Posts from — November 2007

Amazon.com recently released the Kindle, their device for reading ebooks. Michael Hyatt, President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, has a positive (but not fawning) first impression review of the Kindle here.

Robert Scoble, a professional tech blogger, has a very negative review of the Kindle here. If you watch the video (and let me warn you: there’s a few bad words in there), you will see that two of the many complaints he has are:

1. Highlighting: Scoble says at first that you can’t do it. Then he figures it out, right there on the video. I was surprised when he said you couldn’t highlight, because I remember that being one of the features mentioned in Steven Levy’s way-over-the-top story about the Kindle in Newsweek. But then Scoble discovered that feature, though it still looks hard to use.
2. Page numbers: Scoble has it right. How on earth are you supposed to refer anyone to a passage in an ebook if the page numbers don’t correspond in any way to the pages on the real-life dead trees version of the book? Without consistency in page numbers (or some other way to accurately cite written works) regardless of the media on which they are read, the usability of books is diminished, not enhanced. Technology must enhance our experience, not diminish it; otherwise, the technology will be ignored by the market.

I mentioned both of these things in my recent iPhone bookreader wishlist for Apple. Additionally, I still want to be able to copy out sections from an ebook so that I can quote an author, then give him or her proper credit in a footnote.

Let me repeat: I should not have to retype the quote! It is standard, praiseworthy behavior to quote and credit other authors in non-fiction works. The more academically-oriented the writing, the more important this is. I am certain this is not possible on the Kindle, because books on the Kindle are protected by DRM.

But think this through, ebook writers and manufacturers of ebook readers. Who reads more than anyone else? Professors, authors, and students. This is your market! If these people quote your writings, it will inevitably lead to more sales for your writings. Making it as easy as possible to quote you and give you credit is in your best interest. Don’t let your fears of privacy and plagiarism lead you to irrationally excessive protection. Done right, ebooks could be a stimulus for sales rather than an easy way to steal.

One more thing: I have no interest in owning any kind of ebook reader; not the Kindle, not the Sony Reader. (though, if you must buy me one, send it here. I’ll sell it and buy an iPhone instead). I do not need another device to carry. This is why I think the iPhone, or something like it, is the perfect device for this technology. You have your phone, your music, your video, and your books all in one device, plus the Internet. Like your music and videos, you should be able to read the books on your Mac (or PeeCee) and manage them all through iTunes. Include the ebook features iRecommend above, and you can’t go wrong.

The Kindle cannot hold a Kandle to this kind of flexibility and portability.

Update (12/1): Andy Inhatko, who loves the Kindle, has done a side-by-side comparison of the Kindle and the iPhone as book readers. He writes:

I downloaded a free book from the Project Gutenberg site, and spent an hour on my sofa reading chapters on the Kindle and then on my iPhone. I can’t say that the Kindle was a superior experience. I preferred the Kindle’s larger display and its page-turning buttons, but I had the usual gripes about the screen’s E-Ink technology. It’s black text on a gray, non-backlit background, so you don’t get the same crisp, black-on-white contrast of the iPhone’s backlit screen.

Read Andy’s entire review here.

Update #2 (12/11): Daniel Eran Dilger has a nice, long review of the Kindle at AppleInsider. He compares reading documents on the Kindle to reading them on the iPod Touch, which is very similar to the iPhone. He writes:

Unlike typical ebook readers using E Ink displays, the LCD display of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch can zoom in and out of documents, skirting the limitations of PDF or heavily formatted Word documents that commonly confound Kindle and the Sony Reader. The iPhone can also handle other documents, from Excel files to full color graphics and fluid video.

While the iPhone’s display is significantly smaller–about half the visual area of the Kindle and roughly a quarter the resolution (320×480 vs. 600×800)–it’s just as sharp (160 pixels per inch vs the Kindle’s 167 ppi), it’s backlit for reading in the dark, it’s full color, and most importantly it has no slow refresh cycle. The downside is that the iPhone doesn’t last nearly as long on a charge, particularly if you’re actively using it to read documents or browse the web.

Despite the larger screen size and resolution of the Kindle, both show about the same amount of content, even when the iPhone is zoomed in for reading text and the Kindle is set at its smallest text size to show the most content possible (below). The Kindle can only show a small set view of the page, while the iPhone can zoom out to see the entire page overall.

Read the paragraph quoted above in context here. The whole article begins here.

