Eric's Live Space

What is a “Why Train?” If you have toddlers, you no doubt have experienced this phenomenon. It all starts with a question. No matter what answer is given, the next question is “Why?” That answer generates another ""Why?", and it continues on down the line until God Himself would run out of explanations besides "That's the way I wanted it," to which the toddler would respond with yet another "Why?"

I've told my children they are an epistemological nightmare. While cleaning out my car in Buffalo on Sunday, Caleb saw an item in the box and asked "Why is it a Jelly Bean?" I'm an engineer, and went through the list of qualities that make the item that he saw a Jelly Bean. He followed with "Why?"

All that aside, I just went through one of the more amusing "Why Trains." I have my desktop computer set to a pictures screensaver. I can occasionally buy myself a few minutes to work on my laptop if I put "the pictures" on for the kids. Joshua followed me upstairs and the screen saver had already activated. He started pointing out events in the pictures. I tried to say I was trying to read something. Then he got really excited as a picture of my wife in her bridal dress flanked by her youngest sister and cousin as bridesmaids appeared. He said "Look! Mommy getting married!" Without looking up I replied "I know, Joshua. I was there."

He asked "Why?"

I said "Because I married her."

He asked "Why?"

My mind went into a terminal reset mode as I started wanting to answer honestly while realizing that there was little I could say at this point that he would understand. The only thing left to do was bust out laughing. Seriously, get asked by a toddler why you married your wife when you're off guard and see how you react.

An Atlantic Monthly article has been the subject of discussion on many blogs lately. I’ll link to Michael Hyatt because his is easy to remember. The actual article is “Is Google Making us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr. Many of the bloggers discussing the article claim that the Internet has caused them to develop short attention spans, and they have lost their ability to read books and longer works. I’m not aware of any so-called “scientific” research into the subject, so my ability to discuss it is limited to the same subjective experiences the other bloggers are limited to. Of course, you didn’t come to this blog for objective scientific peer reviewed research, did you?

Is the Internet making me stupid? I don’t think so. I follow more than 80 blogs on Google Reader (they don’t all update every day.) I do a lot of reading and research online. Yet, when I sit down to read a book, I’m still able to digest works written on a Master’s or even Doctorate level, assuming the material is interesting.

The one thing the Internet has done to me is make me lose patience when a written work fails to get to the point. I skim magazines a lot more because it seems like most of the text is extraneous. The same goes for newspapers. I don’t actually read newspapers, but when I read news articles, I quickly get bored. I want the headline, and some supporting facts. I don’t care what kind of BS the journalist needs to fill whatever word count he or she has.

Honestly, that’s the only thing I notice. It’s not my attention span the Internet has wrecked. It just taught me how to maximize time by finding the point and moving along. It taught me to ignore the work of lesser writers.

I haven’t thought about MySpace in a long time. I rarely think of it, except for those rare moments anymore when I get a friend request that I need to log in and check out. I had a slow day a while ago, and started reading Wikipedia. I drifted through various topics, and came across Deadliest Catch, a show I have enjoyed watching for several years. For some reason, the show didn’t resonate with me the first season, but by the second season, I was hooked. For some reason, I’ve always considered the Northwestern my favorite boat, although I’ve come to enjoy all of the boats, captains, and crew members involved. I guess like watching Ice Road Truckers, Deadliest Catch portrays one of those jobs we would love to be able to do, but can’t or won’t for whatever reason. Having been in the Navy, and seen some seriously bad seas (I can remember taking a 36 degree roll and looking straight down at the ocean) I can appreciate the Bering Sea storms from the safety of New Jersey.

When I started reading about Deadliest Catch on Wikipedia, I learned that most of the boats involved have websites, like the Northwestern, Cornelia Marie, and the Wizard. The Cornelia Marie and Wizard have blogs, which I subscribed to. Most of them now have stores selling merchandise. I have to admit, these guys have done a great job of capitalizing on the success of the show and building bridges to their fans.

Back to the subject, I even found myself this morning before work searching for sites on MySpace. I sent friend requests to a couple of them.

When reality TV first came out with Survivor, I hated the entire concept, but I have definitely found some reality shows I enjoy. The only one I should enjoy, but don’t for a funny reason, is Tougher in Alaska. I’m sorry, but the first time I watched the show and it cut to a commercial break and I heard “Tougher in Alaska is brought to you by… Viagra,” I have been unable to even think of the show without laughing. I seriously wonder why the History Channel seems to think it’s main demographic is men with erectile dysfunction (otherwise referred to as ED.) It’s starting to make me ashamed of watching the History Channel. I don’t want to be lumped in with guys who have a problem that I wish would have remained unmentionable in the company of other men. Why can’t we just go back to the good old days when if a man’s “stuff” didn’t work, other men didn’t have to hear about it? Oh, that’s right, pharmaceutical companies. Doh! I’m getting tired of hearing politicians bitching about “big oil.” Seriously, why not go after “big drugs?” Starbucks coffee costs like $54 a gallon. Go after big coffee.

