Category: Of Random Interest

Using Yahoo! Go

A friend of mine is work­ing at Yahoo and he men­tioned that I should real­ly give the spe­cial Yahoo pro­gram for cell phones a try (just browse to mobile.yahoo.com with your cell phone and you should be prompt­ed to install it). So I down­loaded it and he’s right — it’s awe­some!

One of its nifti­er fea­tures is that it’s super-easy to upload pic­tures direct­ly to Flickr from my cell phone. So I’ve just uploaded some stuff I’ve been sit­ting on for ages.

Any­way, expect to see some more ran­dom pic­tures from my cell phone now and then in addi­tion to the pho­tos Paula uploads to our fam­i­ly gallery

down­load klute movie

.free night­mare on elm street part 2 fred­dy s revenge a movie down­load

Love and Tolerance

Last night at Chi Alpha’s week­ly meet­ing we had a guest speak­er — mis­sion­ary Mark Orfi­la. He’s been serv­ing for over a decade in east­ern Europe and has been think­ing very deeply about Amer­i­can cul­tur­al val­ues and how they relate to the King­dom of God.

He said a lot of very help­ful things last night, but I think the most help­ful went along these lines (the thoughts are his but the words are mine):

If I had to choose between tol­er­ance and hatred, I’d choose tol­er­ance hands-down.

But we’re not fac­ing a bina­ry choice — we have a whole range of options avail­able to us. And tol­er­ance can’t be the ulti­mate good in a soci­ety for two rea­sons: one philo­soph­i­cal and one prac­ti­cal. There must be some­thing high­er of which tol­er­ance is a spe­cial case, because if tol­er­ance is the high­est good then you have a real prob­lem — how do you han­dle the intol­er­ant mem­bers of your own soci­ety? If you tol­er­ate them, then you allow intol­er­ance to flour­ish. If you don’t tol­er­ate them, then you pro­mote intol­er­ance your­self. Either way intol­er­ance sneaks into your soci­ety. That’s the philo­soph­i­cal approach. But there’s an even big­ger prac­ti­cal prob­lem. Who wants to be tol­er­at­ed? Don’t we all want more than to be put up with? Tol­er­ance is a neg­a­tive virtue — it’s about what we don’t do to peo­ple. I won’t hit you, I won’t insult you, I won’t stig­ma­tize you. It’s a pecu­liar inverse of the gold­en rule — tol­er­ance tells us not to do to oth­ers what we don’t want done to us. It cre­ates a dis­tance between us and nev­er forces us to cross it.

The prob­lem with tol­er­ance for a Chris­t­ian is not that it sets the bar too high but that it sets the bar too low. We are called to love one anoth­er; in fact, we are even called to love our ene­mies. And rather than mere­ly respect­ing the dis­tance between us, we are called to treat them the way we wish they would treat us. Tol­er­ance is a poor sub­sti­tute for love. If it’s the only offer on the table I’ll take it, but in most sit­u­a­tions we should demand more (espe­cial­ly of our­selves).

Thanks for the clear think­ing on a cru­cial sub­ject, Mark.

Scanning a Directory For PHP Errors

My fel­low web geeks might find this script, php-check down­load home on the range movie , use­ful. It recur­sive­ly scans a direc­to­ry check­ing PHP files for syn­tax errors.

Just copy it some­where in your path (like /usr/local/bin) and chmod it to 755.

I wrote the script because I edit PHP using Notepad++, so it’s easy for small typos to enter my scripts. I need­ed a quick way to scan a direc­to­ry after upload­ing revised files.
I wrote it in PHP so that those who need it will also know how to cus­tomize it.

[php]
#!/usr/bin/php
?php // php-check ver­sion 1.0 // recur­sive­ly scans a direc­to­ry for .php files and runs php ‑l on // them (php ‑l checks for PHP syn­tax errors) // revi­sions at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/archives/2007/10/31/scanning-a-directory-for-php-errors/ if (php_sapi_name()!=‘cli’) { die(“This util­i­ty can only be run from the com­mand line.\n”); } $counter=0; $errors=false; func­tion scan_dir($dir) { $counter=0; $dh=opendir($dir); while ($file=readdir($dh)) { if ($file==’.’ || $file==’..’) con­tin­ue; if (is_dir($dir.’/’.$file)) { $counter+=scan_dir($dir.’/’.$file); } else { if (substr($file, strlen($file) — 4) == ‘.php’) { $counter++; $output=shell_exec(“/usr/bin/php ‑l $dir/$file 2>&1”);
if (substr($output,0,2)!=‘No’) { // skips the “No syn­tax errors in …” mes­sage
$errors=true;
echo $out­put;
}
}

