How to Post Your Facebook Status on Your Blogger Blog

You might have noticed that I have my Facebook status posted in the top left-hand corner of this blog. It's updated automatically. I thought I would post instructions on how to do this for the benefit of any Blogger users who might like this on their blog as well.

1. Log on to Facebook and go to your Notifications page.

2. On the right-hand side you’ll see "Subscribe to Notifications." Click the "Your Notifications" link.

3. Go up to the URL in your browser and replace the word "notifications" with "status".

4. Highlight the entire URL and copy it (ctrl+c). This is an RSS feed of your FB status.

5. Login to Blogger.com and go to the Layout page for your blog.

6. Click on the "Add a Gadget" link in your sidebar.

7. A popup will appear. In the popup window, scroll down and click on "Feed."

8. Paste (ctrl+v) your URL from step 4 into the Feed URL box. Click "Continue."

9. Change the Title to "My Facebook Status" or whatever you prefer. Set the Show drop-down menu to the number of recent statuses you want to display (I selected "1" so I only display my most recent status). Check the Item dates checkbox if you want to display the date along with your status. Check the Item sources/authors checkbox if you want to display your name along with your status.

10. Click "Save" and you're done! Your status will now appear in your blog's sidebar. If you want to change where in the sidebar your status appears, click and drag the "My Facebook Status" box to wherever you prefer on your Layout page.

An alternate method of posting your FB status in your sidebar is to use a FB profile badge.

Special thanks to TechLifeWeb.

Harrison Hudson - "On My Heart"

Harrison Hudson is a friend of mine from childhood; I grew up with his older brother John. Harrison and I played in worship bands together in high school. He was always one of those kids who really knew how to play, while the rest of us were just "good enough for youth group worship."

After drifting through a number of bands, Harrison settled into his own as a singer/songwriter and released a killer album titled Angels on One Side...And the Other on the Other. His music is a gritty blend of Roy Orbison, Elvis, The Beatles, Buddy Holly, and Johnny Cash: or in other words, 100-proof Americana (well ok, minus The Beatles). This is my favorite track from the record, featuring splendid background vocals by The Bridges.

Harrison Hudson - "On My Heart"


You can find Harrison in Nashville, on Facebook, and at HarrisonHudson.net. I encourage you to show him and his band some love if you dig their tunes.

Living the Simple Christian Life is HARD

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves?" Richard Foster

Several years ago my faith was revolutionized when I came to know and understand a handful of truths which I outlined in a blog post with the tongue-in-cheek title "Essential Truths of the Christian Faith" -- namely, that I am and will probably always be uncomfortable with some of the Bible's teachings, no one (including me) has a monopoly on precisely what the Bible says and means, being right is not a virtue, and love is the most fundamental characteristic and pursuit of the Christian faith.

This led me come to grips with the fact that the faith I had been living was not a faith that springs from the truth of these ideas. These ideas led me to a simple faith, one that pursues loving God by spending time in relationship with him and one that pursues loving man by serving him/her. They led me away from a faith that concentrates itself primarily on theology, apologetics, and biblical reasoning. They led me away from a faith that focuses on typical Christian church activities rather than actions that serve my fellow man.

But in the years since I have found it incredibly difficult to live out these truths. In fact, I would say I've completely failed. Prayer and time spent with God is still largely vacant from my life. Church activities still take the place of intentional efforts to love my neighbors. Reading (Orthodoxy, The Problem of Pain), writing (Community Church and the Dunbar Number, End All Youth Groups Now), thinking, and conversing about theological ideas still comes so, so easy to me. I run to it. Of course there's nothing wrong with these things, indeed they are considerably positive, but when I am reckless about pursuing them in the absence of what Jesus made possible -- a personal relationship with him -- they are not so good after all.

The disconnect between what I know to be true and the actions I carry out is jarring. My favorite quote of all time (and this is not without some consideration) is G.K. Chesterton's "What is wrong with the world? I am." Or to paraphrase, the trouble with the world is me. It is my relationship with God that needs my action, it is the question of my own faith that needs my consideration, it is my lack of obedience that needs my attention. The salvation of the world can wait. Religious and theological ideas can wait. As C.S. Lewis put it, "For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you."

