I Never Noticed This About Jesus
I recently noticed something about Jesus I never realized before. He never talked much about how to preach (or how to blog), but he did talk about Read More
Gladwell’s Secret To Math
My family and I were recently discussing what makes people good at math. My son Nathaniel, who’s in his early thirties, brought up something he read in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. Gladwell talks about a woman in her mid twenties named Renee who’s trying to solve a math problem as part of a research project. Renee is sitting at a computer that allows you to type in x and y axis values to produce a curve. It’s basic rise over run math stuff that we all learned in junior high school or high school (but nearly all of us have since forgotten).
If you’re like me and you’ve forgotten, Gladwell provides a brief example. If the value of the rise on the y axis = 5, and the value of the run on the x axis = 5, then the slope = 1. Because the rise over run is 5 over 5, and 5/5 = 1.
So this woman Renee is sitting at the computer trying to solve a problem. And while she’s doing this, a Cal Berkeley professor and researcher named Alan Schoenfeld is sitting next to her. Schoenfeld knows the problem Renee is trying to solve is impossible. But she wasn’t told that it’s impossible. What she was told, was to enter values that will create a line that is perfectly vertical. But the problem is impossible because a vertical line requires a rise value of infinity and a run value of 0. And infinity divided by 0 doesn’t produce a number.
So she’s sitting there at this computer. And she starts entering in values. And she fiddles around. And she enters some more values. And then she fiddles some more. The whole while she’s talking to herself. And as she fiddles and experiments, her values for y get larger and larger. And the larger they get, the closer the line gets to the y axis. But no matter how large a value she assigns to y it never gets there.
Finally, after twenty-two minutes of trial and error, Renee experiences a eureka moment and she says, Read More
Why Did Jesus Pray Anyway?
Ever ask yourself that question? Why would Jesus, God incarnate Himself, why would He ever pray? I mean, Jesus is the One who in the beginning was the Word. Jesus was with God, and He was God. And all things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. (see John 1:1-3)
But He still prayed.
So why? Why did He pray?
Love–And Something Surprising
Part of the answer is Jesus was Read More
The Fire That Burned 11 Homes
One time I was on a fire that destroyed eleven homes in Ashland, Oregon. One of our tactics on that fire was to use helicopters to drop water on the burning houses. When the helicopters began operating it was important to keep them from dropping water on one particular house where firefighters were working inside. That’s because a helicopter water drop can push fire in all directions, in spectacular fashion, which is very cool to watch. Most of the time when it happens, if the house is well involved, fire just explodes out of every window and door in the place. But because it blows fire all over, a water drop from a helicopter can cause serious injury or even death to anyone fighting fire inside.
So with a couple of crews inside this house and with the helicopters flying all over doing their water drops, I became concerned that they would drop on the house with my guys inside. So I called command on the radio.
“Command from Oak Knoll Division,” I said. “Direct the helicopters NOT to drop on the house directly across from 8106.”
Command responded, “Copy, send a helicopter to drop water directly on the house across from 8106.”
Of course that was exactly what I did not want them to do. Read More