}
}
return $counter;
}
if ($argc!=2) {
die(“Usage: php-check dirname (usu­al­ly php-check .)\n”);
}

if (!is_dir($argv[1])) {
die(“Argument must be a direc­to­ry. The most com­mon usage is php-check .\n”);
}

$counter=scan_dir($argv[1]);

echo “$counter files checked\n”;
exit($errors);
?>
[/php]

This is a quick and dirty script — there are prob­a­bly some bugs in it. User beware.

If you find it help­ful, you might also want to check out scripts like PHP CodeSnif­fer

or PHP Beau­ti­fi­er.down­load robot chick­en star wars dvd

Me And The Mythbusters

I recent­ly sub­mit­ted a ques­tion to the Freako­nom­ics guys for an inter­view with the Myth­Busters.

They picked my ques­tion as the first one!

Here’s my ques­tion and their answer:

Me: Could you describe the brain­storm­ing process that goes into an episode? How far in advance do you begin plan­ning? Who sits in dur­ing those meet­ings?

ADAM: The usu­al crowd at a brain­storm­ing ses­sion is me, Jamie, Alice Dal­low (our pro­duc­er), and whichev­er researcher is doing the seg­ment we’re work­ing on — either Den­nis Kwon or Eric Haven. We also have an on-the-ground exec­u­tive pro­duc­er dur­ing an offi­cial “sto­ry meet­ing.” We usu­al­ly have one or maybe two of them before shoot­ing a myth, but dis­cus­sions about sto­ries can hap­pen all over the place, and at any time.

Often, we’ll ask for cer­tain para­me­ters as far as loca­tions or mate­ri­als, and as we dis­cov­er what’s pos­si­ble or not pos­si­ble, we’ll hone it down to what we’re actu­al­ly going to do. The show’s researchers are fan­tas­tic about find­ing the weird­est of things and experts, and Alice is bril­liant at keep­ing us on track. The dis­cus­sions can be like herd­ing cats — there’s a rib­ald, fun­ny atmos­phere, and we’ll range very far from the top­ic at hand.

Plan­ning can take any­where from a month to a day or two, depend­ing on the sched­ule. We’ve had crit­i­cal loca­tions fall through at the last minute, and need­ed to turn 180 degrees on a few hours’ notice. We’ll also flag dif­fi­cult sto­ries as far in advance as we think nec­es­sary. Some things, like get­ting per­mis­sion to film at Giants Sta­di­um for the Jim­my Hof­fa sto­ry, have tak­en the bet­ter part of a year to work out.

Then there’s the dis­cus­sions that Jamie and I have. We’ll often take a dif­fi­cult prob­lem home, think about it overnight, and maybe dis­cuss the prob­lems we see in it while dri­ving to a loca­tion. We also play devil’s advo­cate with each oth­er — if one of us has a good idea, the oth­er will poke as many holes in it as pos­si­ble, and in this way we try our best to shake out any prob­lems before we hit them.

JAMIE: This is, believe it or not, the most fun we have on the show. There is no under­es­ti­mat­ing the thrill of a big cat­a­stro­phe or explo­sion; but if you real­ly want to know what gets us going, it’s the brain­storm­ing. Once a top­ic has passed muster, some basic research has been done by our research team, and we are down to nut­ting it out, Adam and I swing into action — sort of. Usu­al­ly we go home first and think about it overnight, and then come in burst­ing with ideas. We set up in front of a dry erase board, and lay out any solu­tions we came up with by our­selves.

Amaz­ing­ly, as much as we are of dif­fer­ent tem­pera­ments, we quick­ly spot the best solu­tions and chip in to flesh the approach out. It becomes like play­ing Ping-Pong with ideas. Some­times it gets so intense that there is no time to com­plete sen­tences; it becomes a bunch of ges­tic­u­la­tions, some pieces of words or phras­es, and then, when we come out on the oth­er end, the approach is fleshed out. We call it the “Myth­Busters Mind­meld.” To any­one lis­ten­ing, it is gib­ber­ish, but it allows us to plow through a huge amount of design­ing in no time (which is what we have a lot of on the show).