The years since my epiphany have made me realize: living the simple Christian life is hard -- at least for me, but probably for most people. Spending time alone with God is awkward, it is difficult, it is messy. Prayer does not come easy. How much easier is it to read C.S. Lewis than Moses or the Apostle Paul? How much easier is it to give my money to the church every week than to cook a meal for a homeless man or pursue a friend who is hurting? Waxing philosophic is easy. Theological pontification is easy. It is simplicity that is hard. Discipline, obedience, devotion: these are the challenges. I must resolve to meet them.

I will close with a few passages from Let God: The Transforming Wisdom of François Fénelon by Winn Collier. If you read this blog much, that's a name you've probably heard before.

Be content with leading a simple life, however that fits for you. Be obedient. Bear your daily cross -- you need it. It is a gift given by the pure mercy of God. The essential idea is to despise self from the heart, and to be willing to be despised, if God allows it. Feed upon God alone. Saint Augustine says that his mother lived on Prayer. You do the same, and die to everything else. We can live toward God only as we allow our self to continually die. [...]

You don't need to know more truth. What you do need, however, is to start obeying the truth you already have. We are deeply deceived whenever we think our spirituality is progressing simply because our useless curiosity is being stimulated. [...]

And I have to ask--why are you chasing after all this knowledge anyway? What we need is to recognize how much we don't know, to see how poor and desperate and helpless we truly are. Books and big-time teaching won't help with that. You don't need what they're pushing. You just need to know a few simple things: you need to know Jesus. And you need to know Jesus died on a cross. Pretty simple, huh? Saint Paul knew what he was talking about: "Knowledge puffs up while love builds up."

If this is  true, then running after all this knowledge, thinking it will finally make you happy with how you are, is a waste. What you need instead is to learn to be contented with love. Just love.

Quotes: Quiet Desperation, Intelligent Life, and Smoking Crack

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things." Henry David Thoreau

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." Bill Watterson

"Anyone who thinks we move in a post-racial society is someone who's been smoking crack." Spike Lee

"The Eternal Appetite of Infancy"

Recently I posted an exhaustive list of quotes from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. I also wanted to include this passage, but the post was far too long as it was. I found this section of the book inspiring; Erin can vouch for how excited I was reading it. Don't you love those moments when you read something so truthful it's electrifying, yet somehow you feel you always knew it? Well I do.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.

Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Image: tricky™

War by Wire

There are men and women in this country who every day get up, drive to work, kill enemy combatants in Afghanistan, get off at five, go home and eat with their families.

PBS Frontline: War by remote: What do you think?

Five Reasons to Hate Twitter

1. People think it's cool to propose via Twitter. (It isn't.)

2. People think it's cool to publish a book of their tweets. (Nope.)

3. People think it's cool to tweet about their miscarriage -- and then rejoice about not having to wait in line for an abortion. (Yikes.)

4. George Clooney would rather have a rectal exam than join Twitter, and he's way cool. Jon Stewart hates Twitter too. (So does Maureen Dowd, but she's not that cool.)

5. Culture-crazy Christians have already made their own version of Twitter, just like they did with YouTube, because "Twitter-land needs a little more Jesus!" It's "microblogging-as-ministry!" (Gag.)

Disclaimer: This is not intended to be fair to Twitter.
Image: andreiu

My Summer of Anger

During the summer of 2005, I commuted between metro-Atlanta and the suburbs three days a week. The Atlantan rush hour is a cultural experience second only to LA in hellishness. Disgruntled businessmen and women sit in their sedans, moving stop-and-go at 2 mph for hours in 100 degree heat, listening to Rush Limbaugh, Neil Bortz, and Sean Hannity. The anger hovers over the four-door armada with unrelenting oppression. You can feel the hate -- at the DOT, at "the liberals," at the car in front of you -- burn through you like a cancer.

I ate it up -- not the talk radio pundit's views, but their anger, which most of the time I fueled right back at them. I wrote about my frustration with the GOP (twice). My hatred for the Kelo v. New London decision. The bias I perceived in NPR's reporting. Senator Byrd's involvement with the KKK. The "liberal media." My burning anger at the pundits. By August of 2005, I am quite convinced that if I had met Neil Bortz, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken, Bill Maher, Ann Coulter, or Randi Rhodes on the street, I would have punched them in the face.

