought it to give advice on the corkscrew that was tested
10,000 times with no fail.

I don't care very much about the book. It's useful. What I really care about is that wine is delicious, and I use a Wal Mart cork screw and drink wine with my wife and she looks pretty and laughs softly and mispronounces Riesling (or maybe I do in my head).

The reason the books facts are interesting to me is because they are excerpts of the experience. My mentor used to say that what mattered was propositional truth (2 + 2; Romans 8:31; Newton's 2nd Law of Thermodynamics; how to execute the West Coast offense) and that experiential truth was less valid. I think maybe he was wrong. The thing that stirs my heart to fight or love or work or pray is experiential truth.

On another note--check out http://stevenfuller.blogspot.com
He wrote a thing about vulnerability (A Public Life) that I think rocks.
For people who read my blog first, disregard the comment I post to him. I'm over the moon about this guy's potential as a thinker and I hold him to an unfairly high standard. Read what he has to say.

Kosher

2006-11-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

A girl I don't know wrote this.
http://outreachchick.blogspot.com/2006/05/not-all-that-important.html#links
Good job girl I don't know.
Christians I know are fitting too much into one or the other broad categories:
Annoyingly introspective and vocal.
Annoyingly shallow in their thinking.
Emerson wrote that education was the end of life.
I respectfully disagree--the end of education is life.
We ponder and navel gaze as if the truths that we hold to be the source of life are a mere philosophy.

Today I had about twenty high school kids in my house keeping Kosher. Really.
Shann's doing the Diary of Anne Frank for her play and as a way to build unity she had the kids over for a Kosher meal. I'd never cooked Kosher before--it's kind of like Cooking Taboo, "Make a cake but you can't use any of these ingredients." The other interesting thing is that built into the meal was a reminder of shared creed, conduct, traditions, and memories. It reminded me in a bizarre way of talking to anyone's grandma in her kitchen. She talks about her vegetables, or how she's got an aloe bush for that burn on your hand, or about how it it hurts her to cross stitch, or how she still gets with her friends (widows) and shares wine and coffee and plays cards and laughs until too late. Their words tie directly to tactile human experience. They are haptic and theirs is a haptic spirituality.

Pi and Babies

2006-10-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

There will be no craft to this writing. I apologize for the stream of consciousness.

On Wednesday mornings I have breakfast with a friend. He's an (almost) PhD in theoretical mathematics. We've been having breakfast because I'm working on a project and the math is a bit above my head. We show up, we drink coffee and eat Panera, we talk about the project for about an hour. Usually we make what feels like a quantum technical leap, which bring us one big leap forward in a project that has required lots of big leaps. After we've hit a wall we talk for about fifteen minutes more about friend stuff. I talk about the day. He talks about one of two things:
--Theoretical math:
For example--my friend taught a lecture on the search for finding pi to infinite digits. This is theoretical, and figuring out that digit z is 4 barely matters. In this case the process matters more than the outcome.
--His soon coming baby
For example--my friend's wife had a dream that he's already had the baby and he held his baby and cried and was happy. Another time he accidentally referred to the process of the baby pushing out his wife's stomach as glacial. That was a mistake.

Sometimes we also talk about faith.

Leaving our meeting today I was thinking about some conversations I've had recently. Pretty much every Christian I know is coming to grips with what might be defined as the broadening of the evangelical mind. I mean by this the idea that most twenty somethings are giving a more thorough treatment to the reconciliation of faith and reason. The goal is no longer to pimp slap postmodernism, but to attempt to reconcile it with biblical reality and see how well the two reconcile. This is a good thing. But as always in subcultural Christianity I think we're swinging too far on that particular pendulum.

A lot of the Christian life is a pi question. The process matters more than if we ever actually get there. The pursuit of God's heart trims me to fighting weight and that's good. This pursuit is pretty much theoretical because I'm still broken, but that's OK. The fact that I'm not going to perfectly reflect his likeness in no way diminishes the pursuit.
Some of the Christian life is like finding pi...but not all of it.
Right now the young church has an intellectual hard on for the fact that we can question stuff and not feel as ostracized as we once would have been. Again this is Good. What's not good is when everything becomes a pi question. Sometimes things are just true. My friends love for his child may not be empirically demonstrable, but it is still and absolutely TRUE.

