Books

photo credit: Book Rowsby Jasoon

Thirty million book titles have been printed. Clearly the idea of being well read does not mean reading a substantial portion of those titles. At the rate of one book per week, a person with an 80 year "reading life" would read approximately 4,000 books. Even at one book per day, 80 years is only enough to read about .1% of those thirty million titles. Assuming each book is about an inch thick, 4,000 books would require more than 300 feet of shelf space. A modest size shopping mall bookstore has about 20,000 titles on hand. The book superstores have about five times that many.

Now that online bookstores exist, millions of titles may be available to anyone with an internet connection.

I'm not sure that the term "well read" has any useful purpose now, even if it did at one time.

Most of the books I have read have been for entertainment. A small number like my college calculus text were strictly for learning purposes. Some subset of the books I read for entertainment are also informative, even edifying at times.

There is only a small number of titles that I have read more than once. The bible tops the list with more than 20 readings. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is number two with about 12 readings. After that I can remember perhaps dozens of books that I have read twice, but certainly less than 100 (uh, not counting certain kid's books that I read over and over again to demanding toddlers).

At most I average one book per week. So if I live to be eighty (and keep reading!) I have time to finish another 1000 titles. I was shocked when I first did that calculation. A thousand books feels very limiting to me. I suddenly regretted all the poor quality titles I have read in the past 50 plus years. I also regret that my choice of books has been so incredibly haphazard. I don't know what reading plan I might have followed, but I do know that I haven't followed any sort of plan at all.

Of course, I have read a lot more than just books. I think of stacks and stacks of newspapers, magazines, brochures, junk mail, e-mails (well virtual stacks), and more. I have definitely benefited from reading. No question. What I wonder is, could I have benefited more by reading less or more selectively.

During most of my life I feared that I read too little rather than too much. Now I think more in terms of having read valuable things versus useless ones. But how shall I value any given bit of reading? I really don't know.

I am having one of those days where I question the value of just about everything I have done. I'm glad that loving my family and having a few friends has been part of the equation. I have also prayed a bit and served a few folks. However, a great deal of what I do seems utterly purposeless.

I pray that I will be more able to do work that pleases God and spend less time worrying about it. Colossians 3:23

How I Met GOD

photo credit: God is moon by Grégoire Lannoy

One day a friend and I were shooting arrows straight up and seeing how close we could let them land without flinching. We took a break and talked about God. I think I was 10.

"God, if you exist, show us right now. At least send a lightning bolt or something."

No show, no bolt. So we were pretty sure that the whole God thing was just made up.

For a kid dumb enough to rain arrows on himself, you might be surprised at how smart I was in science. I loved it. I studied it for fun. By the time I was 14, I had won a science competition over 400 other kids. I pretty much cheated. I studied the general science book that all the questions were to be taken from. I read it cover to cover. The book didn't mention God.

Years later. I was an engineer. I helped invent computers, the Internet, and LEDs. There were probably only a few million of us working on that stuff. We divided the work into pieces. Really, really small pieces. Nonetheless, I felt smart.

I continued to love science. In my early thirties I performed an experiment to see how much alcohol and illicit drugs it would take to destroy me. It took a lot. My zeal for the experiment waned. I decided to shut it down.

Now I had a chance to do personal research on how hard and how miserable it is to quit. Various people told me that I would probably fail to stay quit if I didn't get help from God. Oh yeah. God. I hadn't met him and was still almost positive he didn't exist. That made it hard to ask him for help.

I started reading books that did talk about God: The AA "big book", William James, and Carl Jung. I decided God was really just a name for some of the amazingly complicated chemicals in my head. I was a lot more comfortable then. I knew quite a bit about complicated chemicals.

However, I realized I had not spent much time thinking about the chemicals named God. Now that my life was on the line (not to mention my comfort), I decided I better put a high priority on getting to know God better. I decided to spend almost as much time thinking about God each day as I spent listening to the car radio while commuting. Major commitment.

Apparently talking to yourself is actually good so long as your self is really big and important. I figured the God chemicals must be the big, important factor since the rest of my chemicals composed an o.k. human, but not one that could inspire worship from anyone other than a dog.

