Conversations

Three recent conversations, presented verbatim:

Domino

A Conversation With My Daughter
I set up a line of dominoes running around a corner and had my seven-year-old daughter sit where she could only see the end. I tipped the first domino over and we watched the entire chain fall.

Then I asked her, “How do you know there was a first domino? You didn’t see it.”

She stared at the fallen dominoes with a furrowed brow for a few seconds, then said, “If there was no first domino there would be no world. Nothing could exist.”

Look out, Aristotle. My daughter is gunning for you.

new face
A Conversation With My Son
Yesterday I took my children to Happy Hollow. As we were entering the park we passed by an Asian gal dressed up as an anime character. I’m not sure which one, but she had on some sort of bulky white body armor. More to the point, she had also dyed her hair purple. 

So I said to my wife, “If I was Asian I would totally have purple hair.”

My four-year-old son overheard and said with a dismissive tone, “If I was Asian I’d have black hair.”

kiwanja_palo_alto_texting_3
A Conversation With A Student
A text message conversation with one of my students (verbatim with a few words removed to preserve anonymity):

Student: “Is public nudity a sin?”
Me: “What?”
Student: “Is it just kind of weird or is it something to avoid altogether?”
Me: “Search biblegateway.com for the term ‘modest’.”

One Of The Most Revolutionary Thoughts I Have Read

Papyrus in Greek regarding tax issues (3rd ca. BC.)It doesn’t happen too often, but every once in a while I become aware of some new piece of data that explodes what I think I know about some area I’m interested in. New Testament scholar (and fellow Pentecostal) Larry Hurtado just dropped a bomb on me. 

In his blog post How Long Were Manuscripts Used? he mentions something that had never occurred to me before. Not even a little bit.

One matter Houston addresses is how long manuscripts appear to have been in use. On the basis of manuscripts from Oxyrhynchus and from Herculaneum in particular, Houston notes numerous examples of manuscripts discarded when they were ca. 2–3 centuries old. Overall, he judges that the evidence indicates “a useful life of between one hundred and two hundred years for a majority of the volumes, with a significant minority lasting two hundred years or more” (p. 251). And, as he notes, the evidence from Qumran leads to a similar view.

This is of potential relevance for questions about the transmission of early Christian texts, especially those that became part of the NT. If early copies were intact for something approaching a century or more, then this could be a factor against notions that these texts were highly unstable and susceptible to major revision in the course of transmission. But we might adjust our thinking to allow for an earlier wearing-out of NT manuscripts through greater frequency of usage. OK. Let’s suppose that early manuscripts of NT writings typically wore out sooner: twice as fast (ca. 50–75 years)? That still means that the manuscripts from which copies were made remained available for potential checking for a fair period of time. 

This probably means nothing to most of you, but this is huge if you’re interested in the textual reliability of the New Testament. This is surprising and strong evidence in the “Bible is reliable” column. Check out his comments section where Dr. Hurtado unpacks this a bit more.

Something Dr. Hurtado does not mention is that this makes it plausible that our earliest papyrus fragments (such as P52 or one of the handful of others from the mid-second century) might actually be direct copies from the autograph or only one generation removed. It’s impossible to know, of course. But the mere fact that we can even think it plausible is mind-boggling.

Dr. Hurtado got this data from UNC’s George W. Houston in his article “Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries in the Roman Empire,” in Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, ed. William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 233–67.

Poisonous Rat-Duck Day

PlatypusToday is Groundhog Day, which is hilarious to me. How did they outmaneuver the other animals and get their own holiday? 

I personally would prefer Platypus Day. There’s an animal that deserves to be celebrated. It’s a furry, poisonous rat-duck. A platypus is practically a living Pokémon.

But somehow the groundhogs won out. I suspect bribery.

For the record, today I will honor platypi in my heart. Although Wikipedia tells me that platypi is incorrect and I should say platypuses or platypodes. Also, they are venomous and not poisonous (venom is injected, poison is consumed).

To which I say: poisonous rat-duck sounds better than venomous rat-duck, and platypi has a satisfying faux-intellectual ring to it. Let rhetoric prevail, and let the poisonous rat-ducks have their day on the calendar!

