Compendium of Links #42

I’m pretty well settled into my new house – have mowed the yard a couple of times and pulled a lot of weeds after the recent rainstorm – and now I’m just waiting to get the internet modem hooked up! In the meantime, I spend a lot of time at the library and actually get my browser cleared of the following tabs….

Top 10 reasons I’m actually a man – from a woman, of course. Hilarious.

*6.5 SMALL TALK. WHAT EVEN IS THAT. DON’T WE ALL ALREADY KNOW WHAT THE WEATHER IS LIKE (WE LITERALLY JUST WALKED IN OUT OF IT) & IF I REALLY WANTED TO KNOW WHAT BRAND OF MASCARA YOU WERE WEARING – IF, GOD FORBID, I COULD DISTINGUISH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MASCARA BRANDS – DON’T YOU THINK I WOULD ASK YOU. Somehow though, as much as women can generally small-talk me under the table and I abhor it (I tend to take it as a sign that you don’t actually want to know me), I have to believe that a skill that inane must be a societal construct and hardly something I can blame on any particular gender. However! We are talking about why my interests mandate my being a man and so therefore: NO SMALL TALK = INHERENTLY MALE.

Everyone’s favorite Avengers scene. With the hilarious addendum, and in comic form.

What if evangelicalism succumbed to celebrityism? Oh wait. It’s happening.

Proof that Doctor Who is based on actual events. In visual form, of course.

Joe Carter, a Christian writer whose blogging I’ve appreciated in the past, asks is the news making us dumb?

Most of us realize that the events of last week's news cycle—just like the previous 51 other news cycles this year—will probably not have a significant effect on how we live. Indeed, if we're being honest with ourselves, most of us would have to admit that what is sold as news—on newspaper pages, the Internet, or cable news programs—is rarely newsworthy at all.

It’s billed as “news” and its context’s importance reduced in order to sell, Carter argues. If the importance of the larger context were properly understood, he adds, then the daily news items wouldn’t be near so marketable. I counter that it’s precisely the daily news items that make up the larger context which is far more valuable – at least at the level of local news. The work necessary to understand the larger context and its importance is precisely keeping up with the news.

Another Christian blog addresses the introverted evangelist.

Why are so many adults adopted in Japan? It’s part culture, part economics.

Although Japan’s post-war code no longer upholds primogeniture, business families find the habit hard to kick. The country's declining birth rate has further limited the likelihood of a male heir for many of them, who often select sons from among their most promising top managers. Toyota and Suzuki, both carmakers, Canon, an electronics firm, and Kajima, a construction company, have all adopted sons to manage them. Incentives are high for prospective adoptees, too. Their parents sometimes receive gifts of many million yen. To be selected as a mukoyoshi is to be awarded a high executive honour. This prompts fierce competition among managers, which means that the business has access to as good a talent pool as non-family companies.

And the Evangelical Outpost echoes my own thoughts on why writing by hand is worth it. I’d love to have an easily searchable journal, sure, but I can’t imagine switching to journaling on computer… It’s so not the same. You don’t have the drawings and the changes in handwriting to observe as you peruse old journals!

What if we dressed classical sculptures in hipster clothes? This! (via a FB group)

No video today. Just trying to clear out my browser.

Life on my own #41: Mowing the lawn

I’ve always wondered who invented the lawn. Regular wide-open areas are covered in woods and underbrush or two-foot-tall prairie grass – or they were (now it’s mainly suburbs).

Then in front of houses, you have two choices: garden or lawn.

I’ve often been in favor of having a massive garden on a city lot (my miniscule green thumb notwithstanding). At least they have pretty flowers. A lawn is just a boring unbroken swath of green.

Yet here I am, the new homeowner with a medium-small city lot and the lawn that goes with it. It even has a devil’s strip.

So I bought a lawnmower. I had thought about getting a gas mower – no cord required (and I get enough of cords vacuuming). There isn’t anywhere to plug an electric mower in on two to three sides of the house, anyway. On the other hand, I’ve rarely had more than a 50% success rate getting my dad’s gas push mower started. Mind you, I’m not talking about starting it on the first try. I’m saying at all. (I usually coaxed my brother into coming out to start it for me.)