Once I left Atlanta I calmed down, but keeping myself from blowing up about one of these miscreants, or their deviant hosts like Air America or Fox News, is a constant struggle. That's why I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I read this column by center-right New York Times columnist David Brooks this week. He makes the so very important point that last year a man who the pundits hated with a passion won the Republican presidential nomination. John McCain's centrist views have always kept him out-of-favor with the far-right and their idealogues. Ann Coulter said she would campaign for Hillary Clinton if McCain won the nomination (I don't recall her keeping her word). Candidates like Romney and Thompson were the darlings of Fox News (Huckabee even has his own show on the channel now) -- never McCain.

Which adds great weight and support to the notion that thank heavens, the pundits don't matter. They are not the voice of the majority of the Republican Party, much less middle America. They may be able to get 75,000 people to march on Washington in the name of something-or-other but that doesn't put a dent in the 9 million votes McCain received in the '08 primary. The people who do matter, the people who make up middle America, the average voters in this country, are the centrists. The "purple state" voters.

Fox News and their minions are loud, but they are not powerful. If our Republican leaders would realize this and not be scared of voting against their supposed "base," and if our Democrat leaders would realize this and stop blaming all Republicans for the crimes of the few, we could make great progress in this country. I think Obama gets this, but we need more voices than just his. I know it's hard to unite people under the cause of centrism -- moderation never makes a good slogan. But it's what we need, and it's what the American people believe in.

Image: DividedWeFail.org

The Pentagon's New Map for War and Peace

This lecture blew me away a few weeks ago. In it military strategist Thomas Barnett describes a revolutionary new strategy for U.S. foreign policy which calls upon the U.S. to export security to encourage the globalization of countries which are currently unstable and disconnected from international trade. These also happen to be countries in which the U.S. often finds itself involved in military conflict.

The "America as world police" aspect of it all frightened me a bit, but the idea of transforming the U.S. military to promote peace and trade intrigued me. These ideas are closely related to the work I currently do, they have tremendous implications for our country's current military situation, they provide an interesting and informative look at U.S. military history, and the lecture itself is surprisingly humorous and entertaining.

TED: Thomas Barnett draws a new map for peace

Here is a quick outline of Barnett's "New Map," from its Wikipedia article:

1. Systems of rules called Rule-sets reduce violent conflict. Violence decreases as rules are established (e.g., the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding) for dealing with international conflicts.
   
   
2. The world can be roughly divided into two groups: the Functioning Core, characterized by economic interdependence, and the Non-Integrated Gap, characterized by unstable leadership and absence from international trade. The Core can be sub-divided into Old Core (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia) and New Core (China, India). The Disconnected Gap includes the Middle East, South Asia (except India), most of Africa, Southeast Asia, and northwest South America.
   
   
3. Integration of the Gap countries into the global economy will provide opportunities for individuals living in the Gap to improve their lives, thereby presenting a desirable alternative to violence and terrorism. The US military is the only force capable of providing the military support to facilitate this integration by serving as the last ditch rule-enforcer. Barnett argues that it has been doing so for over 20 years by "exporting" security (US spends about half of the world's total in military spending).
   
   
4. To be successful the US military must stop thinking of war in the context of war but war in the context of "everything else", i.e. demographics, energy, investment, security, politics, trade, immigration, etc.
   
   
5. In recognition of its dual role, the US military should organize itself according to two functions, the "Leviathan" and the "System Administrator."
   
   -Leviathan's purpose is the use of overwhelming force in order to end violence quickly. It will take out governments, defend Core countries, and generally do the deterrence work that the US military has been doing since the end of WWII. The Leviathan force is primarily staffed by young aggressive personnel and is overwhelmingly American.
   
   -The SysAdmin's purpose is to wage peace: peacekeeping, nation building, strengthening weak governments, etc. The SysAdmin force is primarily staffed by older, more experienced personnel, though not entirely (he would put the Marines in SysAdmin as the " Mini-me Leviathan"). The sys Admin force would work best as a Core-wide phenomenon.
   