Commentary Review: Blomberg & Kamell on James

I recently received a review copy of the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on James by Craig Blomberg and Mariam Kamell.

I was particularly excited to receive this book for two reasons:

So here’s my take on the commentary:

  1. It’s nice and short. This is a plus, not a minus. Too many commentaries today run to the thousands of pages. This volume is long enough to helpfully explain puzzling aspects of the text without being so massive that the central message gets lost.
  2. It pays attention to usability. For example: the commentary on each verse is preceded by a bolded English translation of the verse followed by the Greek text. Contrast this with most commentaries that seem to assume you’ve got three or four books open on your desk (or windows on your monitor) at once (view the explanation of James 1:2 to see what I mean).
  3. It keeps you oriented. Every section begins with an outline of the surrounding text and an extraordinarily clear grammatical outline that makes the author’s argument clear. You can see a sample page at Google Books (click that link — seriously).
  4. The commentary ends with a very helpful summary of the overall theology of the book of James — something I wish more commentaries did. The discipline of Biblical theology would be much richer if that were the case.
  5. It uses footnotes. Yay!
  6. I dug into some of the more puzzling verses in James and thought that Blomberg & Kamell explained them with clarity and wisdom. Disclaimer: I have not read this commentary all the way through.

Overall, I recommend this commentary if you need to preach or teach on James anytime soon and urge you to look carefully at the other volumes in the series as reviews on them become available (the linked website — bestcommentaries.com — is, in my opinion, the best place to begin searching for a commentary).

Thanks for the freebie, Zondervan! I would have told the truth if your commentary was lackluster, but I am delighted to report that this is a solid exposition of the book of James.

How To Get Better Grades In Physics

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)Ben Shank is a Ph.D. candidate in physics at Stanford, where he also serves as a teaching assistant (TA) for an undergrad physics course. At our recent Thanksgiving party he began rattling off advice to one of our students on how to get better grades in physics (or almost any technical course). Said student was amazed and beseeched Ben to make this information more publicly available, and so he typed it up and sent it to our Chi Alpha email list.

With Ben’s permission, I also share it below (emphasis is mine):

