like edison

When I was a kid I dreamed of being an inventor.  The idea of taking materials that weren't all that valuable on their own and assembling something valuable out of them was extremely appealing.  As a result, stories like that of Thomas Edison's were very appealing.

I remember hearing about all of the things Edison created, with over 1000 patents to his name, and the underlying philosophy that was part of his persona.  He is credited with the assertion, "Genius: one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."  I remember visualizing him sitting in a dark room trying material after material in his light bulb until something worked.  This whole ideal perfectly fit the philosophy of a nation where most would at least claim to believe in meritocracy.  Intelligence is just hard work, and intelligence that doesn't work can't be called genius.

While I don't fault the focus on effort, as it is a necessary ingredient to success, this philosophy misses a ton of what made Edison successful.  Because the story has historically stopped here many have been led to believe that his secret was simply trying hard, when there was a bit more to it.  Edison brought a bit of intelligence and a lot of elbow grease to the job, and that's all it took to get all of those patents.  So, all that is stopping you is the elbow grease.


In more recent years Edison's reputation has taken a bit of a beating due to what is viewed as his mistreatment of Nikola Tesla.  While I don't know enough to know whether this new reputation is deserved, what I do know is that it shines light on where that perspiration came from.  Edison was right that the genius of his success was in hard work, but it is not appreciated that he hired a lot of that work.  There isn't anything wrong with this, except that the team and their work is always forgotten in order to give credit simply to the guy who hired them.

Also, this illuminates (Ha!) that sometimes one guy working really hard isn't enough.  Some jobs require a team to be successful.  This doesn't fit into a narrative that celebrates our individualistic ideals, so it is scrapped.

I wish I understood all of this earlier, because this is extremely helpful to understanding how the world works today.  If you're fortunate you could be successful as some guy working by himself, but it's unlikely.  You're certainly not going to emulate Edison levels of success that way.  To be successful like Edison isn't just to work hard, but to get others to work hard as well toward that same goal.

I don't actually feel the need to be as successful in this world as Edison today, but since I did aspire to that in my youth I wish I understood what that really meant.

provide a boy

Golden and I both always wanted a boy and a girl because that is what we both grew up with.  We didn't, and I still don't, think of either as being easier or harder to raise, or more or less fun to have around.  Golden had another pressure that I never understood, though.  She felt that she needed to provide me a boy.

I wish she never saw this as a burden, because I always considered the idea silly. Since I never got the impression that it was a big deal to my dad, and it isn't a big deal to me, I always assumed the idea of having someone carry on your name was a dying artifact of a bygone era that modern people didn't care about.  While we did have a boy--and a wonderful one at that--I wouldn't have cared if we only had girls, other than that I would have felt bad for Golden for the burden.

In the past few years I have actually heard a few men make comments about this that have shocked me.  They implied that having a boy was much better than having a girl.  There are actually men who care about this!?  And not only that, I've heard this from some who consider themselves "progressive"! Unless I felt pressure from my parents on this I cannot fathom it being a huge deal what gender my kids were.

We're happy with our boy and our girl.  I can honestly say I would be just as happy if we had two boys or two girls, though.  We love them both!

social needs

My pastor has gotten much of his education in Psychology and Counseling, so has taught a few times that there are six dimensions under which people's needs can be defined.  Those are spiritual, emotional, social, sexual, family, and financial.  I don't know if this is based on any real research, but it is indeed a convenient way of categorizing needs.


There are times that I feel like most of my needs are atypical.  I don't know what really counts as typical or atypical, though.  A great example, and most of what has been on my mind, are social needs.  I just seem to have different social drives than many other people I speak with.

While it has happened, I have very rarely in my life experienced a need to be out among people.  Usually when it has that is because I have been home alone for more than a day.  When I was fourteen living with my family at my grandparents' house I remember wanting to get out to social events, but that was more an issue of circumstance than a reflection of a strong social need.

I do have a strong social need, but that is for people I can have in-depth and analytical conversations.  To do something like this, though, requires a connection.

Something I have noticed is that I can get standoffish to people I detect have strong social needs.  When people start talking about wanting to get together on the spur of the moment, and I don't already have a strong connection with them, my gut reaction is to view them as stealing my precious time resource without paying me something I can use.  I feel overwhelmed very quickly around those sorts of people.

This is a problem because I am starting to understand that to maintain friendships you have a good connection with you need to care about others' needs as well.  I can understand those characters who get older and shut in and don't want to interact with others because that is one of my tendencies.  It's easy to think in the short term that I should only do things that directly align with my needs, but then eighty-year-old me will have few close friendships.

teaching in church

"Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly."- James 3:1

I have been the primary teacher in our Sunday School class for just short of four years now, along with rotating through teaching a men's class on Wednesday nights for the past couple of years.  Many of the classes I have taught have been very thin in attendance (I've taught a solitary person more than once), but many have been well-attended by very intelligent people.  That might sound like bragging, but what what has struck me over and over the past few years is how unqualified I am, and how ridiculous it is that I presume to be able to teach many of the people who regularly fill the seats.  I don't have more knowledge or experience.  All I have is that I put in time to research and prepare a lesson every week.  Just about anyone could do that.

The reason I teach is not skill or a love for teaching.  I'm not a great speaker.  What drives me is the fact that it seems like a waste of time if everyone takes the time to show up and the topic of discussion is either shallow or not well researched.  Why even show up, then?