Read the rest of the inter­view.

Some Thoughts On Servant Leadership

At a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence in St. Louis I just heard Dick Schroed­er use an inter­est­ing phrase to com­pli­ment some­one — “he puts ‘us’ before ‘me’.” Here are some off-the-cuff and unpol­ished thoughts inspired by that phrase:

“Us before me.” What a beau­ti­ful phrase to describe ser­vant lead­er­ship.

“Us” puts the lead­er­ship into ser­vant­hood: “us before me” leads to the over­all good of the group where­as “you before me” can lead to the detri­ment of the group.

To be clear, the Bible does com­mand us to “in humil­i­ty con­sid­er oth­ers bet­ter than our­selves” (Philip­pi­ans 2:3). Does­n’t this lead direct­ly to “you before me”?

Yes. It does. But the prac­ti­cal ques­tion for me as a leader is how to be self-sac­ri­fi­cial in a way that hon­ors my oblig­a­tions to those I am serv­ing. And I have learned that there is a healthy way to pri­or­i­tize oth­ers and a destruc­tive way to pri­or­i­tize oth­ers.

To serve as ful­ly as pos­si­ble there is a cer­tain amount of self-main­te­nance that must take place. Bound­aries must be estab­lished and main­tained. Recre­ation and sab­bat­i­cals must be incor­po­rat­ed. Growth and learn­ing have to take place.

All of these things are self-serv­ing. They require us to say no to oth­ers and yes to our­selves. At times, we wind up say­ing “me before you today because I want to be able to serve you tomor­row”.

But at the same time, all of these things flow from a mature under­stand­ing of “you before me” — putting our fol­low­ers’ long-term good above their short-term desires. For an orga­ni­za­tion, a leader who says “us before me” builds strength. A leader who naively/hyperspiritually says “you before me” leads the orga­ni­za­tion to implo­sion (and like­ly to high lead­er­ship turnover).

Clear­ly, there is the poten­tial for “us before me” to become a pre­text for putting “me before you.” The anti­dote is to keep expand­ing our def­i­n­i­tion of “us”. When­ev­er we begin to sus­pect that our “us” is too com­fort­able, we need to rede­fine the group we are serv­ing in a larg­er way, and con­tin­ue to put “us before me.”

And so a big thanks to Dick Schroed­er for giv­ing me my new favorite phrase: “us before me”. It will prob­a­bly be my favorite for at least a week. 😉

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Zeitgeist

A friend of mine asked me to watch the first sec­tion of Zeit­geist (a movie you can watch for free on the inter­net at http://zeitgeistmovie.com/) and give him some per­spec­tive on it.

Here goes:

I don’t recall ever hav­ing run across so many fac­tu­al inac­cu­ra­cies in such a short span of time. I doubt I even caught them all — they were fly­ing fast and furi­ous.

I’ll start with a few that are easy for an untrained layper­son to see right away. There’s some oth­er stuff he said that I know is false, but demon­strat­ing it is less easy. It becomes “my expert you’ve nev­er heard of” ver­sus “his expert you’ve nev­er heard of” with me say­ing “my expert is bet­ter than his expert — trust me.” So I’ll keep this list focused on stuff any­one can eas­i­ly ver­i­fy on their own.

One eas­i­ly-checked fact that he builds his argu­ment on is that the South­ern Cross is the real inspi­ra­tion for the cross of Jesus (watch from 17:35 through 19:03). Three prob­lems with this:
a) The South­ern Cross is a mod­ern inven­tion — not an ancient con­stel­la­tion. Check http://www.windows.ucar.edu/the_universe/crux.html and http://www.fillingthesky.com/constellationhistory.html
b) The South­ern Cross is not vis­i­ble from where the New Tes­ta­ment was writ­ten. In the North­ern Hemi­sphere you have to be below 30 degrees lat­i­tude to see it. The New Tes­ta­ment was writ­ten from Jerusalem on north.
c) It’s hard to see how a con­stel­la­tion that did­n’t exist and could­n’t be seen inspired the sto­ry of Jesus when Romans actu­al­ly killed peo­ple on cross­es all the time. Is he seri­ous­ly sug­gest­ing that the Romans did­n’t actu­al­ly cru­ci­fy peo­ple?