I couldn’t resist this one. When I first saw the title in my RSS feeds, I got a little apprehensive. When I started reading, I thought “Surely, this is going to frustrate me.” Then I crossed the line in the post when I realized it had to be as far from “serious” as possible, and I was able to sit back and enjoy the read, even though it is on a topic that I frankly couldn’t care less about.

From the blog:

Nearly 2000 years ago the Apostle John wrote the apocalyptic writing we know as the book of Revelation. This book has been the center of theological controversy for nearly two millennia. The interpretive difficulty of this writing has spawned a plethora of biblical doctrines to unfold. Perhaps the most controversial section of these writings has been chapter 20.

Well, I'm delighted to say that after all this time it has finally become clear as to what the meaning of part of this chapter really is. Let us observe together by evaluating a few verses, namely 7-10.
In chapter 7 we read, And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison. The thousand years here is clearly metaphorical. What John is saying here is not a literal thousand years, but rather only a few years. To be more specific, he is really only speaking of a period of 4 years, bare with me on this. As far as who Satan represents, well, because John is speaking in metaphors, he is not speaking about the spiritual nemesis of God. Rather he is speaking of the long awaited entity knows as the Los Angeles Lakers. The four years represents the period of time from 2004 to the present, 2008.

I will merely say that I endeavor to take the book of Revelation seriously. Sure, there’s some symbology, but every single sign is explained elsewhere in the Bible. I fail to see how God could make things so clear, then release a book into circulation that we’re not meant to understand in any possible way. I know a lot of Christians who stay away from Revelation. Some are afraid of it. Personally, I’m not afraid of the book, nor am I afraid of the conclusions that one can be drawn to by taking the book seriously. I’m far more afraid of the fights and contention this can cause with Christians who have other views of Revelation than I am the conclusions I have been drawn to by it, in it’s proper context.

In any case, I enjoyed the “conclusions” the blog I linked came to regarding Chapter 20.

Firefox 3 was finally released yesterday. It’s supposed to be better and faster than Firefox 2. I hope so. I was fairly happy with Firefox 1.5.0.7, and the increments of Firefox 2 have been fairly painful. It was almost painful enough that I would have scrapped Firefox to use Internet Explorer, except for the fact that I have several Firefox extensions that I’ve reached the point of being unable to live without on a regular basis, so I bore the instability and memory leak on Firefox 2. I finally broke down and installed the beta of Firefox 3 on my laptop when temperatures went up and I couldn’t take the memory leak anymore.

One of the worst parts of Firefox is that every time a new release comes out. some extensions break. Either the developers stop updating them or they just fall away, I don’t know. One of my favorite extensions over the last several years is Tab Mix Plus. Firefox, by default, displays all tabs in one horizontal bar. I can have between 30 and 50 tabs open at any given time, so that gets very impractical for me. Tab Mix Plus gives the ability to display tabs in multi-rows, which is very helpful. Also, I like to open a new tab next to the current one rather than at the end of the line. That keeps my tabs together. As far as I know, only Tab Mix Plus does this. I expected to lose some extensions after upgrading to Firefox 3, and Tab Mix Plus was one of them. I found out today though, that Tab Mix Plus for Firefox 3 is available on Download.com. I don’t know why it’s not on the Mozilla extensions page.

I got an interesting email today. I have no idea how I get on some of these lists. I guess when you have a broad range of interests and find yourself constantly chasing down something new, your email address pops up to a lot of marketers. Actually, I got two weird emails today. One had to do with a business school. Somehow I got on the mailing list of BioPharm. Why, I have no idea. My occupation and interests don’t really cross many lines with biology or pharmacology, but somehow BioPharm sends me magazines and sells my contact information to all of their “partners.” I unsubscribed from that marketing list immediately.

The second email was slightly more interesting and could actually be useful to me at some point, God willing. I’ve always for some twisted reason wanted to write a book. A book about what, I have no idea. At one point, I wanted to be a right wing political writer, until I realized I could fart out the window and be slightly more coherent and productive in the public discourse. It’s a long story, and no I haven’t switched to the other “wing.” That’s why you see little political content on my blog. I do occasionally put up something I feel like commenting on, but I try my hardest to either stick to the facts or find some way to make it humorous. Anyway, I’ve thought about other areas I could write a book in, until I realized that I have absolutely no knowledge of how to write a book, or what to write about, so I pretty much stick to posting on my blog as I work on my writing skill.

I read the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing, Michael Hyatt's blog. I subscribe to his RSS feeds. He posts some interesting content. I could care less about his half marathons, but he write a lot of interesting posts about leadership and Christian publishing. One thing I have gathered from him is that if I ever did assemble a manuscript, I probably wouldn't have good odds of getting it through Thomas Nelson. I figure if I did write anything, I'd probably just post it online and ask for $5 from anyone who was blessed or informed or even mildly amused by my book, or just read it and enjoy it. I've come across a lot of good books that way, and it wouldn't bother me to do the same, especially for a first book, which probably won't be that great. I have no editor or professional assistance. I'm normally the guy people I know go to for help with writing, so where could I go for help?

The email I got was from Inspired Publishing, a Christian publisher that seems to specialize in print on demand, self-publishing. It sounded interesting. If you have a manuscript that you've considering publishing, give them a look. It will probably be a long time before a book from me is anything more than a dream.