  1. From the first day of class, sit in the front of the room toward the center. At least one study has shown that students who sit in the front are 2–3 times more likely to get an A and 6 times less likely to fail than students sitting in the back even when seats are randomly assigned on the first day of class. We can debate why this is so all day, but it is so, so take advantage of it. (By ‘the front’ i mean the first ten or so rows of Hewlett 200.)
  2. Be sure to get plenty of sleep the two nights before the exam. Of all the bad conditions you could be in going into a physics test, being tired is probably the worst one that is legal. Studies indicate that the second night before the test is even more important than the night immediately before. A clear, thinking, creative mind is your single greatest asset for any physics you might encounter. If you have been keeping up with the class, getting two full nights of sleep is probably more important than any amount of studying you might do during those two days.
  3. That said you will probably want to do some studying. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend finding someone else in the class to study with. Go over problems together. Go into the later problems in each chapter and pick some that you’re not sure you can both do. Taking an exam well is very similar to teaching the grader how to do the problems, so even if you are teaching a friend how to do something you already know, you are preparing for the test. If you both (or all) get stuck on something, contact a TA.
  4. Read every problem at the beginning of the test. Your mind will continue to process problems you are not looking at, provided it is awake. (See Tip 2) Studies show that you are best served loading all the questions into your brain at the start to give yourself maximum time to contemplate. If you get really stuck on a problem, leave plenty of space and move on. Odds are you’ll have better insight when you come back to it.
  5. DON’T PANIC. Attempt every question. This sounds really obvious, but we occasionally get blue books that have a few scribbles labeled ‘Problem 1’ and nothing else. As best we can tell, these students are looking at the first question, panicking and staring blankly at the paper for forty-five minutes or just walking out. This is something worth practicing to avoid. If you find yourself in a panic: stop, look away from the paper while slowly counting to ten. If you are feeling calm, you can go back and draw a diagram or write down some possibly relevant equations. If you start panicking again, repeat Steps 1 and 2. If you are not feeling calm, turn a couple pages and start the next question. Things will look better when you come back to this one. Trust me.
  6. Now for a few tips on getting the most [points] out of your graders. Grading a midterm takes 4–5 hours. As much as we try to assess each of you according to all the knowledge of physics you demonstrated, we are going to get tired and eventually parts of our brains are going to go on autopilot. If your answers are in clearly marked boxes (preferably near the left side of the page) and they are right, there is a reduced chance of any error in your work being marked off. If an answer is wrong, but it’s in a box near the left side of the page immediately below the work that produced it, then it is very easy for us to find the one little error and give you most of the points. I know having all the answers in one box at the bottom of the page feels concise, but if one of them is wrong we have no idea where on the page to look for the mistake. On a related note, it is better if you work one part of a problem and then work the next one below it. Believe it or not, grad students can get confused if part c is to the right of part b instead of below it. It’s silly, but after a few hours of grading that’s the way we are, so you might as well not let it hurt you. As a general rule, each line on the page should only have one equation or statement on it. (pictures excluded) You may use up more pages that way, but there’s no shortage of blue books.
  7. Whenever possible, draw a picture. Not only will it help you think, but it also helps us know what you were thinking. If you are not absolutely confident in your solution, a minute spent drawing a decent picture is probably worth it in terms of partial credit. Too often I’ve suspected a student knew more than their answer indicated, but they didn’t leave a good record of their thought process so I couldn’t grant partial credit. And that makes me sad. (Organizing graphics are also great antidotes to panic, see Tip 5.)
  8. When you get an answer, check that it makes sense. Negative lengths and times are often indicators that you’ve made a mistake, as are e.g. megaCoulomb charges and kiloAmp currents. If this happens to you, go look for the error and fix it. If you can’t find it, let us know that you don’t like the answer and why. One of the easiest ways to tell that someone is lost is if they give you a non-physical answer and don’t blink. As a physicist, it is much easier to grade leniently if a student indicates that they understand why the result of their calculation can’t be right. If nothing else, the grading rubric often has a point designated just for having a result that could be true. You’ll at least get that.
  9. It is well known that having good handwriting improves the attitude of those grading your exam. What is less well known is that having tiny handwriting can hurt you. Often what is perfectly legible to you while you are curled up with your nose 12 inches from the paper makes our eyes hurt after the third or fourth hour of grading. Obviously this vastly reduces the incentive to hunt for that tiny little math error you made in part a. This is not a small matter. I, for one, tend to get a migraine when I bend over small text for too long. So imagine a three hour migraine and then gauge the incentive to just mark you off so I can stop looking at your paper. Find a test that you have taken recently. If you (or better, a friend) can’t clearly read your text at arm’s length, you might consider consciously writing larger on all tests from now on. Grading fatigue isn’t limited to physics TAs.

And that’s what Ben has to say about that. Hope it helps you out as finals draw nigh. 

The Most Amusingly True Sentence I’ve Read In A While

WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire US government is forced to go through a full-body scanner (Evgeny Morozov)

I laughed out loud.

being a Christian in a sorority

PanhellenicA recent convert told me she’s struggling with life in her sorority, so I asked another sorority gal I know to give her some advice. 

Sorority gal emailed the recent convert and, with her permission, I’ve anonymized it and present her email for your consideration. I’ve trimmed off the beginning because it’s impossible to anonymize without making it useless (she identifies a specific Christian in the recipient’s sorority for her to connect with), but the rest of her letter is more broadly applicable:

I think [your sorority and my sorority] may be different in terms of their emphasis on partying and drinking, but I will definitely try to give you my two cents, and if you want to meet up at any point, let me know and I’d love to get together to talk and/or pray with you about it. 

I have always felt very at home in [my sorority] as a Christian. There are 10–15 Christian girls in [my sorority], and many more who aren’t into getting drunk/hooking up. My big is a Christian, as is my twin, and my twin’s little. I try to surround myself with these girls, rather than the partiers. I do still go out to the events where there is drinking, but I only drink moderately (if at all) and still always have a great time. Do you have a group of girls like this in [your sorority]? Are there other Christians in [your sorority] you can team up with?