Miss­ing such a basic fact does­n’t inspire con­fi­dence in the more eso­teric, less eas­i­ly-checked facts he uses to make his entire case. There are oth­er eas­i­ly-checked facts he dis­torts. Two from the Bible struck me.

In the time range 23:38 — 25:20 the movie claims that Jesus is a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the astro­log­i­cal sign of Pisces. Towards the end of this sec­tion, the nar­ra­tor states that Jesus’ dis­ci­ples asked him when he would cel­e­brate the next passover with them him after he is gone and that Jesus’ answer in Luke 22:10 was code lan­guage for Aquar­ius (the next age of the Zodi­ac). This is easy enough to check — and it turns out to be a lie. Luke 22:10 is about the passover they are cel­e­brat­ing that night, not the next meal they will share after his res­ur­rec­tion. That isn’t a minor dif­fer­ence — it under­mines his entire inter­pre­ta­tion.

Anoth­er exam­ple of his will­ing­ness to dis­tort the Bible to make his point occurs around time mark­er 21:10, when he says that the Bible teach­es that Jesus comes from heav­en wear­ing a crown of thorns, which rep­re­sent the rays of the sun. He quotes John 19:5 to sup­port this point. Look it up. There’s not even a hint of Jesus descend­ing from heav­en any­where in this pas­sage. He’s walk­ing from one place to anoth­er — not descend­ing from the clouds as the nar­ra­tor claims.

These two instances aren’t nit­pick­ing — these are very eas­i­ly checked state­ments in the best­selling book of all time which is always avail­able for instant fact-check­ing on the inter­net at places such as Bible Gate­way. If he did­n’t even check these ref­er­ences that key parts of his argu­ment rely on, then how much stock can we place in his ref­er­ences to obscure ancient Egypt­ian texts that only schol­ars have ready access to?

He’s evi­dent­ly received crit­i­cism along this line, because he felt com­pelled to give some doc­u­men­ta­tion for his use of ancient texts at http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/GMappendix.htm

Just look through it. Pay atten­tion to the sto­ries of Jesus in the right col­umn (you are pre­sum­ably more famil­iar with them). I think you’ll be sur­prised at how flaky that list is.

Bot­tom line: Zeit­geist is very imag­i­na­tive, but that’s about it.

UPDATE 2/24/2008: This post is still gen­er­at­ing com­ments. It’s been six months since I wrote this post, and since then a help­ful review by Ben With­er­ing­ton has been post­ed — The Zeit­geist of the ‘Zeit­geist Movie’. Look to it for a more detailed rebut­tal of the movie’s claims.

Congratulations, George O. Wood

While I was busy tour­ing Mon­terey Bay Aquar­i­um with my fam­i­ly and eat­ing duri­an, most of the rest of the Assem­blies of God was in Indi­anapo­lis for our bien­ni­al min­is­te­r­i­al gath­er­ing.

George Wood has been elect­ed Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent of the Assem­blies of God. I hon­est­ly did­n’t think he had a chance — our move­ment is still pret­ty anti-intel­lec­tu­al and he has two earned doc­tor­ates. In addi­tion, I thought he might be per­ceived as part of the “old guard” in a time of great change. I’m delight­ed that I was wrong — he’ll be a great leader. He’s a very flex­i­ble thinker and sees both the strengths and weak­ness­es of our move­ment pret­ty clear­ly.

Alton Gar­ri­son was elect­ed the new Assis­tant Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent (I expect­ed he would take one of the two top spots) — and he’s a very savvy leader. He’s much more well-read and inno­v­a­tive than most peo­ple expect an evan­ge­list from Arkansas to be. He’ll be a great voice to have at the table.

John Palmer is the new Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary — I had expect­ed him to become the exec­u­tive direc­tor of AG US Mis­sions instead. I’ve nev­er met him, but I’ve heard noth­ing but good things. Tim and Julie Smith in par­tic­u­lar have giv­en me very encour­ag­ing reports about him. He seems like a great addi­tion to the team.

Zol­lie Smith was the most sur­pris­ing elec­tion. He’s my new boss’s boss (direc­tor of US Mis­sions, tak­ing the posi­tion I expect­ed John Palmer to land), and I’ve been hear­ing good things about him for years. His elec­tion was a mile­stone for the Assem­blies of God — he’s our first non-Cau­casian exec­u­tive offi­cer.

