Jolly Good Links - 7/5/08

Sorry I missed the links last week - I was on vacation.  Here's some good stuff I've read over the last few weeks.

1. Leadership lessons from computer geeks.  Who says geeks don't know how to lead?  Actually, this post is not on leadership per se, it's on "Egoless Programming."  But these "ten commandments" not only work for programming, they work in leadership and all relationships.  Here's the first five:

Understand and accept that you will make mistakes. The point is to find them early, before they make it into production. Fortunately, except for the few of us developing rocket guidance software at JPL, mistakes are rarely fatal in our industry, so we can, and should, learn, laugh, and move on.

You are not your code. Remember that the entire point of a review is to find problems, and problems will be found. Don't take it personally when one is uncovered.

No matter how much "karate" you know, someone else will always know more. Such an individual can teach you some new moves if you ask. Seek and accept input from others, especially when you think it's not needed.

Don't rewrite code without consultation. There's a fine line between "fixing code" and "rewriting code." Know the difference, and pursue stylistic changes within the framework of a code review, not as a lone enforcer.

Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience. Nontechnical people who deal with developers on a regular basis almost universally hold the opinion that we are prima donnas at best and crybabies at worst. Don't reinforce this stereotype with anger and impatience. 

2. N. T. Wright on the gospel/evangelism:

'The task of evangelism is therefore best understood as the proclamation that Jesus is already Lord, that in him God's new creation has broken into history, and that all people are therefore summoned to submit to him in love, worship and obedience. The logic of this message requires that those who announce it should be seeking to bring Christ's Lordship to bear on every area of human and worldly existence'.

3.  Though Victor Reppert directs this to his philosophy students it has much wider application to the issue of contextualization. 

I am myself a Christian and my philosophical career has been centered around thinking things through from a Christian perspective. I have taught in both a Christian setting and a non-Christian setting, but most of my student career and my teaching career has been in secular institutions. I often find that in a non-Christian setting students seem unaware of the fact that they have a world-view, or else they haven’t really thought very clearly about what their world-view is and how to make it a consistent one. So you find people drawing from one source here and one source there whenever it suits them. In a Christian setting you will still find some of that as well. But the main issue that I believe I should try to come to terms with in dealing with Christian students is the fact that they have learned certain ways of talking about what they believe which are common in churches but have little meaning to anyone outside of four walls of the institutional church. One church outsider came to a church and was asked “Are you under the blood?” which prompted him to look up at the ceiling to see if there was some red liquid coming down. Consider even a phrase like “Christ paid the penalty for our sins.” What penalty? What sins? And how could Christ pay it, if we incurred the penalty?

Missionaries often spend years studying the peoples of the countries in which they minister, hoping to understand the thought-forms of those peoples, so that they can learn to present the Christian message in a way that is meaningful to the people of that culture. Yet, I think, a lot of Christians have no idea how their world-view differs from the world-views of others, or how to ask the questions a non-believer would ask.

   

4. What every American needs to know about the Middle East - good stuff here.

5. Of course I always have to give a plug for the low-carb lifestyle in these link lists.  Here's a post by Jimmy Moore that lets a "no-carb" advocate get a few words in - that's right, not just "low-carb" but "no-carb."  Here's the part I found most interesting:

While there is little or no scientific evidence that carbohydrates are a particularly good energy food, we know that fats are. Dr. Groves explains further why the best performance is only possible with the correct diet and this applies to humans and animals. With the correct diet, constant exercise and practice to maintain muscle suppleness, strength and stamina doesn't seem to be needed either.

It is well known that carnivorous animals such as lions and tigers are fed their natural diet of fatty meat, even when confined in cages or small pens in zoos for long periods of time, without the opportunity to exercise, do not lose their vigor, strength and endurance. Such animals in circuses are even more confined but they are still able to make prodigious leaps when called upon to do so.