Of course I am simplifying things a bit. I knew God wasn't just chemicals. I knew there was also electricity and a lot of genetic information painstakingly crafted by eons of accidents. Once again, I realized I was smart. Most people did not understand how accidents could result in people.

I did.

I wrestled hard with my own head, seeking to get a glimpse of the God part of it. I really needed to get to know God, because I was having a very tough time staying quit, just like everyone said I would. I even got up early most days to make time for wrestling. I hate getting up early. Early is a sharp pain, whereas late is just a dull ache.

I got frustrated. I thought to myself , "I need to work harder on my concept of God."

That was when GOD chose to speak to me. GOD said, "I am not your concept, you are my concept." Speak is the only word I have for it. But it wasn't a matter of vibrating air molecules. Neither was it that little voice inside my head that I use for talking to my self.

I was scared. Not because I thought I was hallucinating, but because I knew I wasn't.

I knew I had met GOD.

Over the past 25 years or so, I have gotten to know GOD much better. However, when a person is infinite (well, three persons), the things you learn seem quite small compared to the things you still don't know.

I don't feel as smart as I did. I am, however, much happier.

Fractals: Who Knew?

The word fractal was coined in ca. 1980 by the mathematician who was the first to demonstrate how an obscure branch of geometry could be used to generate remarkable models that show properties that are stunningly similar to complex configurations in nature: the branching of trees, coastlines, broccoli florets, galaxies and clusters of galaxies, and many more.

I had heard the word, but didn't know much about them until I read a post in Christine Quigley's blog (my favorite blog!). I especially recommend the 50 minute video she showcased, it is entitled Fractals: The Colors of Infinity.

Despite my engineering education, advanced mathematics (Calculus and beyond), has always been a weak area for me. Even after the excellent explanations and examples in the video, I could not actually generate an image using a fractal. Nonetheless, one property of fractals really popped out at me.

A fractal is a short mathematical expression (example: Z = z times z plus c) which can be iterated to produce artifacts of enormous complexity, endlessly unique shapes with recognizable similarities.

Thus fractals can be used to create geometries more characteristic of nature than of a machine shop's product. One example would be the shapes of trees. Although every oak tree branches in a unique pattern, the patterns of oak tree branches is readily distinguishable from the patterns of pine tree branches. The coastline of Ireland is quite different from the coastline of Puerto Rico, and yet island coastlines are easily recognizable as such on a map. The scale is not important, a bonsai cypress bears a striking resemblance to a huge old growth cypress. Australia's island coastline is clearly in a class with Jamaica's .

What struck me was that a process composed of a few simple steps can create infinitely complex shapes with easily recognizable similarities. I see a parallel with Christian lives. Following Jesus

requires us to invite him to help us iterate on relatively straight forward set of teachings: love one another, forgive one another, give generously, serve humbly, and so on. As each of us repeats those steps over and over, a pattern emerges that is unique to our own life and yet recognizably similar to the lives of other faithful followers of Christ. In a similar way, the pursuit of worldly goals consists of iterations of pride, greed, lust, hate, and so on. Again, each worldly life will differ from all others and yet there are easily recognizable patterns that emerge.

Scale is not important here, just as with fractals. A small kindness resembles a large kindness; a small theft resembles a large one.

Simple steps are not necessarily easy steps. Even small simple steps may be very difficult. Forgiving a small injury may prove more difficult than forgiving a larger one. Giving a billion dollars may be easier for Bill Gates than giving a thousand is for a single mom of limited means.

Generosity cannot be measured by the size of the gift.

Fortunately, each of us is simply responsible to follow God's leading, one step at a time. And because God knows that we will fail apart from his help, he has provided the grace we need.

High Priests of the Big Bang

Wonder. Humans wonder. We want to know.

Journalists created five W's and an H as a mnemonic to help them satisfy our curiosity any time they report an event.

• Who? Who was involved?
• What? What happened (what's the story)?
• When? When did it take place?
• Where? Where did it take place?
• Why? Why did it happen?
• How? How did it happen?