I’m very excit­ed about the lead­er­ship team that came out of this Gen­er­al Coun­cil. It bodes well for our future as a move­ment. We picked some extreme­ly com­pe­tent peo­ple.

Oh — and the busi­ness ses­sions were feisty this year. If you’re into that sort of thing, you might want to check them out

.

A Missionary As General Superintendent?

The way the Assem­blies of God works, our next Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent will almost cer­tain­ly be or have been the pas­tor of a megachurch (I add “have been” because dis­trict offi­cials come pri­mar­i­ly from these ranks).

In fact, some are clam­or­ing for chang­ing our lead­er­ship mod­el to require that our Gen­er­al Superinden­dent be required to serve as pas­tor while serv­ing as our nation­al leader. There’s mer­it to the idea, but I’ve always had a notion in the back of my head that I’ve want­ed to see tried instead: elect a mis­sion­ary as Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent.

The Assem­blies of God is explod­ing world­wide, part­ly due to the lead­er­ship of our mis­sion­ar­ies. Turn­ing to these proven and capa­ble lead­ers seems like com­mon sense to me, espe­cial­ly since we are increas­ing­ly real­iz­ing that Amer­i­ca is a mis­sion field just like any oth­er. We need some­one who is able to sep­a­rate the way they want to do things from the way things need to be done — the very essence of an effec­tive mis­sion­ary.

Why not some­one who has led a nation to revival? None of our state­side lead­ers has that kind of resume, but sev­er­al of our mis­sion­ar­ies have rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence.

Why not some­one who has proven that they can func­tion with lead­ers they did not select them­selves? This, after all, is a key aspect of the Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent posi­tion to which megachurch pas­tors are unac­cus­tomed.

Why not some­one who is accus­tomed to train­ing and coach­ing lead­ers on the ground instead of try­ing to run the whole show them­selves?

The only oth­er can­di­date I think is as well-suit­ed for the job is a dis­trict super­in­ten­dent who has led his dis­trict to health and growth. I expect that Leslie Welk (North­west) and Don Gif­ford (Indi­ana) will both receive nom­i­na­tions on this basis. Jim Brad­dy (Nor Cal / Nev) might also — but I’m a mem­ber of his dis­trict and so I don’t have a good sense of how he’s per­ceived out­side our nar­row lit­tle world.

How­ev­er, I’m bet­ting that Alton Gar­ri­son (for­mer Sup of Arkansas) is ulti­mate­ly going to get the nod. He’s led a megachurch, led a dis­trict, and is pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship on the nation­al lev­el as the direc­tor of AG US Mis­sions.

So there’s a good chance that we’ll get some­one from AGUSM into the top spot — but not because of his con­nec­tion with mis­sions.

As to the oth­er spots I have no idea. In addi­tion to the nom­i­nees I men­tioned above, I’m pret­ty sure John Lin­dell will get nom­i­nat­ed. He may even let his name stand (although I sus­pect this depends on whether or not he can con­tin­ue to pas­tor at James Riv­er). Dary Northrop will prob­a­bly be nom­i­nat­ed. Dan Bet­zer will be nom­i­nat­ed. Bret Allen might get nom­i­nat­ed but he will decline. I would not be sur­prised at all if John Palmer gets nom­i­nat­ed (espe­cial­ly for the AGUSM lead­er­ship role if Alton is elect­ed Gen Sup), but I have no idea if he will accept.

Beyond that, I real­ly don’t know. There are a lot of poten­tial can­di­dates out there, and our desire to avoid the appear­ance of pol­i­tics means that we nev­er know for sure who will be nom­i­nat­ed and who will allow their names to stand.

Speak­ing of avoid­ing the appear­ance of pol­i­tics — the only way to real­ly avoid pol­i­tics is to select our lead­ers ran­dom­ly. Any solu­tion involv­ing vot­ing is extreme­ly polit­i­cal and the only ques­tion is whether or not those pol­i­tics will be pub­lic. In our move­ment we’ve decid­ed that hid­den pol­i­tics are prefer­able to trans­par­ent ones, and more and more of us are unhap­py with the result.

How­ev­er it shakes out, the Assem­blies is in for a wild ride at Gen­er­al Coun­cil this year. Too bad I’m going to miss it…

Electing A New General Superintendent

A friend of mine (Jay New­land) just sent me a fas­ci­nat­ing site talk­ing about the future of the Assem­blies of God: Future AG.