In light of the statement above from James, it is scary what I don't know.  How can I teach when there are so many questions that I don't know let alone the answers?  There are passages of Scripture that flat-out confound, and there are realities of life I am not close to grasping.  People ask hard questions in class and pose difficult scenarios, as they should.  There is a limit to my knowledge, and the a big theme of the last five years for me has been realizing how much I still need to understand about the Bible and doctrine.  This being the case, how do I keep from leading people down wrong paths on this issue or the next?

Really, the only thing I know to keep myself in line is something I mentioned in class a few months ago.  If I get to the end of class and haven't mentioned how the passage we're looking at points to Christ, then something is wrong.  I pray that there aren't other things that I state wrongly along the way.

conspiracy theory, take 2

Years ago I wrote a blog post where I was very sarcastic toward people who held to conspiracy theories. That is not something that I would write again today, as I have realized in retrospect that the tone was somewhat detestable and more than a little self-righteous. If I haven't repented of this before, consider this my repentance now. That was a vain approach, and it wasn't the only vain thing I wrote in that era.

I have given a lot of thought to conspiracy theories since, however.

My issue with conspiracy theories has long been that they are intellectually lazy. The approach takes the form that I believe the world is a certain way, but the objective evidence suggests otherwise, so I decide that the objective evidence is just what some secret and powerful group of people want everyone else to believe. It exchanges a logical approach for storytelling, and it implies that anecdotal evidence is more valid than quantitative evidence.  It also appeals to the human desire to be superior to others since I get to be part of the small group of people who have figured out the way the world really works.

The mathematical take on this is that a true conspiracy with many members would be difficult-to-impossible to maintain, but as the number of people involved shrinks the potential for a secret conspiracy to be maintained increases.  So, a secret cartel in some industry that requires ten or twenty people to keep a secret is logically feasible, whereas a secret but huge cabal of thousands necessary to convincingly fake the moon landing or hide the fact that the earth is flat from the populace is not logically feasible.

The problem is, a lot of people whose opinions and intellect I respect do buy into specific conspiracy theories. The list of people I respect who I know believe in some conspiracy theory or another has grown significantly in the past few months. I don't know what to do with that fact. It bothers me because my respect for them is challenged, but then I still see the other areas of their lives and intellect that are worthy of respect. It's a difficult thing to reconcile.

So, the way things are now, if I hear someone relay their opinion that some conspiracy theory is true my reaction is one of two things. If it's a small conspiracy it is to consider the greater-than-zero odds that the theory is accurate. If it's a large conspiracy it is to do my absolute best not to let that theory tarnish my respect for that person. So, I'm doing my level best not to hold Fox Mulder in disrespect, but it's a serious challenge!

feature i wish netflix had

This is very much a first world problems post, but they happen.

A little under a year ago we cut the cord on cable.  Between Netflix, YouTube, and an over-the-air recorder (Tablo), Golden and I get most of what we want to watch..  However, I am sure the kids might prefer to have more ready access to the Disney and Nick channels.  One thing that gets on my nerves more now that we rely on it, though, is Netflix's impossible-to-navigate interface.

At first blush, the Netflix interface looks great.  It's clean and attractive.  It does a decent job of recommending things we'll probably want to see.  However, it is a major source of frustration for the way I want to use it.

The way I want to use Netflix is that I want to be able to go out searching for things I might like to see when I have spare time to investigate.  Then, I want to tag a movie or a show as "Something only I will like" or "Something to watch with Golden and I" or "Kid's shows" or "Good for watching with the family over the holidays."  What Netflix offers me instead is the ability to add the show or movie to a single list.  We have decided at times not to try to find something to watch on Netflix because we couldn't easily find something that fell into one of those categories on the spot.

This idea could be expanded upon as well.  As a parent it would be great if I could tag shows as "Only play once I enter a code" or take the opposite approach of disallowing everything unless I have tagged it as allowed.  It would also be nice to be able to tag movies in this way that are not yet on streaming, but might be some day.

A year ago I looked into whether I could write something like this myself using the public APIs Netflix allows developers to use.  I found that this may have been possible in the past, but they recently locked down what is truly accessible through their APIs to block what they viewed as competing services from using their data/system.

I also looked into submitting this request directly to Netflix because I imagine a lot of people would like a system like what I describe, and it honestly would not be very difficult to build.  It turns out that Netflix does not have a support email address to send these requests to, and only has an online chat function which is never active when I have time to submit my request.

So, I post my request here.  Maybe at some point someone in Netflix Product Management will be doing a Google search for desired features, run across this post, and decide that it isn't such a bad idea.  That's my only real hope for getting this incredibly useful feature added to the product that I subscribe to and use with some regularity.

melancholy songs

I'm not usually drawn to melancholy songs, but every once in a while I'll lock onto one and listen to it to death.  When I was in high school it was Elle G. by The Newsboys.



In my twenties I could not stop listening to the Johnny Cash cover of Hurt.



Oddly enough, the melancholy song I've been going to lately is an old one rather than a new one.  It's the Gary Jules cover of Mad World.


For whatever reason, these particular songs are the sad ones I decided I wanted to listen to when I want to listen to a sad song.  The songs themselves feel like they have more substance than a run-of-the-mill sad song, but that might be me rationalizing after I've decided I like a song.

Do you have any that serve this same function?