We are most satisfied when all of those questions are answered. Of course, for even the most trivial stories, say a fender bender at rush hour, it is possible that we will never get all the answers.

It should be no surprise, therefore, that we humans struggle to create a story about the origin of the universe that satisfactorily answers all of the Five W's and the H. A quick survey of cosmological theories over the centuries shows that we have had a tough time answering even one of the questions. It is not surprising that there have been attempts to shorten the list of questions.

For many centuries, physicists supposed the when question to be irrelevant. The universe was declared to have had no beginning and no end. Timeless and infinite. But, for most of the last century, scientific thought about the physical universe seems to point to a beginning: the big bang. Before the big bang, neither when nor where existed. Space and time did not exist until the big bang happened. The clock couldn't start ticking until then. Many physicists estimate that the clock has been ticking for about 14 billion years.

There is no strong consensus on when (or even whether) the universe will end. Consequently, one may find several scenarios: The big freeze, the big rip, the big crunch, The big bounce, and the multiverse. Cosmologists seem overly fond of the word big. Big compared to us I suppose, but I thought we had given up having man be the measure (and center) of the universe. Multiverse is a contradiction in terms, since universe is meant to describe all that is.

It surprises me that one of the more literate cosmologists hasn't proposed the the big whimper, thus allowing us to start with a bang and end with a whimper.

Cosmologists have done their best to answer the what, when, and where questions. Things get messy when we move on to who, why, and how. Those who are disinclined to the spiritual side resent the suggestion that a who is involved. With no who, the question of why is difficult to entertain. Theists propose a Big Who and believe that the Who knows why.

Cosmologists have an o.k. story about the how follows the big bang. They don't have much to say about how the big bang happened. It would be a description of no space and time suddenly spawning a singularity that contains all space time and proceeds to spread out over as many dimensions as we care to do the math for. So nothing results in everything tightly compressed , followed by expansion ended by freeze, rip, crunch, bounce or the poet's entry, whimper.

This would seem to be a story that suits both theists and atheists. The matters of who and why could be declared outside the scope of the cosmological debate. However this seems to trouble some atheists, who insist there is nothing outside the scope of the physical universe. Theists, like myself, wonder what makes the atheist care about the who and why questions, since they seem to insist that who and why don't exist. It seems the atheist wants the theist to play by the rules while insisting that there are no rules.

It is those atheists who want theists to shape up and fly right that I would call the High Priests of the Big Bang. The High Priests seem to damn the theists, and not with faint praise. I pray God would bless the atheists, and sincerely hope that damnation is not their fate nor my own.

Living Poised Between Heaven and Hell

photo credit: Heaven & Hell by J. Lozano

When things are great, we say "this is heaven on earth". When things are really bad we say "I am going through hell".

Neither is true.

Our lives are a mixture of pain and sorrow, pleasure and joy. We work to move closer to the good and further from the bad, but we know that bad things of one sort or another will dog us to the end of our days on earth. When life is particularly difficult, we may despair, yet the sun rises each day, flowers grow, children laugh. We could not survive if all things were evil.

We exist somewhere between the worst and the best we can imagine. We may rest easy at a spot where the hellish events on this earth seem to be far from us, but we know that in a single moment, terrible suffering may beset us.

Recently a friend and five of her seven children were in a van, on a freeway, returning from a vacation. Her son was driving and made a common mistake for a new driver, he over corrected the steering in response to a small difficulty. Even at the legal speed limit, that one error was enough to cause the van to careen and then roll several times. The friend and four of her children were battered badly, but sustained no serious injury. However, one daughter repeatedly struck the pavement. When all movement stopped, she was badly injured and pinned under the weight of the van.

Disease. Accidents. Financial ruin. Each can occur at any time. I thank God that I have enjoyed a life where such difficulties have been the punctuation in sentences, rather than the body of the story. There are some who struggle to see the few bright spots in their otherwise bleak existence.

Optimists and pessimists are both frequently correct. However, both are fallible and unable to predict the future accurately. From conception to death, we live poised between heaven and hell. Our best efforts may not succeed in moving us closer to heaven. Our personal failures and our worst enemies may not be able to move us closer to hell.