Another thing that helped me ensure that there are enough events that don’t center around drinking/partying was getting involved on the sisterhood committee. If you guys have a committee like that, I would encourage you to get involved and make sure those kinds of events are happening. 

If you are feeling like [your sorority] is a place where you can’t be yourself or where you are encouraged to make poor decisions, deactivating might be the right choice for you. My biggest advice to you would be to pray about it and go with your gut. I do think there is room to be a Christian in Greek life, but I also think it varies a lot depending on the frat/sorority. Many of my closest friends aren’t Christian, and I think this can definitely make it more difficult to do the right thing at times. But, I think that as long as you have that Christian community somewhere, you can make it work.

I feel like I haven’t done a very good job giving you advice here, so please let me know if you want to talk about it over coffee or something!

I think that, on the whole, it is pretty good advice. What would you have said?

the NIV reloaded

Bible Study 2I sent an email to my students and it occurred to me that it might be of more general interest:

Chi Alphans,

You might be interested to know that the NIV translation of the Bible has been revised. You can’t buy it in stores yet, but it is available online at biblegateway.com

I think you’ll find the translator’s notes interesting. They include a section on language and gender and also have a list of key passages that have changed in the newest translation. http://www.biblegateway.com/niv/Translators-Notes.pdf

And while I’m on the subject of new releases of the Bible (which is a weird sentence), I should mention that there is a new, academically legit compilation of the Greek New Testament available at http://sblgnt.com/

Finally, remember that every translation optimizes some things at the expense of others. There is no “best” translation. It’s far more important you read whatever you have than that you engage in some fruitless quest for the ideal. In other words, your existing NIV will do just fine from now until you die.

Glen

P.S. There is no “best translation” but there is an option you might not have considered — you can learn to read the Bible in its original languages. It’s not for everyone, but just think of it: you can earn Stanford credits while growing in your understanding of God’s Word — it’s a twofer! 

Chutes To Gehenna

chutes and laddersI believe I have identified my least favorite part of parenting: playing Chutes and Ladders. My epiphany came about as I was playing the longest round that I’ve ever seen. It was all chutes and no ladders. Playing was like watching crabs in a styrofoam cooler: as soon as one character was close to escaping it was sent tumbling back down to the bottom.

While that most recent round was particularly tedious, I don’t like the game even when it takes ten minutes because it’s a game with no skill component whatsoever. I will confess to thinking — often — that we could determine victory by flipping a coin instead of through the interminable process of moving the game pieces in accordance with the dictates of the spinner and the requirements of the board. 

That’s bad enough, but there is one more factor that evokes dread in my soul when asked to play. It is this: children young enough to truly enjoy the game are usually unable to move their characters properly, so I have to do it for them. This means I am playing the game against myself. A game I don’t like. A game whose two-player version is logically indistinguishable from a coin toss yet which has the potential to endure until the heat death of the universe. Even if I win, I lose. I lost as soon as I took the box down from the shelf.

And yet I will play today and I know I will play again tomorrow. It’s like a torment from a Greek myth. Aaargh!

My heart goes out to thoroughgoing determinists who necessarily regard all of life as a complicated version of Chutes and Ladders. If that’s you, I suggest you arrange to be fated not to think about it.

Yikes — New Students Arrive Today!

In which I describe in great detail my panicked yet joyous feelings as the school year begins.

these are random freshmen from some other school... but you get the ideaNew students arrive on campus today. Yikes!

To Do:

  • Brush my teeth really well, including my tongue so my breath doesn’t stink.
  • Shave head. Carefully. We don’t want a repeat of that incident when I missed a patch and looked like a Who from Whoville.
  • Trim edges of beard. The difference between an epic prophet beard and a crazy cult leader beard is surprisingly hard to define, but raggedy beard edges have something to do with it. That, and neck hair. Say no to the throat beard.
  • Print literature for tabling: new student devotional guide, Why Jesus? essay, The Jesus FAQ.
  • Practice smiling in the mirror.
  • Double check on throat hair.

P.S. I don’t think I’ve publicized it here, but I put a new writing online. I mention it above in the “print literature” bullet point — it’s a ten-day devotional guide for new students called Thrive. It, along with all my other writings, is indexed here.