Sites like these are con­tro­ver­sial in our move­ment because we wish to avoid the appear­ance of pol­i­tics — it seems too tawdry for us. But our goal is not to be non-polit­i­cal (as though that were pos­si­ble), but to be wise in our selec­tion process. Con­ver­sa­tions such as those at Future AG can help us make wis­er choic­es, and are there­fore a good thing.

One post was extreme­ly help­ful to me, and so I share it in the hope it will be help­ful to oth­ers as well.

Here is how it will work. When we arrive we will be asked to nom­i­nate some­one for the posi­tion of gen­er­al super­in­ten­dent fol­lowed by the assis­tant gen­er­al super­in­ten­dent, gen­er­al sec­re­tary, AG World Mis­sions exec­u­tive direc­tor and mem­bers of the Exec­u­tive Pres­bytery. Any ordained min­is­ter can be nom­i­nat­ed.

In the past this has been done by writ­ing someone’s name down on a piece of paper, how­ev­er, vot­ing this year will be con­duct­ed elec­tron­i­cal­ly. This should speed up busi­ness con­sid­er­ably. For exam­ple, fol­low­ing an elec­tion results should be avail­able in 10 min­utes rather than the hour or more it has tak­en in the past.

With these changes, it is impor­tant that you reg­is­ter ear­ly. Go to www.ag.org and you can reg­is­ter online before August 3rd. If you miss that date make sure to reg­is­ter imme­di­ate­ly upon arrival.

Vot­ing will require: Reg­is­tra­tion, Vot­er ID Badge, Vot­er Guide­book

Vot­ing del­e­gates will receive a vot­ing num­ber on the back of their reg­is­tra­tion cards, which will give them access to the vot­ing machine.

If one nom­i­nee receives two-thirds of the bal­lots cast by the del­e­gates at the gen­er­al coun­cil, a win­ner will be declared. That is what hap­pened in 2001 and 2005 when Trask was re-elect­ed.

If no one receives the two-thirds major­i­ty, the vot­ing is lim­it­ed to the top 15 vote-get­ters.

If that does­n’t pro­duce a win­ner, the field is cut to the top three.

You might also wish to check out http://www.agleadershipchange.blogspot.com/

Information Overload?

Every so often I’ll hear some­one men­tion in pass­ing that we are over­loaded with infor­ma­tion com­pared to our ances­tors. I’m sure that’s true if you mea­sure “infor­ma­tion” in a very spe­cif­ic way, but I’m not sure it’s as true as peo­ple think it is.

Augus­tine, the 4th cen­tu­ry bish­op, left behind over 5,000,000 words in writ­ing.

That’s 5 mil­lion words.

Many nov­els have 50,000 (the range varies depend­ing on the genre).

He left behind the equiv­a­lent of 100 nov­els. And he’s just one author.

For the edu­cat­ed elite, the ancient world was rife with infor­ma­tion. And, by and large, the stuff they read was more impor­tant than the “infor­ma­tion” we’re so proud of. Most of what we devote our brain­pow­er to pro­cess­ing is from news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines, and tele­vi­sion… the knowl­edge equiv­a­lent of emp­ty calo­ries.

For all the “infor­ma­tion” we each have at our beck and call, not many of us could muster up 5 mil­lion words.

And since our point in say­ing that we’re so over­loaded com­pared to the ancients is that we’ve got so much more stuff to process than they did, maybe we should­n’t be so smug. After all — we don’t real­ly process the “infor­ma­tion” that bom­bards us. We rush through it and prompt­ly for­get as much as pos­si­ble to get ready for the next del­uge.

The ancients were read­ing and reread­ing and rereread­ing sub­stan­tive works and actu­al­ly under­stand­ing them. And so Augus­tine was able to write 5,000,000 words that peo­ple still mull over today.

We have no idea what infor­ma­tion over­load feels like. If we can­celed our news­pa­per sub­scrip­tions, threw away all our mag­a­zines, and replaced all that read­ing time with reread­ing a hand­ful of sol­id books until we under­stood them thor­ough­ly, then we’d have some inkling of what true infor­ma­tion over­load is.

And since we’ve got so many years of insights beyond Augus­tine to avail our­selves of, and the mod­ern peer-reviewed sys­tem of jour­nals to draw from, we’d be very jus­ti­fied in say­ing that we wres­tle with infor­ma­tion in a way that the ancients nev­er did.

But not now.