Dear lady sitting near me at Panera in Greensboro, North Carolina,

I can hear the conversation you are having right now over lunch with your five hundred lunch companions. I’m sorry to be listening in. It’s not that you’re being too loud; you’re using your appropriate inside voices. But I heard you say the word “church.” I’m a preacher. What am I supposed to do? I have to listen. Your next statements might give me an illustration to use someday in one of my messages. This is especially true if you’re funny and dead certain if you are both foolish and funny at the same time.

Anyway, you mentioned hearing a sermon recently where the preacher talked about Moses bringing Joseph’s bones back from Egypt. You said that this was the only thing about the sermon that you remember. I’m sorry to hear that. It makes me cringe to think about what people who hear me retain from my messages.

Where was I? Oh, you said the preacher mentioned that Moses had Joseph’s bones and buried them with Abraham. Now you’re questioning whether or not this is true. Is it true? The good news is that I’m going to answer you. If you ever use “The Google” to look up this question, you might find my answer. If not, you’ll never even know I wrote this because I’m not going to interrupt six people at lunch. Two people? Nah, I probably wouldn’t do that either. I’m either too polite or too big a wuss. Take your pick.

In Genesis 50:25, Joseph commanded his descendants to remove his remains and return them to the promised land. He made them promise on oath, meaning they would be cursed by God if they failed to do it. Hebrews 11:22 makes reference to this passage also, but adds nothing new to the discussion.

In Exodus 13:19, Moses fulfilled part of this oath, taking the bones with him when the Jews made their exodus from Egypt.

But here’s where your pastor made a couple of mistakes, if he really said what you’re saying he said. According to you, he said that Moses buried Joseph’s bones in Abraham’s tomb. Two big strikes there. Here’s why:

1. Moses never made it to the promised land. He died before he got there. Oops. See Deuteronomy 34:1-5, and Numbers 20:1-14 for the backstory.
2. Joshua did bury Joseph’s bones, but not in Abraham’s tomb. Rather, Joshua 24:32 says that he buried them “at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor.” This is a place where Jacob built an altar to the Lord, according to Genesis 33:18-20. Abraham, by contrast, was buried with Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre. See Genesis 23:19 and 25:10.

Oooh, now two of your companions are talking about Calvinism. I want badly to listen in, but there’s too much ambient noise. I can’t make out what they’re saying. I can hear one of them saying that Calvinism-Arminianism is like a toilet paper roll: over or under, take your pick. Yikes! That’s bad theology, but you can be sure THIS WILL SHOW UP IN MY TEACHING OR PREACHING SOMEDAY. Probably repeatedly. For the rest of my life.

If you ever find this on the net, my apologies to you. I hope that this doesn’t creep you out too badly.

Grace,

Brian

In his weekly press conference this week, Detroit Lions head coach Rod Marinelli said:

I’ve repeatedly talked to them about, when we come in on Wednesday, it’s preparation. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we prepare and then the test on Sunday is easy. The test should be just fun if you’ve prepared. The worst thing is to not prepare. Then the test is not good, because you don’t know the answers. When you don’t know the answers, you don’t play well. So I keep working to try to sell them the preparation, every single day. Then we can go out and have a ball, let our talent go.

This is how I feel about Sundays, too, but my feelings relate to church, not football. When I have a good week preparing to preach, the Sunday that follows is almost always the most enjoyable day of the week. I find that delivering a sermon is the best, most enjoyable part of the process. I enjoy preparation, too, but that’s the part that feels like work. Preparation feels like work; delivery feels like fun.

When you’re preparing to preach, nobody sees it. Nobody knows how much time you spent reading your text, thinking about its meaning, asking interpretive questions of the text and researching their answers, praying for yourself and your people to receive and obey the truth, and working on how that truth applies here where we live. Nobody knows how much time you spent preparing; they only know if the sermon was “good.”

Or, not so good.

The things that make a sermon good—that it truthfully explains the message of scripture, is clear about how that scripture speaks to life as we live it, and is interesting—these are all completely decided in the study, not on the stage. When I wake up on Sunday morning and have the answers to these questions, then I can relax and enjoy Sunday because usually the sermon delivers itself.

If I don’t have the answers, then I have no right to feel good about anything. I haven’t done my job and therefore I deserve to be exposed.

Sure, sometimes you’re well prepared but things go bad—you feel ill, your voice goes hoarse, there is some technical problem, or interruption from the congregation—but those are rare. Usually the preacher’s problems in preaching are self-inflicted. At least mine are. A well-prepared preacher is the number one ingredient necessary for a good Sunday sermon.