God knows the troubles we experience. He became a man and walked the earth. He suffered and died. He has not forgotten a single one of us. He calls us to him, that we may be assured a home with him for all eternity. We must focus on what is ahead as we endure what is here. We can be thankful for the good things in this life. Better is yet to come.

Do not pray for an easy life. Pray to be stronger. Pray to serve better.

What Most People Need Is A Good Listening To

Photo credit Ear by Travis Isaacs

You probably have a lot to say, a lot on your mind, a need to vent a bit. So do I. So do most people. There is a plenitude of folks who want to talk. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of folks who want to listen.

Perhaps you are thinking, "That's not true. I have to listen to others all day long. I am lucky to get even a scrap of air time." That may well be. There are plenty of people who feel that they have to listen. I am talking about people who want to listen.

It is much more difficult to listen when compelled to do so instead of desiring to do so. You may very well hear every word spoken. You may even remember most of them. But as John Milton wrote "The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven". The ear can pick up the sound waves, the brain can process and store the message, while the mind is stubbornly pursuing its own agenda. Sometimes that agenda is well meaning, as when we are wondering what is the best thing to say in response to what is being heard. Other times the mind is simply bouncing about from topic to topic and only occasionally stopping in to participate in the current conversation. Very little true listening is going on. Regardless of whether we are sympathetic or merely bored, hearing is not listening.

If I want to listen, I must start with the proper motivation: How can I best serve this person?. Desiring to serve differs fundamentally from desiring to be served. How we grow our desire to serve is a topic outside the scope of this essay. For my purpose here, I am going to assume that we want to serve.

We must dump the idea that listening is a passive activity. To really listen, we must actively consider the words, the tone, the body language, and the context. Our goal is to understand what the speaker is saying, as well as why they feel it needs to be said. We can gauge the efficacy of our listening by checking to see how well we understand. The simplest way to check is to occasionally rephrase a part of what you have heard and feed it back to the speaker. You will often get a response ranging from "No, that's not what I mean" to "Well, sort of" and on to "Exactly!".

I like to fish. Fishing is most exciting when I feel the line tug in a way that makes me cry out "fish on!". When I paraphrase what someone has said and they say "Exactly!", we both get a similar thrill. I use exactly as a representative word. The speaker may actually say "Yes!", "That's it", or any of a wide range of exclamations and affirmations. It may even be a nonverbal response. One of my friends energetically points his finger at me when I understand him well; another widens his eyes and nods.

That moment of understanding is precious to both speaker and listener. It is a building block for relationships.

Another way to check understanding is to respond to what you have heard by telling an anecdote. Strive for a quick story that shows how you have experienced or observed something very similar to what the speaker hopes to convey. When you miss the mark, common responses include a frown, a puzzled look, or even a head shake. Verbal responses may be as direct as "That's not what I am talking about" or as passive as a vague "oh". In those cases you may need to reestablish the speaker's train of thought by referring back to what was said earlier or by asking a clarifying question.

Speaking of questions, avoid asking questions that are really disguised advice. It isn't nearly so disguised as you think. Advice should only be offered when asked for. Even then, offer it sparingly. People with advice are abundant. People willing to listen well are rare, and correspondingly more valuable.

You may find yourself longing for someone who will listen well to you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just be patient. Model the behavior you would like to see. Remember to encourage those who listen even a little, and to cherish those who listen well.

Been There, Failed That

Sometimes failure can be a powerful source of comfort. Not so much for the person failing, but for all of their friends, acquaintances, or even anonymous observers. One place I have noticed this is in meetings. When I just can't follow what is going on, and I have to stop everything to ask for an explanation, I almost always see relief on some of the faces in the room. Maybe they too needed help to understand, or maybe they are just enjoying seeing how dense I am. Either way, I have contributed to their sense of well being.