And then my cousin talked me into a reel mower (otherwise known as, mower-whose-only-power-is-you-pushing). I had to use a reel mower at least two summers back home, somewhere there in high school/college. I did not like the reel mower. In fact, I hated it. It usually left the grass a bit scraggly , and I had to take extra passes over what I’d already mowed because the grass was so long. (Yes, we kids tended to procrastinate on the mowing.) And that’s not even considering the roughly one-inch width of each pass… Well, anyway, it was so narrow I had to make about twice as many passes with it as with the old gas mower

Not that the gas mower would start. I’m talking about a best-of-all-worlds situation here.

But, my cousin said, the blades on a reel mower are great if they’re sharp! They cut the grass so cleanly! You don’t have to power it with gas or anything and there’s no motor to fiddle with!

So I reconsidered, noted that my lawn is significantly smaller than my folks’, considered the chances that I’d ever get a gas mower started, and decided to give a reel mower another shot.

This is where online shopping websites come in handy. I had no intention of ordering a mower online – I had waited too long to buy one already – but at least I could find out which mowers were rated more highly by both amateurs and professionals.

So I settled on a reel mower available at a local store and bought it Monday. A 20-inch one – just as wide as the gas push mowers I’d originally thought of getting. And far better than a 16-inch average reel mower.

After putting the handle together (piece of cake), I tackled the back yard. The grass was pretty high back there so I had to make a couple of passes in several spots… make that more than half the yard… to get the grass cut. But it did get cut.

I noticed my forehead getting really hot when I was about halfway done with the front yard. And then I realized I’d imbibed exactly 0 cups of water so far that day. That’s when I beelined it to the kitchen for lots of water and a banana.

Properly refreshed, I finished the last of the lawn and headed inside. And it really did look mowed when I checked it through the kitchen window (while drinking yet another glass of water).

Same title, new duties

A few weeks ago my work schedule changed a bit. I now work an early second-shift type schedule, much like my sister the nurse does, actually, but Tuesday through Saturday as always.

The change came about because one position was cut from the newsroom. Now, there’s just the managing editor and me as editors for the six-day-a-week paper, so we’ve split the duties formerly assumed by the associate editor. As a consequence, I’m the one coming in late and staying late to edit copy (stories and stuff) and “put the paper to bed,” as we say. (That just means I read through everything that goes in the paper, tell the designers what to put on which pages, then read through it all again once they design the pages and make more corrections.) I still do reporting as much as I can, which feels like very little.

It’s a rather solitary job, far more than reporting has been, anyway. Most of the newspaper staff leaves at 5 p.m. sharp and the reporters, who start a bit later because of the news cycle, are usually out by 6 or 7 p.m. Then it’s just me and maybe a sports guy or two, off in their own little world about a dozen feet from my desk.

Unsurprisingly, the solitude doesn’t bother me. I actually save most of my writing for those part-hours between sending copy and receiving printouts of the designed pages to proofread. No distractions, no interruptions. It’s heavenly.

It also leaves the sunshiny mornings for my own amusement… bike rides, curling up with a book, having friends over for brunch, going on a walk, taking care of errands, all that great stuff. All the things that people normally picture doing in evenings aren’t my type of thing, anyway – definitely not into the bar scene – so this suits me well.

What I read: “Quiet Strength” by Susan Cain

A while ago I got the writing bug and had all sorts of grand plans for reinventing this blog. One of them was to write more about the books I read. The writing bug has since been funneled into my work, but I’m still reading – and I still like the idea.

Late last week, I finished the book Quiet Strength by Susan Cain, a self-identified introvert who began her career as a lawyer and has since switched to leadership consulting. The book’s subtitled “The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking,” a fitting summary of the book’s contents.