In my first pastorate out of seminary, Sundays were hard. I did the same things to prepare that I do today, but I had not learned to trust God to use that preparation on Sunday morning. Therefore I was anxious, irritable, fearful, and uncaring. These words are not ones that describe the fruit of the Spirit, are they?

At some point, and I don’t know when this was, I learned a lesson similar to the one coach Marinelli preached to the media this week. Preparation is power. Have faith in it.

My study is the place where God speaks to me through the text of scripture. When I faithfully do the things associated with listening to his voice in the Bible, he faithfully prepares me to speak to his people. Then, unless I welcome sin into my life or God allows some test of faith to interrupt our worship, Sundays are a foregone conclusion. I expect God’s spirit to work through me, so I just try to stay out of the way.

I can honestly say now that Sundays are my favorite day of the week. I’m always tired at the end, but there is joy throughout the day. I get to spend time with my spiritual family. We put aside all our stuff and just focus on the only one that really matters—the Lord God who communicated to us in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ and his word, the Bible. This makes Sunday my most fun day.

I’ll see you then.

I have a 3rd generation iPod which has a 30GB hard drive. I bought it four years ago and it has just worked great for me. I took it running for most of those four years. Running is very hard on a hard drive based device. Still, it served me well and didn’t freak out too much despite the pounding the hard drive was taking. I replaced the battery on this thing about 2 years ago and that has extended its life and usefulness for me.

Until now.

Over the last week, my poor iPod has had a daily nervous breakdown from which it cannot recover. When it starts up, it gives me the Apple logo for a long time, then goes immediately to the folder-exclamation point icon. This icon is the poor little iPod’s way of screaming, “I’ve completely lost my mind! I can’t play any music or podcasts for you!”

I have tried to resurrect this thing as I’ve done before using iTunes’ restore feature. I have also used the Mac’s disk utility to check the disk. It supposedly found and corrected errors on the iPod’s hard drvie, but still does not work. I even erased the disk completely using disk utility. No help. Right now, only a straight jacket or a coffin is appropriate.

I have a two year old Treo 650 which works just fine, but since the iPod is dead, I’d really like to replace the phone and iPod with one of them there iPhones. I don’t really need this device. I could afford to buy it, but I have other financial priorities right now that preclude me from spending any money on the iPhone.

So, I turn to you, dear reader, to beg. First of all, if you are part of the Calvary Bible Church family, this begging is not for you. You pay my salary with your tithes and offerings and that’s all you should be doing for me. And, if you’re NOT giving regularly to CBC, you should be doing that, not donating to my iPhone fund. So, CBC people are out. Stop reading now, please.

If you are a member of my family and usually get me some kind of gift for Christmas, I urge you to contact Suzanne and donate money to her. I want you all to rally together and give whatever amount you might ordinarily spend on a Christmas gift for me into a pool that will help me get my dream phone. If you want that to be my birthday gift as well, that’s even better.

Finally, if you dear readers would like to donate any amount, that is much appreciated. You can do that very easily by clicking on this:

Again, I do not need this, so if you choose not to give, that’s completely cool. But, if you can shake loose a few pennies for me, that is very much appreciated.

Thanks for listening to me beg. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

This is a question of situational ethics.

Say that a physician or EMT walks into a public restroom because he or she really HAS GOT TO GO.

Right.
Now.

(Number one or number two? That’s your call. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it is completely urgent, reaching the breaking point, as it were.)

Upon entering this public restroom, the life-saving-ready person sees another person (of the same sex, let’s not complicate this) passing out on the floor. Instantly, this person’s medically-tuned spidey senses start tingling. He or she can see that the person on the floor is not breathing. The victim needs immediate life-saving intervention or s/he will die. It is an emergency.

But, it was an emergency of a different sort that caused the doctor, nurse, EMT, whatever to walk into the bathroom in the first place. So, what’s the next move?

Should you save the life and pee your pants or relieve yourself first so that you can be 100% focused on reviving this person. Then the victim will be able to get up again and wash his or her hands.

I turn to you, reader. You read my little posts all the time, but most of you never utter a peep in comments. Get over yourselves, click on that comment link and tell me what the right thing to do is. A life is (theoretically) at stake here.

[Note: although I know people in medicine, this is a completely fictional situation, one inspired by..., well, you don't want to know that. But don't project my wife into this. She has nothing to do with this story, except to be disgusted with me when she reads it.]