As a young engineer, I dreaded making presentations to audiences that were either large or full of people to whom I was a peon. However, one day I was standing near my boss's boss when he was called upon to address a large room full of people. I was close enough to see his face twitch a bit. I could hear a small tremor in his voice. I saw that deer in the headlight look in his eyes. Once I realized he was nervous, I could have decided that it simply proved that I was right to be afraid of speaking to groups. I had often thought that way. This time I was struck by a new idea: if he is two levels up ladder, 15 years more experienced, and still quaking about sharing a few words, then it is no big deal if I suffer that same anxiety. That epiphany occurred 35 years ago, yet I remember it vividly. It has helped me countless times.

I made sure I shared lots of my failures with my kids. I knew they would eventually learn that I was fallible, even if I tried to hide it from them, but I really enjoyed giving them advance notice. Sometimes I blushed when they laughed heartily at my shortcomings, but my shame was only momentary. It was soon supplanted by the warm glow of knowing that they had just been freed to make a few mistakes themselves without undue worry.

False humility drains failure of much of its value. I mustn't pretend that I always fail. I don't. Very likely some of my successes have inspired others. I too enjoy seeing someone surmount a challenge.

Seeing others both fail and succeed allows me to see them in depth. I am far more able to identify with them. We share a common plight.

I hope we can all find the courage to showcase at least a few of our failures. It will make the world a better place.

What's Different About Facebook?

Raeanne Gardner Olivier June 21 at 9:34pm

Are you THE Kent Schnake that attended Harris in the 60s?

Kent Schnake June 22 at 9:27am

Yes I am. Are you the Raeanne who went on the hayride with me but wouldn't let me kiss you :-)

Raeanne Gardner Olivier June 22 at 11:41am

hehehe...Yes, I am, but I hope you won't hold that against me...Surely the statute of limitations has run out after 45 years..

I remember Raeanne very well. But when she wrote to me, that was the first communication we had had in about 44 years. I suppose there are other ways that our paths may have crossed. However, she still lives in Metairie, LA where I went to junior high. I am in Oregon thousands of miles away. We have no friends in common that we have stayed in touch with. And I am pretty sure that if we had walked right past each other on the street, we may have had a fleeting sense that we knew each other, but I doubt that it would have prompted us to speak.

What's different about Facebook? It enables me to maintain a bit of social contact with folks in Louisiana, Chicago, Seattle, Latvia, Tanzania, Norway and more. It is almost effortless. We don't have to write to each other, we can just check our news feed or take a look at each other's walls. We can share photos and even videos. Snail Mail, Telegraph, Telephone, Radio, TV, and E-mail don't work that way. There is a fundamental difference.

I am watching and wondering how it will impact the world.

I Walk, I Talk, I Write

I walk about three miles most days. I do it because when I am done, I feel better. I do it because I know that it will help me maintain a reasonable weight and decent health, I don't do it to impress anyone else.

I probably utter a few thousand words every day. I guess I am a member of the chattering class. A large percentage of the words are uttered without much thought. Quite a few are reflexive responses like "thanks" or "excuse me". However, much of what I say is directed to other people. I put a lot more energy in working to make an impression on others with my words than I do with my walking. I almost wrote that that only makes sense. Not so. I can imagine actors, dancers, young people flirting, and others, whose walk might be just as important to them as their talk. And I mean walk, not as a metaphor, just locomotion.

I write a fair amount each day. A lot of it is like my speaking, pretty much just a reflexive response. I write e-mails that answer questions. I write short notes on Facebook as a way of staying in touch with another person or a group of people. I do think before I write, but mostly I'm just trying to be clear, not profound.

This blog has been different. It is not a record of my day to day life. It has no particular theme like sports, films, or music. It is all over the map. I've written about gold prices, life experiences, people I have known and people I have only read about or seen in the media.

Some of the posts may seem a bit philosophical, others humorous, and many probably seem pointless to anyone who happens to read them. My first few posts were written with my daughter in mind. I was sharing a little bit about what my life was like in the early years. There have been a few posts (out of hundreds) that describe more recent events in my life. However, early on I decided that for most posts I would write about anything I felt like writing about.

For a while my writing was like my walking. I wrote because it felt good when I was done. I also figured it would probably help keep me mentally fit, the way walking helps me stay physically fit, and it would enable me to write better over time.

