From An Email I Sent My Students Earlier Today

It’ll be like hav­ing that new car smell waft­ing around you all day long. Sort of like a pleas­ant body odor except not so weird.

Guilty As Charged

From a phone con­ver­sa­tion yes­ter­day: “[Our mutu­al friend] told me about your con­ver­sa­tion. Glen, only you would think to mock some­one who had just tried to kill them­selves.” In my defense, I was quite fun­ny (and the humor was well-received: the psych wards of hos­pi­tals are such drea­ry places).

I need the word for…

While lying abed this morn­ing, a ques­tion popped into my mind: “You know how some­times things go sour abrupt­ly and you have this detached sense of watch­ing your life col­lapse in slow motion? What’s the fam­i­ly-friend­ly word for that?”

There are over 500,000 words in the Eng­lish lan­guage, and most of us have nev­er heard 80% of them. Take didap­per, for exam­ple. It’s a real word (a small grebe as it turns out), but you’ve like­ly nev­er even heard it. You are no doubt an artic­u­late speak­er with a wide-rang­ing vocab­u­lary, and yet you could­n’t pick a didap­per out of a line­up if it mugged you. Grebe is just five let­ters and yet if I played it in Scrab­ble you’d make me whip out a dic­tio­nary to prove it was real.

There are hun­dreds of thou­sands of words just like that. There must be one for this! Every­one I’ve asked knows exact­ly the feel­ing I’m describ­ing, and yet they can’t think of a polite name for it.

In case you’re still con­fused about that feel­ing, here are some oth­er descrip­tions:

  • the sick­ly feel­ing that drowns your mind when you remem­ber that you left your presentation/homework/wallet at home
  • the sen­sa­tion of your bow­els plum­met­ing to your knees as you real­ize you’re not alone when you thought you were
  • the instant your mind achieves total calm and with per­fect clar­i­ty gazes upon your mis­take in all its splen­dor
  • the sud­den jolt that runs through your body at the sound of a shot­gun round being cham­bered unex­pect­ed­ly

That feel­ing. It’s not fear, although fear often fol­lows on its heels. It’s not surprise–surprise is hav­ing some­thing unex­pect­ed hap­pen whether good or bad. This is the sen­sa­tion that fol­lows sur­prise as you begin to process the event and real­ize that it is very, very bad.

Most emo­tions are des­ti­na­tions (the state of hap­pi­ness or sor­row, for instance), this one is more of a jour­ney.

What’s the word?

Things Which Interested Glen Last Week

Things I book­marked last week on del.icio.us.

Dis­claimer: these links are post­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly using the excel­lent yawd hack and are mere­ly things that were inter­est­ing enough to book­mark for future reference–I may or may not agree with the views expressed by the linked pages. In fact, I may not have even read them yet.

More Holiday Happenings

After I post­ed last night’s entry I was filled with even more mem­o­ries of the hol­i­days.

  • Home cook­ing. Home Cajun cook­ing.
  • Eat­ing at the Steam­boat for our anniver­sary. Tasty beyond belief.
  • Teach­ing my nephew Rick why you should nev­er lose at Tic-Tac-Toe. Also, reduc­ing niece Rebec­ca to whin­ing because I would­n’t “go easy on her” while demon­strat­ing my mad Tic-Tac-Toe skil­lz to a suit­ably impressed Rick.
  • Read­ing Sol­dier, Ask Not as an adult and real­iz­ing the hero is some­one oth­er than I thought it was when I first read it as a kid.
  • Being a mis­sion­ary table host for the stu­dents from FSU Chi Alpha when the assigned dis­cus­sion top­ic was sex­u­al puri­ty. There was so much bois­ter­ous laugh­ter at our table that we got a dirty look from one table and a snide com­ment from anoth­er, “Do you see how that table is laugh­ing over there? They don’t take sex seri­ous­ly.” To which my reply was, “I find humor in every­thing I val­ue greatly–laughter is one way of delight­ing in some­thing pre­cious. Besides, if you can’t laugh at some­thing as ridicu­lous as sex you are seri­ous­ly humor-chal­lenged.” In the oth­er table’s defense, how­ev­er, we were hav­ing a dis­rup­tive­ly good time.
  • Find­ing out that many of my for­mer RUi stu­dents real­ly enjoyed my ses­sions and remem­bered them in sur­pris­ing detail.
  • See­ing how many Chi Alphas are spread­ing into the elite schools. One cou­ple I helped dis­ci­ple is head­ing to estab­lish a min­istry at Cor­nell and I met anoth­er chap head­ing to Brown (his bril­liant sup­port-rais­ing mot­to: “What can you do for Brown?”). Of Amer­i­ca’s extreme­ly pres­ti­gious schools, that makes staff-sup­port­ed chap­ters at Stan­ford, George­town, MIT, Brown, Yale and Cor­nell. We’re mak­ing major progress on that front.
  • Chat­ting with Gene Bre­it­en­bach about the recent intel­li­gent design court case (he’s a huge fan of the way the case was decid­ed).
  • Real­iz­ing how stark the imbal­ance is between Chi Alpha Xan­ga users and the more enlight­ened Chi Alpha Word­Press crowd. I may have to post an arti­cle on that some­day (but only if I want to endure a good-natured web fight, espe­cial­ly since my wife is a Xan­gan).
  • Dana scream­ing “Home!” with delight when we stepped back through the door of our apart­ment.