   
6. By exporting security, the US and the rest of the Core benefit from increased trade, increased international investment, and other benefits.
   

Soon You Will Forget What It Was Like to Forget

Four years ago I wrote that in my lifetime we would see the advent of a small electronic device which would allow users to record every second of their lives in audio and video and import this data into a computer, where it would be archiveable and searchable.

Turns out it's already begun. A Microsoft researcher has started what he calls "lifelogging," by wearing two cameras every waking moment and recording his entire life. Thanks to advancements in camera technology and the fact that data storage has grown at an even faster rate than Moore's Law, this has become possible very quickly.

I have the same questions now I had in 2005. What will the world be like with these devices? The implications are enormous, and they go far beyond internet pop-culture phenomena such as lifecasting. Soon you and I will be able to instantly recall a video of every experience we've ever had. We'll be able to pull data such as how many times we've said the words "I love you" in our lifetimes, how much time we spent watching TV, how many calories we ate, how many books we read and what was in them. We will be able to recall exactly what we said in every conversation we've ever had, and precisely what was said to us. Nothing that happens to us will be forgotten, and maintaining personal control of this information will become the privacy war to end all wars. There will be those who are completely disgusted by the narcissism of it all and others who are so addicted they become dependent on the technology to remember things for them.

It may sound like I'm describing something out of a sci-fi film, but all this is possible with technology we have right now, today. Strap in, folks. We're on our way.

Image: FLEECIRCUS

How to Rediscover the Joy of Facebook

I've decided to start a new post category called "Tips" for sharing helpful bits of info I've collected, mostly about using the web. Enjoy!

Last year I nearly deleted my Facebook account, primarily because it had grown so cluttered with updates and requests from people I barely knew. As I recently mentioned in regards to Twitter, the signal-to-noise ratio had become unbearable.

As a last ditch effort, I decided to use Facebook's friends list feature to create a private list of my closest friends. It took forever to wade through all my Facebook friends and pick the 25 or so people I know the best, but the payoff was huge. Now when I load up my Facebook homepage, I only see updates from people who are close to me. As a result, Facebook has once again become a source of entertainment, community, and fun in my life, instead of a chore.

Of course I could have unfriended everyone but my closest friends, but this surely would resulted in hurt feelings. Because Facebook friends lists are private, I can avoid that. I also could have used Facebook's "hide" button in my news feed, but you are limited to hiding 200 people with this feature and it would have taken forever to hide everyone.

I highly recommend you try out a "close friends" list. Here are some good instructions on how to do it. Some extra tips I would add:

1. You can set the "friends" box on your profile page to only include people from one of your friends lists. Just click on the little pencil in the top-right corner of the box. This serves as a neat way to make a "top friends" box, like MySpace's old "Top 8."

2. On your Facebook homepage, after you click "more" on the left menu, you can drag your friends list to the top of the menu. If you do this, your friends list will come up by default on your homepage, saving you a click!

3. You can set privacy settings based on your friends lists. So if you'd like, you can give your closest friends access to info that the rest of your Facebook friends can't view.

Image: eston

The Daily Show on CNN: "Nobody Leaves More Things There"

Exhibit A for why Jon Stewart is the best damn newsman of my generation:

The Daily Show: CNN Leaves It There

Quotes: Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

I read Chesterton's Orthodoxy last year as I've been wanting to do for a long time. I was a bit ambivalent about the book; I would definitely recommend that every Christian it, but on the other hand I had some real struggles with some of Chesterton's arguments for mysticism over reason. My notes in the margins range from excited praise to steadfast disagreement. Nevertheless, Chesterton cannot be denied as a stalwart fountain of wisdom with a style and humor all his own. As is my custom, I've selected a few of my favorite quotes to post here. Quite a few, actually. So many that you would probably be better off just reading the book. But let's be honest, that's my custom too.

The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of today discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom.

Cowper [...] was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

When materialism leads me to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force.

The man who cannot believe his sense, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by an error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of Heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of earth.

The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are walking alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine reason. [..] For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern skeptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance.

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped.

Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist.

[The skeptic] will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is a waste of time.

They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labeled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by his insane magnificence and his insane meekness. They have parted his garments among them, and for his vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout.