Eskimo sled dogs are normally kept on leashes or in small kennels during the summer months and fed fat meat and fish. When, after some months of such inactivity, the winter arrives and they are required to pull sleds again, they have no need of a period of training or conditioning before they go about their arduous task. And they still manage to pull heavy sleds for up to twelve hours a day. The same applies to English hunting dogs. They do not lose their ability to run hard for long distances when correctly fed.

The same is true of Man. The Eskimo spends most of the year in practical inactivity during the winter months. Confined to his snow-covered hut or igloo, eating meat, fish and fat, he rarely ventures outside for months at a time. But when spring arrives, he immediately begins a very strenuous life, traveling many miles to hunting grounds. He, too needs no period of conditioning after his long winter of inactivity. He also requires less sleep and is much more resistant to fatigue.

In 1895 two Norwegians, Fridtjof Nansen and Frederik Johansen, landed on an island of the Franz Joseph group. They had 'conventional' provisions to last for several weeks but, as there was abundant game in the form of walrus and polar bear, they decided to live off the land and save their provisions until the following summer. From the end of August 1895 until the spring break up of the arctic ice they got no exercise, did not wash themselves or change their clothes, yet they remained in perfect health and were able to do a full day's sledging on their first day of travel.

Rear Admiral Robert Peary also noted the ability of Arctic explorers to subsist for more than a year with no food other than pemmican twice a day. Men doing heavy work required two pounds of pemmican, which was the equivalent of six pounds of meat and a pound of fat per day.

This ability to do fantastic feats of strength and endurance was not confined to the Arctic. Native porters in Australia, eating only kangaroo meat, carried heavy loads for up to twelve hours without rest or refreshment; and Aborigines in the desert, would lope for distances of up to twenty miles, with occasional bursts of speed to catch game, on a handful of worms, bugs and insects, and kangaroo meat.

What all these people (and animals) have in common is their carbohydrate-free diet. Fat is the best fuel for an athlete, carbohydrates are the worst. It really is as simple as that.

6. The Blair Witch Links.  OK, I never actually saw "The Blair Witch Project" but I do remember that scene that was on all the trailers where the girl says "I am soooo scared!!" Given this post I did earlier in the week I have been doing a little looking around for more on the culture of fear - here's a couple of links on the subject.

Beyond a Culture of Fear

The Culture of Fear

7. How success can diminish mission.  This is from Dallas Willard quoted on "The Hsu's Views."

Intense devotion to God by the individual or group brings substantial outward success. Outward success brings a sense of accomplishment and a sense of responsibility for what has been achieved — and for further achievement. For onlookers the outward success is the whole thing. The sense of accomplishment and responsibility reorients vision away from God to what we are doing and are to do — usually to the applause and support of sympathetic people. The mission increasingly becomes the vision. It becomes what we are focused upon. The mission and ministry is what we spend our thoughts, feelings, and strength upon. Goals occupy the place of the vision of God in the inward life, and we find ourselves caught up in a vision-less pursuit of various goals. Grinding it out.

8. In a post called Scholarly Legends, Richard Rhodes talks about the legend that eskimos have dozens, maybe hundreds of words for "snow." This is not so.  But the reason we now know that this is not so is that some one engaged in the intellectual rigor to actually track down the facts.  This is why we have to avoid intellectual sloth.

But Pullum’s point isn’t really about Eskimo — interesting though that may be. As he himself says:

“[This essay] isn't about Eskimo lexicography at all, though I'm sure it will be taken to be. What it's actually about is intellectual sloth. .... The tragedy is not that so many people got the facts wrong; it is that in the mentally lazy and anti-intellectual world we live in today, hardly anyone cares enough to think about trying to determine what the facts are.” (pg. 171)

9. Urban Meyer is da' bomb.  GOOOOOOOOOO . . . GATORS!!

Cool doesn't begin to describe it.

Urban Meyer is the coolest rockin' daddy in intercollegiate sports. He's the hippest, hottest rock star in college football. He's Hannah Montana with a cockeyed headset. He's Lil Wayne with a big playbook. He's the Pussycat Dolls with an offense that purrs like a kitten.