I appreciated Cain’s recognition of how introversion’s unique characteristics are intrinsically worth exercising – such as introverted people’s tendency to resist getting caught up in positive emotion and hesitancy to go forward with a project without having gathered and processed all the relevant information. One chapter, “Why did Wall Street crash and Warren Buffet prosper?,” goes into that aspect in detail. Overall the book’s written with businesspeople in mind – ones who wear suits and ties, endure meetings, attend conferences, make presentations, all that jazz. I’m not one of them, but there’s still need for wise leadership where I work and go to church and volunteer. I figure I can glean from this kind of book some insights  to apply in non- or semi-business situations.

Another thing I liked about the book was that she didn’t go dismissing the real benefits of extraversion while expounding on the benefits of introversion. The balance was great – and is often lacking in popular literature (think books and websites), which always bugged me. I’m introverted (I’m pretty certain!) but I still think extraverted people are awesome and have strengths of their own. She talked about the ways extraverted people can and sometimes should imitate introverted people more, but she also has a chapter on helping introverts like me determine when and to what extent we should consider acting more extraverted. (FWIW, it basically boils down to: When it’s in pursuit of a deeply valued end and it doesn’t tax you too much, make you hate the thing toward which you’re working.)

All in all, a book I’d recommend, but not one I’m going to buy, I suppose. Then again, there are very few books I do buy. (And most of them are by C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, A.W. Tozer or G.K. Chesterton. I seem to have an inexplicable affection for initials.)

I’m buying a house.

There, I updated my blog.

 

 

 

 

…..OK, so I’ll do a little more than that. (As my editor constantly quips – don’t say I never gave you anything!)

It’s true, I’m buying a house. God pretty much dropped this wonderful little two-bedroom house into my lap. I saw it before it went on the market and the owners were thrilled to get the selling part out of the way before they’d even started looking for their next house. I’ll be sure to post a couple pictures of the inside once I get moved in later this summer!

Sometimes, when it hits me again that I’M BUYING A HOUSE, I can’t help smiling and jumping for joy. Or at least bouncing up and down in my seat.

Also, I’m now more an editor than a reporter at the paper I work at (though I still do a fair bit of reporting). The newsroom staff lost one position and the managing editor and I ended up having to split the duties of the associate editor, whose position is now lost to oblivion. (Story of the industry.) With that change comes a bit of a schedule change – I now work mostly second shift hours. Kinda-sorta. It’s always been hard to explain my schedule, and while this makes it slightly easier it’s still complicated!

I have been matched with a Little in the local Big Brothers/Big Sisters program and am enjoying getting to know her through games, time at the park, other things 8-year-olds enjoy doing.

I bought a kayak a couple of weeks ago and am itching to make someone go kayaking with me SOON!

And the weather improved greatly over the past couple of weeks (aside from that flood-inducing spring storm…) so I’ve been able to take my bike out on a few rides.

All of that pretty much sums up why I’ve not updated my blog in about a month. In fact, I didn’t realize it had been so long until an old friend emailed me Sunday night begging for an update.

So, this post is dedicated to Carol. Don’t say I never gave you anything!

Compendium of Links #41

I’M HOME!!!

By that, I mean I’m visiting my folks, and won’t be online much, I suspect. However, my sister right now is in the middle of her morning routine and nobody else is awake or home, so I shall share a few links!

Seven skills to develop in your twenties – like, you know, a lengthened attention span, logical thinking and budgeting. (Via Boundless.)

What to do about teens dropping out of church after high school graduation? Well, find out why they’re dropping out, or revisit your assumption that they’re dropping out in such high numbers at all. If you read one article, please read the other, too. (First link via Facebook friends; second, via Gene Veith.)

The decline of marriage and the rise of unwed mothers: An economics-based answer to why the culture is changing, courtesy of the writers at The Atlantic Wire. Curious, isn’t it?

Think of marriage like any other contract or investment. It's most likely to happen when the gains are big. So we should expect marriages among low-income Americans to decline if women perceive declining gains from hitching themselves to the men around them.

Make a silver ring for 25 cents!

The most disobeyed commandment in the church – it’s the fifth, and it has more to do with the President than with your mom in this respect.