It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.

It seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited.

Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman.

So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.

Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

Morality did not begin by one man staying to another, "I will not hit you if you do not hit me"; there is no trace of such a transaction. There is a trace of both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holy place." They gained their morality by guarding their religion.

Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform. [...] The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves, is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason.

The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.

That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.

All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.

In so far as I am a Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a Man I am the chief of sinners.

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

The main point of Christianity was this: That Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone, you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change.

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.

Seriousness is not a virtue.

It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laugher is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by force of gravity.

The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.

There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

In actual modern Europe a freethinker does not mean a man who thinks for himself. It means a man who, having thought for himself, has come to one particular class of conclusions, the material origin of phenomena, the impossibility of miracles, the improbability of personal immortality and so on.

So the truth is that the difficulty of all creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught.

God himself is a society.

Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they might fight the Church.

We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal.

Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are walls of a playground.

Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while the believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some other dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.

If I say, "Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious"; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in miracles.

For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling mediums or trick miracles. That is not an argument at all, good or bad. A false ghost disproves the reality of ghost exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England--if anything, it proves its existence.

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.

There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

*I put my absolute favorites in bold.

His Heart Was Stronger Than a Heavy Metal Bullet

My grandfather, John Paul Scott, died ten years ago this coming June. He was a World War II veteran who marched under Patton, though he rarely spoke about it. He was an life insurance salesman who dropped out of college when his father died to help provide for his family. He was a man of faith and conviction.

He had a lot of joy. He laughed loudly. He enjoyed being alone fishing or in his garden or feeding his chickens, but get him riled up about politics and he could talk your ear off. He was passionate. Sometimes, when I'm so excited or so mad I could spit about some political issue, I wonder if I'm channeling Paul Scott. I guess there's no question I am.

He loved music. He sang and played the trumpet during the war. When my dad was going through my grandfather's belongings after the funeral, he found a 78 rpm record with two songs my grandfather had recorded. I thought I'd share them here.

Paul Scott - "Stardust"


Paul Scott - "There Will Never Be Another You"


(By the way, if anyone out there has the ability to clean these recordings up, that would be just awesome.)

There is a song I've been listening to for years now which always reminds me of my grandfather. It's about a good man who has died. It may be that the song isn't written about any man in particular, but is just a bunch of cliches strung together; the rock 'n roll style isn't exactly what you'd expect from a requiem. But I can't help it that every line reminds me of him. Here is the song, with the lyrics to follow.

M. Ward - "Requiem"

Well he stormed with his feet
And he clapped with his hands
He summoned all of his joy when he laughed
It suffered all of his joy when he cried
And sometimes when he got into talking
Man he could rattle all day long
He was a good man and now he's gone

Well in war he was a tiger
When it was over like a dove
He summoned all of his strength in the climb
It suffered all of his strength in the fall
And sometimes when he got into fighting
Man he could fight with you all day long
He was a good man and now he's gone

He put his trust in a higher power
He held his power like a holy grail
He summoned all of his faith in the lifting
It suffered all of his faith in the fail
His heart was stronger than a heavy metal bullet
And that's why I dedicate this song
He was a good man and now he's gone

Community Church and the Dunbar Number

I have had an idea rolling around in my head for probably five years now. It has roots in my experience with church, in my journey from an Atlantan mega-church (5,000 members) to a college-town community church (200 "regular attenders").

God changed me through both of these churches, but after several years in the community church I was struck by how deeply I believed that small community is the best expression of the Gospel; the most authentic and effective way to change hearts and provide a context for us to know, understand, and love one another; the most accurate reflection of our triune God, the methods by which Jesus led his ministry, and the way Paul and Peter constructed the early church.

I slowly reached the conclusion that maybe it is good for communities to be small. Maybe the best way for a church to serve its members, its community, and its God is to split when it gets too big.

I was very surprised last year when I found this idea staring me in the face in an unexpected place -- Malcolm Gladwell's famous, perspective-bending book, The Tipping Point. In chapter five, Gladwell explains how our minds and bodies are wired for small amounts of information. On average we can remember six or seven different categories before we start making mistakes (if telephone numbers were one digit longer, the number of mis-dialed numbers would go up exponentially). We each know about twelve people whose death would devastate us. And we each have the ability to maintain a genuine social relationship with a maximum of about 150 people.