Holiday Highlights

As always, we spent Christ­mas in Lou­siana. In addi­tion, I got to spend around 14 hours in a car dri­ving from Lafayette, LA to Louisville, KY for The World Mis­sions Sum­mit. Near­ly 4,000 col­lege stu­dents from Chi Alpha groups across Amer­i­ca gath­ered to con­sid­er their role in God’s glob­al plan. And then I got to spend 14 hours dri­ving back again.
Some high­lights from the trip:

  • Get­ting loot for Christ­mas, includ­ing Munchkin.
  • Hav­ing Dana decide that dad­dy was her favorite for a lit­tle while.
  • Watch­ing my par­ents final­ly get broad­band inter­net ser­vice. Also, fix­ing com­put­ers for both my par­ents and my in-laws.
  • Dis­cov­er­ing that Steve Barke has a snore that would cause a dead per­son to search for ear plugs. Also, pur­chas­ing ear plugs.
  • Lis­ten­ing to J. Rufus Fears talk about Win­ston Churchill for 12 hours. I’ve long admired Churchill based on what lit­tle I knew about him–now that I know more I’m astound­ed. He was among the great­est of all time.
  • Hang­ing out with Greg for 14 hours in a car.
  • Dis­cov­er­ing that there are whole stretch­es of road in the South which only receive coun­try and/or rap sta­tions.
  • Chat­ting with Lind­sey and Nic­ho­lette about their upcom­ing moves to join us. They’re both such great people–Paula and I can’t wait for them to be here!
  • Meet­ing Will Phillips. He was every bit as enter­tain­ing in per­son as I had hoped he would be. For some rea­son he thinks he out-geeks me. Some­day I may have to dis­abuse him of that notion (I con­tribute to Wikipedia, for cry­ing out loud).
  • See­ing my old bud Randy Jumper again. We were class­mates at AGTS and have kept in touch dig­i­tal­ly since. Nice to have a face-to-face again.
  • Dis­cov­er­ing that Stan­ford frosh John Sill­cox can focus out of each eye sep­a­rate­ly. Freaky.
  • Way cool wor­ship in the morn­ing. In an odd turn of events, the morn­ing ser­vices were con­sis­tent­ly 5 to 7 times bet­ter than the evening ser­vices.
  • See­ing over 650 stu­dents make a one-year com­mitt­ment to mis­sions with the option for a life­time exten­sion. Woohoo! And they weren’t just sign­ing up for the easy places, either. A lot of closed coun­tries are in for a big sur­prise.
  • Watch­ing the amaz­ing lev­el of panache with which the Ascent (a Chi Alpha staff event) was pulled off. Know­ing that Belkas Lehmann and I had planned the whole thing made it extra-spe­cial.
  • Get­ting a free copy of Full Gospel, Frac­tured Minds. I’m enjoy­ing it so far, and I’ll post a review when I’m done. Big thanks to Jer­ry Gib­son for hook­ing me up.
  • Ran­dom­ly walk­ing around Louisville at dark look­ing for food (which I final­ly dis­cov­ered at a gas sta­tion).
  • Final­ly watch­ing The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en.
  • Watch­ing The Fan­tas­tic Four and final­ly real­iz­ing that they’re the four ele­ments.
  • Hav­ing Dana behave on both flights.

Funniest Subject Line In A Spam Email

I just returned to the office after Christ­mas and The World Mis­sions Sum­mit (details forth­com­ing) and I’m pro­cess­ing the gazil­lion emails I had wait­ing in my inbox. Fun­ni­est sub­ject line so far? How A Man Can Do It Like A Les­bian. I actu­al­ly chuck­led as I was hit­ting the delete key.

Encyclopedia Smackdown

In yet anoth­er vin­di­ca­tion of Wikipedia, the pres­ti­gious sci­ence jour­nal Nature just released a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle, Inter­net ency­clopae­dias go head to head which did some thor­ough research and dis­cov­ered that at least in sci­ence, Wikipedia is on par with the Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca for accu­ra­cy (if not ele­gance). Dis­claimer: I’m a proud Wikipedi­an (user­name Glen­Davis)

Personality Tests And Their Defects

The Cult of Personality Testing : How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand OurselvesSome­time last year I read The Cult of Per­son­al­i­ty (since reti­tled to The Cult of Per­son­al­i­ty Test­ing). I picked it up on a whim at an off­beat book­store in Half Moon Bay between two church ser­vices.

I loved it and found it utter­ly per­sua­sive. I’ve had a long-sim­mer­ing aver­sion to per­son­al­i­ty test­ing (root­ed in a bad expe­ri­ence in sem­i­nary, observ­ing friends get shaft­ed by the Assem­blies of God per­son­al­i­ty screen­ing sys­tem for mis­sion­ar­ies, some bit­ing pas­sages about psy­chol­o­gy by Richard Feyn­mann, and being a crit­i­cal thinker). Some­thing about them always felt wrong (and I could even put parts of my unease into fair­ly per­sua­sive words), but I nev­er had the facts I need­ed to under­stand exact­ly where the prob­lem lay. This book changed all that.

I men­tion it because I just read an arti­cle by Mal­colm Glad­well called Per­son­al­i­ty Plus that cov­ers the same ground. It’s a great intro to the con­cepts cov­ered in the book.

So if you’re in the habit of refer­ring to peo­ple by their Myers-Brig­gs type, or if you like to use the terms san­guine and cho­ler­ic in casu­al con­ver­sa­tion, or if you’ve ever made a deci­sion based on the results of a per­son­al­i­ty test, READ THIS BOOK (or at least Glad­well’s arti­cle).

Vaguely Surprising

The Assem­blies of God State­ment of Fun­da­men­tal Truths appar­ent­ly mer­its an arti­cle on Wikipedia.