Month: March 2007

Definition

Boredom: when you have plenty of things to do, but you don’t want to do *any* of them.

I actually have two different levels of boredom. The first one happens when I run out of distractions. Sometimes those distractions are legitimate things that interrupt me, and I resent them. Most of the time they are the things that I set up to keep me from doing **work**.

Work is defined as any large project wherein there is a significant time lag between beginning and when I see any kind of measurable result. Reading is not work. Blogging is not work. Writing a book report is work.

The first level of boredom is relatively easy to deal with. I put myself in a place where creating new distractions is actually… work. Eventually, I run out of distractions and begin showing actual productivity. The second level of boredom is much more dangerous: At some point, particularly when I’m working on a large project when I begin to feel slightly discouraged because of the time lag between putting effort in and seeing measurable results. The typical response to this is to revert for a “short” period of time to doing something where I can get lots of progress with little work. Reading (even assigned reading) generally has this effect. So do video games. Sometimes blogging has that effect (thus), though not if I have something particularly complicated I’m trying to pound out. But when I’ve already removed most of my distractions, I can hit a spot when I have nothing to do but… work. And when every single project I’m working on is in the exact same slump… that’s boredom.

Of course, usually the biggest time for these kinds of slumps is right before a deadline. And next week is midterms.

I Don’t Wanna!

I hate writing book reports. I don’t do book reviews on my blog, and I don’t read the blogs others who do. Yet for my class this semester on the theology of the Pentateuch (which in itself has been pretty good), fully ten percent of my grade comes, not from merely reading the material, but from *writing book reports* on what I’ve read.

I’ve really enjoyed my time at seminary. I really have. It’s been a challenge, and I say that in a positive light. But one thing that rankles me, and other students who have come from other academic backgrounds, is the emphasis on fulfilling the reading requirements. I understand that the reading is an integral part of the education experience. As I’ve sort of hinted at before, I’d rather do the reading than show up for class. But making the reading part of your grade? This doesn’t even resemble what I came here for.

I have a complete outline I’m supposed to follow: 1) Summarize the book. 2) Discuss the high points of the book. Insights, strong arguments. 3) Discuss the weaknesses of the book. On points 2 and 3, I’m supposed to cite page numbers. Which is to say, while I was busy, you know, reading the text, I was supposed to have been keeping a little notebook by my side in which I kept a diary of my experience in the reading. You may recognize this as a bad idea. When I write essays, I don’t take notes, and only look up my quotes after the fact.

But this assignment falls to a new nadir in removing all my former joys in higher education: My reading is on a time schedule. This is a problem. I hold to reading schedules like a BMX bike holds to railroad tracks. But my professor has given me a list of which book reports are due – half of them on the date of our mid-term. Which is to say, Monday.

And as I said, I don’t wanna!

(This has been service reminder from the whining broadcast system. We now return to your regularly scheduled blogging.)

Copying is Stealing?

Mark Loughridge is accusing me of mendacity: He says that copyright infringement is stealing. I say I don’t get it. He says I get it just fine and I’m just playing dumb.

I suppose he’s right. I do comprehend the argument: infringement=stealing. I just think it’s a stupid, fallacious, incoherent argument, which actually undermines any desire that responsible and upright Christians might otherwise have to obey the law.

There are two very good reasons to avoid copyright infringement:

  • First of all, it’s illegal. There is in fact a law against it. It’s a very bad law, stupid and shortsighted, having the effect of crippling the very people it’s designed to protect. But it’s a law, and Christians have a responsibility to obey the law. Continue reading “Copying is Stealing?”

Kohl’s Here I Come.

After this Wednesday evening, I will be officially employed at Kohl’s to fill in the rest of my hours for the week. I don’t know what my hours will be yet, but they already know that I have a teaching position in the morning and can’t come in until 11am on weekdays. I’ll be doing cashier work. Please pray that I get enough hours to offset our costs and to save up a bit for the move back to NC.