That last one is called the Dunbar number, after British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. From the book:

"The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals whith whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they related to us." [Robin Dunbar]

Wouldn't you know it, the Dunbar number is everywhere. Of the 21 different hunter-gatherer societies we have historical evidence of, the average number of villagers was 150. A religious group called the Hutterites (from the same tradition as the Amish and Mennonites) had a policy of splitting when their colony approached 150 members. The basic unit of military organization, the company, has roughly 150 soldiers. The company Gortex has built a very successful organizational structure which splits into new divisions to keep workers in groups of 150 people -- and do away with traditional management. John Wesley built one of the largest Christian denominations in history, Methodism, by creating small, independent communities. The average Facebook user has 150 friends (that one's not from the book, it's from the Economist).

After reading all this, my mind was completely blown when I reached the following money-quote:

If we want groups to serve as incubators for contagious messages, then, [...] we have to keep groups below the 150 Tipping Point. Above that point, there begin to be structural impediments to the ability of the people to agree and act with one voice. If we want to, say, develop schools in disadvantaged communities that can successfully counteract the poisonous atmosphere of their surrounding neighborhoods, this tells us that we're probably better off building lots of little schools than one or two big ones. The Rule of 150 says that congregants of a rapidly expanding church, or the members of a social club, or anyone in a group activity banking on the epidemic spread of shared ideals needs to be particularly cognizant of the perils of bigness. Crossing the 150 line is a small change that can make a big difference.

There you have it. There seems to be great support in social science for keeping communities small. I don't want to go overboard applying pop-psychology to ideas of faith, but what is the Gospel if not a "contagious message," and what is the church if not an "incubator" for it?

Combining Gladwell's ideas with my own experience I've become pretty convinced; big churches need to split.

I'm not going to close without admitting that there are a lot of questions that come with this notion. What about the benefits of large churches, like missional evangelism or large-scale involvement in a city or other large community? What implications do small vs. big have for membership, authority, and accountability? If 150 is the maximum amount of total relationships we can handle, shouldn't churches be even smaller? That's just the beginning.  I may tackle these questions in later posts. My goal here was just to start the conversation.

Image: Crossway.org

Quotes: Judgement, Doubts, and the District

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment." Barry LePatner

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties." Sir Francis Bacon

"After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood." Fred Thompson

The Future Has No Moving Parts

That's the title of this article by one of my favorite tech writers, Mike Elgan. I think he's right. Here is a quick summary of the article:

In the near future...

Solid-state drives (storage on chips) will replace hard drives (storage spinning disks).

Flash drives and online data transmission/storage will replace CD-ROMS and all other types of removable disks.

Touch screens and sensors will replace buttons and keyboards (I think this is the boldest prediction -- but it's completely possible).

Image: saxcubano

Here is a Rocket Ship Designed by Denis Cox

Every once in a while I happen upon something which reminds of how I got to be an electrical engineer. Something that reminds me of the excitement, mystery, creativity, adventure, and discovery which I saw in engineering as a kid. Sometimes it's really hard to explain how something like electrical engineering could contain any of these things.

It all came flooding back to me for a brief moment yesterday when I saw this:

From Letters of Note

"You put in other details." That's my favorite.

The National Archives Social Experiment

Living in DC, Erin and I have twice visited the National Archives, home of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and an under-appreciated original copy of the Magna Carta.

The first time we went it was very crowded. The documents are located in a large atrium, and visitors line up in roped off rows in front of its entrance. Every few minutes, a security guard lets a group of about thirty people into the atrium.

The guard explains very clearly before letting each group go that there are no lines in the atrium. He encourages everyone to take in the documents and then allow others to have a look. He asks everyone to be patient and polite.

This is my kind of system, because it relies on people's better instincts rather than their baser ones. One of the things that separates us humans from cattle or sheep is we don't have to be corralled into rows to ensure we have equal access to something. We are capable of sharing.