I fear that as a church we are reacting to a pretty stupid evangelical culture that doesn't value wisdom and the pursuit of truth by creating a pretty stupid evangelical culture that values sophistry.

Perhaps the reason it bothers me is that I love a vision of Christianity where there is certainty over love, and over God's awful goodness, and over the call of the Spirit to adventure. If the "look I'm edgy" crap that passes itself off as neo Christian insight is truly the best thing that faith has to offer my mind it provides de facto confirmation that faith and reason truly are divorced.

Put in fewer words: The love of Christ is not theoretical.

Five Funny Shirts

2006-10-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

My five favorite t-shirts from the Marathon today:
5. "Why the hell am I doing this?"
4. Two twins with matching shirts--"I'm not Becky." "I'm not Beth."
3. "No excuses. No whining. Let's go."
2. "Chafed yet?"
1. "My other legs are Kenyan."
Funny.

Interesting Post

2006-10-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

A guy who knows some people who I know wrote a thing.
He's going to go and try to be Jesus in a strip club.
It's the kind of thing that you read about and that other people do.
I like it because it's ballsy.
Check it out here.
It's also woth checking out a comment by a lady named Grace.
Here's a link to the thing.
http://stevenfuller.blogspot.com
I don't know if he should do this. I think I'd have trouble having pretty, naked girls bring me drinks and still think about Jesus. That's a good argument for me not doing this. That might even be a good argument for ONE not doing this. It's not much of an argument for this guy Steve not doing it.
In either case, even if this guy is doing the wrong thing, you gotta love the way he's doing it. One of my favorite philosophers is a Christian Existentialist named Soren Kierkegaard. He wrote once that it is by the absence of passion that men will die.
I love the idea of passionate Christians. I love the idea of a group of Christians who aren't tepid and pusilanamous. I love the idea of a passionate, full bodied, bold, Christian existence. I love the idea of our offices littered with dry wall and the us shaped holes in the wall as we run after hope and justice and truth.
I don't know much about the guy whose going to be sitting in this bar but me and Soren are cheering.

Cognitive Dissonance and Jesus

2006-10-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

A buddy of mine wrote a thing in his blog about his beliefs. It raised a question:
How big is the tent of what we call "Christian."
I think there are some ideas of doctrinal belief that lots of us struggle with. In some ways though, what we call struggle is really just a Christiany way of saying, "Crap, this doesn't make any sense to me and I don't think I really believe it when I'm honest with myself, but I do believe in Jesus and I've been told that this thing goes along with that" As such we use the term struggle of faith to arrest the cognitive dissonance that we feel as educated Christians when presented with fossil records, the crusades, gay friends, the death of a nonbelieving loved one, or an amazingly compassionate and loving agnostics. These things confound the bullet point faith that passes itself of as contemporary Christianity.
For a long time I prided myself on the ability to go nine rounds with an agnostic on the rational underpinnings of faith and avidly read books to sharpen my apologetics. That's fine, and it's important to know you can believe and not be a moron. Sometimes though, I think what we in the church have referred to as defending the philosophical underpinnings of the Gospel have much more to do with defending philosophical modernism than truly defending the gospel.
I've heard some Navigators staffers say, "The Bridge is dead" referring to the logic based illustration for the gospel that was created to connect to thinkers with a modern world view. I don't know if "The Bridge is Dead" but I'm certain that the gospel of Christ had more to do with transformation of the Hebrew conception of the heart (the seat of the mind, will, and emotions) and less to do with formulaic doctrinal purity.
The missing piece of my argument is that sound theology absolutely matters to real life. The theological conceit that "God is still God and I'm still not" probably kept my faith alive for about a year. That said any theology that isn't focused fundamentally around the life, teaching, and words of Christ is no theology at all. Put more simply Jesus was never bound by bullet points.