And for fans of the Cup Song (check it out on YouTube first if you’re not familiar with it already), I present: A cover.

:)

Postman on reading (with annotations)

I’m re-reading Neil Postman’s classic jeremiad Amusing Ourselves to Death, subtitled Print discourse in the age of show business, in which this fantastic writer and philosopher explains why he thinks television, as an entertainment-oriented medium, is unfit for conveying serious thought (like political discourse, for example). In the second chapter he gets into how different cultures’ concepts of truth are influenced by the media that predominates, and through the course of the exploration he makes the following observations on what really is required of a reader:

You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time. [RS: Of which I’m incapable. Thus fidgeting.] If you cannot do this (with this or any other book), our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined [i.e. ADHD]; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency. The printing press makes rather stringent demands on our bodies as well as our minds. Controlling your body is, however, only a minimal requirement. You must also have learned to pay no attention to the shapes of the letters on the page. [Typesetting all mine.] You must see through them, so to speak, so that you can go directly to the meanings of the words they form. If you are preoccupied with the shapes of the letters, you will be an intolerably inefficient reader, likely to be thought stupid. If you have learned how to get to meanings without aesthetic distraction, you are required to assume an attitude of detachment and objectivity. [Here we get into reading comprehension and higher-order thinking skills, some of which high-schoolers are rarely well-versed in.] This includes your bringing to the task what Bertrand Russell called an “immunity to eloquence,” meaning that you are able to distinguish between the sensuous pleasure, or charm, or ingratiating tone (if such there be) of the words, and the logic of their argument. But at the same time, you must be able to tell from the tone of the language what is the author’s attitude toward the subject and toward the reader. You must, in other words, know the difference between a joke and an argument. [Really?] And in judging the quality of an argument, you must be able to do several things at once, including delaying a verdict until the entire argument is finished, holding in mind questions until you have determined where, when or if the text answers them, and bringing to bear on the text all of your relevant experience as a counterargument to what is being proposed. [See also: How to Read a Book.] You must also be able to withhold those parts of your knowledge and experience which, in fact, do not have a bearing on the argument. And in preparing yourself to do all of this, you must have divested yourself of the belief that words are magical and, above all, have learned to negotiate the world of abstractions, for there are very few phrases and sentences in this book that require you to call forth concrete images. In a print-culture, we are apt to say of people who are not intelligent that we must “draw them pictures” so that they may understand. Intelligence implies that one can dwell comfortably without pictures, in a field of concepts and generalizations.

This kind of capable, engaged reading is what’s going to be expected of elementary-school students under the Common Core standards, methinks – or something quite similar. I sincerely wonder whether I read this way before my mid-teens.

What I learned #7: About chuckholes

I opened my lovely newspaper Friday morning and was immediately perplexed by the op-ed page. On it, an editorial cartoon poked fun at all the egregious potholes drivers get slammed by on Indiana roads.

The cartoon pictured a little fairy tossing potholes onto the roads in front of a driver. The fairy was named – ready?

The “chuckhole” fairy.

I asked around at work for someone who’s grown up in Indiana and upon finding one such coworker, asked her if chuckhole was a normal word for potholes. She looked at me a little funny and said yeah.

I’ve since learned, via Facebook, that the term is strange to some others living around here, yet recognized by a smattering of Ohio friends, too.

My own mother said she recognized the term from her hometown.

Am I the only one left that didn’t know what a chuckhole was?

(And a note: I keep posting these “What I learned” pieces late, so I snipped off the “today” in the series title. Get over it. )

Snowed in

I'm a good driver. Snow doesn't scare me.

Snow that drifts across the road in depths higher than the front grill of my car, however, causes me to think twice about driving.

I met my cousins and some friends for lunch today after church, then headed over to their place after a couple hours of shopping (during which I found four fun belts at Goodwill, yippee!). A few episodes of Doctor Who and Sherlock later--not to mention a lot of browsing Pinterest for pictures of Michelle Obama's and Kate Middleton's styles--my cousin and I decided it was time for me to head home.