In other news, Tom and Christy had a healthy little girl yesterday. Kyle deleted the message that he had on his phone from Tom, but I believe that they had a 7lb little girl that they’ve named Jocelyn (not sure about that spelling). So they have a beautiful little Sabbath Child to bring them lots of joy and little sleep.

Peace and Blessings to you all.

Written vs. Oral Communication: an application

As I was saying last week, before I was so rudely interrupted by the weekend, I have my own personal little conflict between talking and writing. Talk is easier, but writing is more cogent, more permanent. I have lots of great ideas all the time, nice little five-minute blasts of controversy. When my life is peaceful, these things show up here, in print. But when things are all crazy, like they’ve been for the last six months (or so), writing things down just takes too much effort. I keep having great ideas, but you never hear about them. My poor wife hears them – over and over and over again – because seeing that I can’t expurgate them by writing, I keep talking until I’m done thinking about them.

For instance, last semester, I had a spiritual encounter that was a sort of culmination of a period of thought and study on the nature and purpose of the church. This was a Big Encounter, something on the level of the call I had to go to seminary. Continue reading “Written vs. Oral Communication: an application”

Bruce Metzger

Bruce Metzger, a prominent professor of Biblical Criticism at Princeton, died last week. I was generally familiar with him, but I haven’t read a lot of his work. However, this quote was particularly pleasing:

On another occasion, one of our more charismatic ‘scholars’ took issue with one of Dr. Metzger’s interpretations of several verses in the book of Revelation. She proceeded to share the interpretation she had received by ‘the gift of the Holy Spirit’ while she was praying over that Scripture the night before. Some students began to giggle. But Dr. Metzger thanked the young woman for sharing her interpretation and noted that he placed great faith in the ability of the Holy Spirit to assist us whenever we interpreted Scripture. He stated further that he, himself, never approached the study of the Bible in any language apart from prayer and the invocation of the Spirit. And then class continued.

In which I explain another reason why I go by the handle “Puretext”

To the best of my knowledge, there are two ways of communicating abstract ideas – written and oral. There’s a broad variety of options for communicating more concrete ideas (spanking comes to mind) but for abstract concepts, you really need words, and for transacting words, you have two options.

What’s interesting for me is the comparative advantage of the two. I like to focus on speed: As a communicator, the faster I can get the words out, the easier it is for me to do my job. So, given the option of speaking or writing, I should prefer speaking. It’s a rare man who can write nearly as fast as he can speak, and I am not him. I understand that, if you write shorthand, it is possible to write as fast as a person speaks, but then no on can read it, so it’s generally a waste.

Listening generally happens at the exact same rate as speaking. (How’s that for stating the obvious?) In fact, it’s kind of silly to talk about listening faster than the speaker talks. How would that be possible? Listening to multiple streams at once? I don’t think so! Talk about serious data corruption. It is possible to talk faster than a person can listen, which is why, when in a public speaking environment, it’s recommended to speak relatively slowly. You have to lower your rate of communication to the lowest common denominator – how fast can the slowest person listen? And unless you’re naturally a very slow speaker, this can be very frustrating, since one of the primary reasons for communicating orally in the first place is the ease that comes from being able to send words as close as possible to the rate at which you think them.

Oral communication, then, is most perfectly adapted to dialogue. Conversation is its great delight. Brainstorming with people who think alike – ah! Another pleasure! Monolithic lectures, on the other hand, can be a little bit frustrating. As long as you attend, you are a captive to the speaker’s best estimate of the lowest listening speed in the room. And no matter how fast it is, everyone can think many times faster than anyone ever speaks. So unless the topic is engrossing, the mind wanders.

Dialogue is the normal setting for communicating with words. Dialogue is natural; everything else becomes odder by degrees. From this perspective, single sided speeches are disconcerting and a little frustrating. But written communication – ! This is truly bizarre! Continue reading “In which I explain another reason why I go by the handle “Puretext””