"He's white-hot right now," says longtime sports writer Buddy Martin, who just finished the soon-to-be-released biography called Urban's Way.

"He's at the peak of his powers," says Chris Fowler, ESPN college football analyst and host of the network's ultra-popular GameDay. "Urban is as dialed in to what makes young people tick as anybody I've ever seen."

If you want to know why Urban Meyer is rich like butter to today's hip-hop generation, then just take a look at today's newly redesigned Orlando Sentinel. It's visual. It's colorful. It's bold and bodacious. It's just cooler than the traditional newspaper.

And that's Urban Meyer. He's just cooler because he has purposely redesigned the traditional college coach. He is reinventing the image of the rumpled, old, outdated football fogy and turning him into a more modern, attractive version that looks phat and fresh on his state-of-the-art Web site CoachUrbanMeyer.com.

10.  Ben Witherington is reviewing Pagan Christianity by Viola and Barna - here's Part 1,  and Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.  This is important stuff - the series ought to be subtitled "Proverbs 18:17."

Comments

[Dave]

Here's a response to Witherington's review.

http://www.paganchristianity.org/zensresponds1.htm

[Maggie]

Jesus isn't Allah, may Allah be pleased with Isa and his prophets and messengers.

That is your first mistake.

Peace on you in any case. Nice blog and I've mentioned you on mine but perhaps not in the way you might hope for.

[Dan Phillips]

A point of contact: Jesus is not Allah -- nor Buddha, Shiva, Kali, Zardoz, Baal, Molech, nor any other false god. He is God the Son incarnate, as anticipated, foreshadowed, required and predicted in the Word of God.

I'm having folks spamming my blog with Zens' response too; I see it at other blogs as well. Do you have rules against comments that are nothing but links, David? I'm thinking I may need to add one such.

[Jake Meador]

Ha, well Florida will always have a warm place in my heart because without you guys, Nebraska's finest moment wouldn't have happened. Somebody had to provide the 8 guys to try to tackle Tommie Frazier and the irate head coach throwing his headset on the sideline ;). Seriously though, Florida is one of my favorites to watch. You guys have a one-of-a-kind atmosphere at The Swamp and your offense with Tebow and company is awesome. I think we would've evolved into some kind of spread option if we had stuck with the old offense, but I don't know that we'd ever run it as well as you guys.

(Now hopefully Bo does what Urban did and takes good athletes that haven't been well-coached and helps bring us back to prominence as Urban has for you guys.)

[Brian]

Can you post the URL for the computer geek commandments? You only posted the first 5, and I can't find the hyperlink to follow to the rest.

[David Wayne]

Brian - thanks for catching that - I put the link in now.

Dan - hope you are still around - sorry for not getting back to you earlier on this. Thanks for your response to Maggie, I second and third that. No, I don't have any real policy on that - I just delete things that I think are obviously spam or irrelevant links. In this case, the Zens link is relevant, so I didn't mind leaving it.

Jake - thanks for bringing back one of my worst football memories of all time. That game was men against boys, and unfortunately my team was the boys. Good luck with Bo - here's hoping for better days for the Huskers. I understand it's water under the bridge now but I never understood why Nebraska hired Bill Calahan in the first place. He came out of a very messy break-up with the Raiders and tried to install an offense which was completely foreign to Husker football culture. It seemed doomed from the start.

[Jill]

The sequel to “Pagan Christianity?” is out now. It’s called “Reimagining Church”. It picks up where “Pagan Christianity” left off and continues the conversation. (“Pagan Christianity” was never meant to be a stand alone book; it’s part one of the conversation.) “Reimagining Church” is endorsed by Leonard Sweet, Shane Claiborne, Alan Hirsch, and many others. You can read a sample chapter at http://www.ReimaginingChurch.org. It’s also available on Amazon.com. Frank is also blogging now at http://frankviola.wordpress.com/