So it was 11 p.m. or so and I stepped outside--still wearing my church shoes (a cute pair of heels)--into several inches of snow.

There was definitely no snow on the ground when we came back from town around 5 p.m.

It can't be that bad, I thought, so I backed my car into a slightly shallower portion of snow so I could walk around the car, brushing the snow off the windshield and headlights without getting (too) much snow into my shoes.

I still ended up with wet socks. And that wasn't the worst.

Creeping down the road at 25 mph, I discovered three circumstances I couldn't tell from the driveway:

1. The roads aren't plowed. Not in the least.
2. The snow is deep. I can't see the ditches and I'm not entirely sure where the cornfields start. (It's Indiana, remember. 98% of the state is cornfields. Or something like that.)
3. The snow is still falling. Visibility is about six inches with the headlights on.

It took me several minutes to get to the first stop sign--the only place I was even remotely positive I could turn around and head back to my cousins' for the night.

Good thing they have extra toothbrushes.

I bought eight books this past weekend.

And here they are:

It was a mix of the library booksale and a Half Price Books store where I met an old college buddy; and it was a mix of books I’ve read and books I haven’t but am curious about. I spent about $16 all told, I think.

I just have to finish the books I’m currently reading now… but I do so want to start some of these today!

(I suppose I should also go through my existing shelves of books and find about eight other books to get rid of. Easier said than done.)

Things you find in a truck bed…

A friend came over to hang out over coffee this morning. (The joys of having Mondays off and friends still in college.) We decided to go out on a walk after finishing the coffee since this weekend is the first really decent weather we’ve had this year.

We started down the sidewalk and noticed that Upstairs Dweller’s truck had its lights on. (This is that ancient, two-tone Ford.) Upstairs Dweller was nowhere in sight, so we checked to see if we could turn the lights off ourselves (or he’d be stuck this afternoon with a dead battery).

As my friend leaned into the truck to check for the headlights switch, she noticed something odd laying in the truck bed and jumped back, hanging onto me for dear life:

A dead coyote.

At least we’re pretty sure that’s what it was.

Why in the world Upstairs Dweller has a dead coyote laying in the back of his truck…. I haven’t a clue.

Compendium of Links #40

Daylight Saving Time went into effect this morning. Thus, I overslept a bit (despite my alarm) and nearly missed praise band practice. I should go sleep soon. But I have several extra tabs open.

38 maps you never knew you needed – including how Google autocomplete describes all 50 U.S. states:

Yes, it’s hilarious. The rest of the maps are worthwhile too. Or, shall I say, entertaining. (Via the roomie.)

Speculative Faith gathers Christian sci-fi and fantasy writers together, supplying writing tips, thoughts and encouragement. (Via a Facebook group.)

Why Facebook might be losing teens. Apparently Tumblr is the next new thing. I so called it years ago. (Well, not the Tumblr thing, but the fact that Facebook’s monopoly wouldn’t last forever.) Via Challies:

Ultimately, the day of the overshare may have passed, and bragging online isn't as fun as it used to be. "I think that kids just don’t care anymore," Bois wrote. "They have gotten over the idea of knowing everybody’s life and everybody knowing their lives!"

The Atlantic (only my favorite magazine) says great teachers can’t save America’s schools – at least not until they’re freed from crippling curriculum standards. As a reporter who covers education, I must say I hear from lots of teachers and administrators who blame state and federal regulations/standards for restricting what they can do to make the classroom better. This article goes on to say that the Common Core standards are a step in the right direction, but I reserve my judgment.

A random preacher-blogger criticizes seven ways to do a bad word study, including the “Webster’s Dictionary” fallacy. (Link via Challies again.) It’s worth a read for the linguistic sticklers out there who rather enjoy their pastors’ Greek word explanations but want to make sure they’re being like the Bereans – checking the info out for themselves.

For your auditory pleasure: The IU orchestra performs Bohemian Rhapsody. (Link courtesy of an old college buddy.)

It’s like Fantasia meets Queen.