Microlevel Entrepeneurship

2006-10-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Just out of college I wrote a book/curriculum called The Agincourt Project. The concept of Agincourt was to develop a series of learning activies that allowed gifted High School students to enact change on a targeted area. Often the programs would piggy back off of a USAID or NGO effort to reach people. Most of the projects seeked to create both connectivity and to support microentrepeneurship in a way that allowed kids to learn more about themselves, the developing nation, and the underlying social or economic principle.
Agincourt was three things:
1. A neat idea.
2. A piece of clever if incomplete scholarship.
3. Written by a guy who at the time had no experience in the rigors of execution.
Because of item 3 it hasn't really changed that many lives, a fact that I lose sleep over.
Someone else is doing something similar in practice, if not in concept. I haven't assessed their program as well as I will but the concept is to connect anyone with a Paypal account with a specific entrepeneur in a developing nation. THIS was the gap I couldn't fill. At the time I could get to the concept of why microlevel entrepeneurship was a great way to teach High School kids about pretty much everything. The problem was that establshing the transaction was more than could reasonably be asked of a High School teacher.
Go to their site and learn more.
http://www.kiva.org/

Politics Rant

2006-08-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book on politics right now. It's one of the best books I've ever read and you should read it too.
The book, Poltics Lost by Joe Klein talks about the unmitigated and infuriating atrophy of American political discourse between the 1960-s and today.
I won't rehash Klein's points here, except to say that reading the book filled me with a sense of sadness like walking through a once great city. The shadows of greatness are there, but what we have now is a craven caricature of what was there before.
I tend to think that most of the nostalgic good old day stuff is bullcrap and throughout the course of American history most political discourse has been trite and soporistic fear mongering. NINA anyone? That said, it is undeniable that politics right now sucks.
Much of the intellectual component of my Christian upbringing had to do with absolute truth and how liberals don't believe in it.
I don't know about that, but I do know that the erosion of truth under the current administration breaks my heart. Truth is now opinion (Did we find WMD-s, was Kerry a war hero, etc.) They are manufacturing consent in order to serve a narrowly defined and shortsighted vision. That, coupled with poor execution in key executive positions means that we're doing wrong thing AND we suck at it.
More frustrating is that the political counterbalance is being offered by a group of nutsack light morons who can't shoot straight.
The other problem is that the smartest guys I know aren't interested in the process. I do not know the best minds of my generation because I went to a second tier college, but I know some smart smart people and they all feel like they need to shower after watching C-Span for more than five minutes.
As a born again Christian I find that my "flock" is complicit. The religious right are the ideological ass clowns of the political right. They offer the Jesus stamp of approval and political cover so that poor people and stupid people vote against their dearly help beliefs or personal economic interest.
The religious left have done NOTHING other than whine, lie, engage in sophistry, and provide the Jesus stamp of approval to the basest and most craven excesses of ministry. Their statments, "Jesus loved the poor so we should create a culture of poverty" makes as much sense as "Jesus loved the poor so we should execute fundamentally flawed economic policy that helps the very rich."

My challenge (issued really to myself) is to care. Do not be a scoffer throwing tomatoes at the people who jump into the game. To look for valid biblical basis for policy actions. To look for excellence in execution. To think of Government as a force for good and require goodness from the leaders. I don't know how this will help, but I think if my friends and I decide to engage politics as one avenue to amend structural sin the world gets better.

Donald Miller

2006-08-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

Donald Miller is much smarter than me. Lots of what I say that people think is smart is actually just stuff I've stolen from him. He's kind of the Christian Author du jour right now (a la John Eldredge a few weeks ago, Lee Strobel the week before that, and so on). The thing is, there's some real wisdom to crowds on this one.
I just read "Searching for God Knows What." Awesome.
The fundamental premise of the book is that the Gospel of Jesus was written as relational truth (I love my wife), and we've screwed it up and treated it merely as propositional truth (Avogadro's number). For example, the Gospel of Jesus is about relationship. We say this, but when we look at the Gospel as presented in lots of churches what we say is more about a formula and less about Jesus.
I could expound upon this, but I'd just be adding words. I really think you should read the book.