God, Technology, and Things That Make Us Want to Move to the Moon
Monday, April 27th, 2009
I’ve been biting my nails for years. I’m pretty sure it’s not an issue of nerves; I do it almost constantly, whether I’m walking or reading a book or having a conversation. I generally feel completely powerless against the urge to gnaw away at my fingernails. I’ve tried to use my own willpower to stop hundreds of times, but that has always failed miserably. I don’t really know the next step to take. (more…)
Monday, April 20th, 2009
I don’t often post about things that are already overly talked about, but I couldn’t resist this one. The first time I watched a video of Susan Boyle’s Britain’s Got Talent tryout, I felt all kinds of emotions. If you haven’t heard about Susan Boyle, you’ve got to watch her sing. Here are two articles that I thought particularly interesting, the first regarding God and the second regarding technology:
The Susan Boyle Phenomenon | Thinking Out Loud
Susan Boyle YouTube Video: 100 Million Hits, So Where’s the Money? | Wired
Oh, and check out one of the many videos:
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
These new social media web frame toolbar things (there’s got to be a more succinct name here) have been the talk of the town lately, as many, many bloggers have whined about them and even more twitterers have shared their opinions. Google, StumbleUpon, Digg, and others have recently introduced little toolbars that overlay inside a web page. I’ve been thinking about them, as well, and I think I’ve made up my mind: I’m pretty much against them. Why? Three reasons: (1) They take up valuable screen real estate. (2) They look cluttered. (3) They have to reload each time a new page loads.
Now, these first two reasons are pretty subjective, and others might not mind them. Some would argue that replacing these in-page toolbars with software toolbars would cause the user to lose even more space, and I would certainly agree with that. The only difference is that you could turn off a browser toolbar when you don’t want to see it, versus a web toolbar to which you’re forcefully subjected. Furthermore, some people don’t mind the look of these guys, which is fine by me.
The third reason, however, really gets me. From a developer’s standpoint, why would I ever want to put one of these on my site? I’m constantly trying to speed my site’s load time; why would I want to intentionally add something which will slow down the user experience on every page?
I’ve created to the left an image with a quadruple-bar, inspired by some other people who’ve joked about this “double bar” problem. Obviously, this one is just a mock-up, but you can imagine that it wouldn’t be all that difficult to see this kind of thing in the wild.
Monday, April 13th, 2009
Just for fun: a little while back I came across the longest word in the English language. I’m pretty sure I looked it up for a reason, but I’m not sure what that reason was. Regardless, in case you were wondering, here’s the longest word in the English language. Coming in at a whopping 189,819 letters, this word is freaking long. Of course, it will never be in any dictionary since it’s a technical word, but that’s alright. Check out the Wikipedia article on the longest English words for more interesting things like this. Some other greats include Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, Antidisestablishmentarianism, and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (which actually does appear in some dictionaries). What’s your favorite long word, or do you suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia?
Friday, April 10th, 2009
This is part three of three in a series of guest posts that I wrote for Jesus Thirst, a blog by Richard Morris. Check out this post on his blog: We Stink at Relationships – Part III: Encourage and find parts one and two here: We Stink at Relationships – Part I: Pray and We Stink at Relationships – Part II: Inspire.
I think that of all the sermons I hear (which isn’t that many compared to Richard who listens to about 37 sermons a day), the ones that convict me the most almost always involve speech. It’s not that I’m some crazy perverted mess; I just tend to notice ways which negative speech affects people.
In high school, I had a friend who would often insult with the intention of being funny. Soon this joking turned into actual insulting, in which I started to think he was incapable of doing anything well. I would get angry at him and use words I had previously intended for humor in a tone that said, “I don’t like you.” I’m pretty sure these things bounced right off him, but the words I used definitely shaped the way I treated him.
This relationship shaped the way I think about communication with our friends. In fact, I taught myself to remove that type of speech from my vocabulary. But I’m not healed of my problem. Like I said, I stopped saying mean things to people, I stopped being so negative, and I stopped putting down my friends. I willed myself into cleaning up my act. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t end there.
The phrase, “out of the (overflow of the) heart, the mouth speaks,” is thrown around a lot. Considering it’s in the Bible, I tend to wonder if there’s something to that statement. This is the part that gets me every time: I was able to pretty much stop using negative speech, but as soon as my defenses are down, the gross hurtfulness comes right back. On top of that, I’m not very good at encouraging. I don’t believe that my willpower will ever be strong enough to control all of these things.
Here I believe our relationships break down. Because we do not bring prayer, inspiration, and encouragement to our relationships, we have no bond with our friends and our relationships fall apart. Although we continue striving, we cannot on our own change our hearts to properly value our friends.
Instead, only through the Holy Spirit changing us by the blood of Christ will our hearts be transformed to love well through prayer, inspiration, and encouragement.
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So thanks again for reading these last three posts. I’ve really enjoyed writing them. I hope they’ve proved valuable in some way, if even as small reminders.
Oh, and bonus points to anyone who noticed the “PIE” acronym. I love bad acronyms.