But the interesting thing is this: it doesn't work. People form a line anyway, which snakes in front of all the documents. Given the choice between being courteous or waiting in line, people choose waiting in line. When I saw this I couldn't believe it, and naturally rebelled. I walked straight up to the documents and waited for a space to open up. And wouldn't you believe it, people got angry. They grumbled, shot me mean looks, and let me know where the end of the line was.

Why are we like this? Has "waiting your turn" become an instinctual social habit? Can we just not bear the disorganization and lack of hierarchy in a world without lines? Do we dislike interaction, cooperation, and mutuality? Do we prefer to wait in line so we have a guaranteed "right" to a turn?

These questions are asked and the experiment continues every day at 700 Pennsylvania Ave. You're welcome to stay at our place if you'd like to come take a look. Admission is free.

Image: yo_unroe

Real-Time vs. Relevance: The Future of the World and the Web

By the end of this year, half of the people on earth will have a cell phone. I have already stated on this blog that I believe personal mobile broadcasting (everyday people sharing information from their cell phones) will change the world.

How it will change the world is an intriguing question. The internet has been abuzz lately with talk of the "real-time web." You may think the web is a really fast-paced place, and of course it is. But it's not instant. In the past news has taken a while to get around the internet. Many services (like Google search) receive information by regularly checking websites for updates, and the time between checks keeps information from being immediately available.

This is changing. Social services like Twitter, Facebook, and others operate in real-time. When something happens, you can update these online apps immediately with your cell phone. Increasingly this instant information is becoming searchable. I have often used Twitter's search function to find up-to-the-second information. For instance, when Gmail went down a few weeks ago, I wanted to know if it was just me or if everyone was experiencing an outage. It takes quite a while for bloggers to write about a topic like this and for Google to index their blogs and report this information in its search results. Not so for Twitter search. One quick "gmail down" query and I knew it was a huge problem. I could see the hundreds of new "tweets" arriving on the issue every minute.

What concerns me about the real-time web is that perhaps we are focusing on a small problem (speed) while ignoring a bigger one: relevance. Here is a quote from blogger Nik Fletcher:

...In an age where we're seemingly drawn to 'first' instead of 'better' with the news, I can't help but feel we ought to be looking at relevancy, not real-time.

I agree. What about signal-to-noise ratio? How do we ensure that the onslaught of real-time information is actually information we want? How do we keep from just creating a newer, dumber form of television?

This proved to be a big problem this summer for the famous Iranian protesters who used Twitter to tell the world the injustices taking place in their country. It turns out, according to this story in Businessweek, that very few Iranians actually twittered about the protests. The vast majority of the tweets came from people outside the country tweeting and re-tweeting about the situation. Actual organization of and information about the protests spread in traditional ways -- word of mouth, over the phone, knocking on doors, and traditional journalism.

This is partly because governments have the power to shutdown internet forums like Twitter as they have done in Iran and China -- or use them for their own purposes. I recently watched this fascinating TED talk by Evgeny Morozov about the flawed assumption that technology inherently gives way to democracy, liberty, and freedom from oppression. Morozov makes some great points about how dictatorships are able to use social media to their own ends. Check it out if you're interested:

Evgeny Morozov: How the Net aids dictatorships

This is not to say I think real-time, personal, mobile broadcasting is doomed. Quite the contrary, I think there is great evidence that it will bring about positive change. But I think we need to remember relevance. How can we ensure that information coming along real-time channels is authentic? Who created it? Where were they located? What is its source? Most importantly, is it information we want? Is it valuable?

Please note that Twitter is currently answering these questions, well, poorly. A recent report labeled 40% of tweets "pointless babble." Most of its users have never tweeted and don't follow anyone. Companies like Philtro are already devising ways to tune down the noise in Twitter.

This is only the beginning of mobile broadcasting, but as we move forward I think we need to keep our eyes open for ideas that concentrate on providing relevant as well as real-time information, so we may arrive in a future with less noise and more insight. I'll leave you with another TED talk which highlights a mobile-web-based, crowdsource system that was able to amass helpful, useful information. Blogger Erik Hersman has created a platform called Ushahidi which allowed Kenyans to report and track violence during the 2008 elections. He believes this technology saved lives, and will continue to do so as it evolves.

Erik Hersman on reporting crisis via texting