What I learned today #6: About space

If you ever watched The Magic School Bus when you were a kid, maybe you remember this bit about Arnold turning to ice:

Don’t worry, he thaws out.

I always kinda believed that that’s essentially what would happen to an astronaut if one really did remove the helmet out in space.

Apparently that’s not the case!

A nuclear physicist and wannabe-astronaut I know informed me today that somebody who takes his helmet off in space is probably going to survive for a minute or so (and would thus have enough time to get back into the safety of a ship – maybe).

No air, you say? People can hold their breath for at least a minute. Nothing about that changes by being out in space.

It’s cold, you say? Yes – around 3 degrees Kelvin apparently (almost as cold as it gets anywhere in the universe) – but it takes quite a lot of time to cool you down when there’s no air hitting you to transfer your body heat to. Not exactly a snap freeze.

No air pressure, you say? So you depressurize fast – on earth, it’s called the bends (like when scuba divers go too deep and come up too fast). It makes you pass out. But there are ways to survive, one of which involves spending two weeks in a pressure chamber that slowly decompresses you. (The physicist assures me they give you books and a little TV to pass the time.)

Who’da thunk?

Movie-fast February in hindsight

It’s March 4, and the last day I saw a movie was Feb. 1.

Not that I’ve noticed much.

The first week or so, I felt like watching a movie almost every night, and had to restrain myself. After that, I kind of forgot that I was purposely abstaining from movies.

I had books to read. (I’m currently working on two, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Martyn Lloyd-Jones and The Complete Father Brown collection of G.K. Chesterton short stories. I’m aiming to read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman as soon as I finish one of those two books.)

I had an apartment to clean. (It’s clean. Even most of the dishes are done. I vacuumed today, thinking the whole time about things that don’t like bowties.)

I had friends to hang out with. (At a friend’s inaugural jewelry party, at a living history fair, at church, at my cousins’ houses, and so on.)

I had a church missions conference to attend.

I had taxes to do. (Done, but not filed. Yet.)

I had a new phone to order, activate and play with.

I even had a Greek play to attend.

Now I’m just trying to decide whether I really want to start watching movies again. By myself, at least. I can see the value of watching movies with friend – it’s a bonding thing – but if I’m watching a movie by myself, in my apartment, it’s probably because I can’t think of anything better to do.

And that’s probably a fault of my own thinking rather than an actual dearth of better ways to fill my time.

Compendium of Links #39

The experiment of the movie-less month continues, and I’ve read no less than two collections of Agatha Christie short stories in the last couple of days. And started a Martyn Lloyd-Jones collection of sermons on the Sermon on the Mount (which I’m really enjoying). Yeah, I miss watching movies, and yeah, there are (many) times when I feel like all I want to do is sit down and unwind watching a fun little fictional story. But this is becoming a really great month.

For your entertainment this week….

How to find a modern-day Mr. Darcy. This article is completely serious. (via me ol' roomie) And on a related note, I present: Pride and Prejudice, The Game. Also found via the roomie.

You had one job. ONE JOB. (Via a Facebook friend.)

A writer for Speculative Faith penned a two-part series on the relationship between Amy and Rory in the splendid British sci-fi show Doctor Who. That pair is probably the best married couple depicted on modern screens, just FYI. (Via a Facebook DW fan club)

First Things had the best Pope joke I’ve seen.

Finally, we have some specifics on what Obama is proposing as immigration reform. (via Facebook, I think.)

According to the White House draft, people would need to pass a criminal background check, submit biometric information and pay fees to qualify for the new visa. If approved, they would be allowed to legally reside in the U.S. for four years, work and leave the country for short periods of time. After the four years, they could then reapply for an extension.

Illegal immigrants would be disqualified from the program if they were convicted of a crime that led to a prison term of at least one year, three or more different crimes that resulted in a total of 90 days in jail, or if they committed any offense abroad that "if committed in the United States would render the alien inadmissible or removable from the United States."

I might take up cross-stitch just so I can do this to my jeans:

And what would you like to watch for a video this week? Perhaps a tutorial on how to write a worship song?

Watch to the end. You will be rewarded.