After a while, some influences crept in that have all but crippled me. I began to realize that there were a small number of people who read a significant number of my posts. My readers, so to speak. I have tried hard not to cater to any particular audience, but over time I have begun to feel the pressure of those few pairs of eyes that read my posts. Another problem was that I learned that folks find my posts when doing web searches. They stumble upon what I have written. It may be related to that which prompted them to do the search, as when someone types in the film title "American Meth" and finds my review of it. Often the search that leads to my blog has been an image search. One common way folks come upon my blog is typing the simple question: how do I make a good choice.

Not only have folks found my blog, they sometimes have spent a bit of time reading it. My tracking software began to show me that I was getting hits from many countries. 79 different countries in the past year. There are only a couple of hundred countries in the world. I became somewhat obsessed with watching the hits come in day by day. Another thing that surprised me was that my blog is read in other languages. Apparently folks have used Google language tools to read my blog in a 39 different languages.

Now I find that I spend too much time thinking about who might be reading my blog and how they come upon it.

I need to take concrete action to bring myself back to writing because it feels good and it is good for me. A good place to start would be to eliminate my site tracking tools. I can't be influenced by data I don't have. I can't spend time obsessively reading the reports if they don't exist. So as of tonight, no more tracking software.

The only way I will be aware of readers is if they choose to comment. Since that seldom happens, I imagine I won't be very aware of readers.

I am going to leave the blog public. If someone is encouraged or entertained by what I have written, I am glad. It is freeing to know that the blog doesn't push itself on to anyone. The only people who will see it are those who deliberately decide to take a look. I have always intended that what I write could be read by anyone who chose to do so. I have private journals where I record thoughts that are only for my consumption.

I feel a bit giddy. I feel as if I am breaking free of fetters. I am stepping outside after an incarceration. Relative to writing, I will be returning to my first love: spinning tales, histories, and ponderings simply because I feel like doing so. I will treat comments just as I might respond to someone on the street who speaks to me. If they are obnoxious, I will ignore them. If they are friendly or asking a question, I will very likely respond to them.

How We Think About Time

Photo credit: View with a grain of sand by lepiaf.geo (better off slipping into blur)

Time is the one commodity that is uniformly distributed among the billions of people on this planet. Every one of us receives 24 hours, 3600 seconds per hour, doled out once each day. The only folks who do not receive their daily allotment are those who are not yet born and those who have died.

Time can be neither stored nor borrowed. The 24 hours given to each us passes inexorably at the same rate for all of us.*

Time flows uniformly, yet we seldom speak of it that way.

I have no time.

I need to kill some time.

We will lose time.

We are out of time.

He worked overtime.

I need to find some time.

Please give me some time.

Your time is up.

I saved some time.

I spent too much time.

We must remember that we do not spend time. Rather we make choices about what we will do as time passes. We may try to fit too many, or too few, activities into a span of time. It is our choices that may vary. Time does not change.

We speak of time passing quickly, or slowly. However, it is our awareness of time passing that varies, not time itself. A common change in awareness occurs as we grow older. We say that each year is shorter. In other cases our perception of time's flow can change in an instant. Time flies when we are having fun, yet it nearly stops altogether when we are in great pain. A moment is all that is required to pass from one state to the other.

Now is a moment. All other time is past or future. The events in time past are unchangeable. Events in our future on this earth cannot be predicted dependably. Not by us.

What we do. What we are. What we hope to be. We impact with each choice we make during each moment we are given. Plans have no value for predicting the future. Their value is in helping us to choose now.

I thank God that my plans (and yours) are not the basis for our hope.

Jeremiah 29:11 (New International Version)

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

God grants us the ability to make choices in the moment. He retains sovereignty over the outcome. If there seems to be a conflict between our ability to choose and his ability to plan, it is because God's relationship to time is not constrained as ours is.

2 Peter 3:8 (New International Version)

⁸But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

It is only by God's grace that we can redeem the time we are given.

*There are concepts in relativistic physics that allow a clock to tick measurably slower (relative to ours) when it travels at high speeds (relative to us). The effect here on the face of the earth is so small that very few are ever aware of the minuscule variations.