Honor

I was at a retreat this past weekend where the theme was "Empowering a Generation." You may have heard the statistics about how, historically, revivals are typcially not evident in the third generation. The speaker at the retreat talked about how if a "culture of honor" is not built, revival will not pass to the next generation. Essentially, if we do not honor (see value in) each other, the connection to the next generation will be hindered. This gave me a slightly different perspective. People can become disengaged when their gifts and abilities are overlooked or undeveloped by ones in authority. Most of the time we are taught that honor is to be directed toward people in authority (as it should be), but it goes both ways. For example, when you encourage or compliment someone they typically will respond in a similar way, and the tone is set. It is much more enjoyable to work with/learn from someone who recognizes you as a valuable person. Maybe if we see each other as God sees us...

A Simplified Life?

I decided a couple years ago that I wanted to simplify my life--to slow down and not run myself ragged. I don't know how good of a job I am doing in keeping with that idea. It feels like I don't have enough hours in the day to do everything that is on my list. How does that happen?

Maybe there is a false perception about technology. Because technology "makes our lives easier," which it does in many cases, we might think that our lives will be less complicated. That is not necessarily the case. I was talking to my mom last night and she was mentioning how 40 years ago, very large educational programs were run by one secretary. They had methods for charting out their filing systems for quick access to information. Now she says that in those same places (with fewer students) they have a team of office staff in order to handle the load. I was telling her that maybe the expectations are different now--perhaps we expect to have answers/solutions much more quickly than in the past.

I would venture to say that because technology has made some tasks so much easier (running water from a tap, throwing our clothes into the washing machine, driving a car to the store, doing our banking online), we tend to try to pack more into a day. We have much less patient when we want something, so our frustrations become greater. My mom was also telling me that my grandmother designated one day each week for a different task: cleaning, baking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, & ironing. Now we think all of those things should be done in a flash, so we can get on with all of our other things.

So here I am writing a post on my blog (it was on my to-do list).

Judging a book by the first 2 paragraphs

Last night I was visiting with a couple friends when we started talking about books. I read a book that one of my friends highly recommended. It had a great plot and a good message, but I found the writing to be a rather non-linear with lots of extraneous details. We decided to read the first two paragraphs of several books aloud to see if a person could actually make a reasonable judgment about the overall writing quality in a book by the first page. In my opinion, it seemed to be a pretty good indicator; however the experiment wasn't very scientific, so check it out for yourself. I would be interested to hear your methods for "screening" the quality of a book--leave a comment.

By the way, here is the beginning of a very good book (clear, succinct, and very profound):
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Gen 1:1-5 ESV)

Fast track

I saw a news article today that said they want to "fast track" the reconstruction of the I35W bridge in Minneapolis. It sounds like a great idea, "Let's do what typically takes 3 years in 1.5 years." Hmm...I've been there and done that--trying to build before the design has been completed. I would not recommend it. There are so many unforseen pitfalls in that type of a project. I have a feeling that the new bridge will cost twice as much as it would typically cost and that it will not be finished in the expected amount of time. I guess only time will tell. It sounds like politicians are making engineering and construction decisions...

Collapse

This week everyone has been talking about the collapes of the 35W Bridge in Minneapolis, which was a very tragic event. I have been over that bridge at least a couple times over the last several years when I have been in Minneapolis. I have friends and relatives who live in the Twin Cities who could have been on that bridge when it collapsed, but as far as I know they were not. We can praise God that the anticipated number who perished is much lower than initially expected.

Now comes the investigation period. How did it happen? Why did it happen? Who was at fault? I am sure by incorporating video footage, forensic evidence, and circumstancial evidence (loads, temperature, etc.) that the first two questions will be answered fairly conclusively.

The last question is the one that could continue for a long time--"who was at fault?" I am guessing there will be a lot of finger pointing. The government will probably blame the engineers, and the engineers will blame the government. There will be a lot of finger pointing within each group as well. Of course everyone will want to pass on the responsibility. And in reality, the responsibility does not likely rest on one individual and is probably shared by many. Many times engineering decisions are not based solely on observed data, but are tempered by financial and political considerations. Too often significant repairs are not undertaken because the cost is great and useful service of the entity will be diminished or closed while work is being done.

I have absolutely no basis for assuming the following scenario, but this is a situation that I imagine could have happened. I imagine a meeting where bridge inspectors reported their findings to a group of decision-makers. They probably said that the bridge had some deficiencies that needed to be corrected. The people controlling the budget probably said that there was no money for such repairs and asked for a plan that would streamline the cost for incremental repairs, so they could be planned in the budget for years ahead. This scenario happens all the time in the engineering world. Engineers give recommendations for proper repairs, and the engineering plans are cut back to fit the budget. In some cases, this may not necessarily be a bad thing as it may force an engineer to focus on the essentials, and perhaps cause him/her to think outside-the-box on how to accomplish the goals in a more cost-effective manner. (I am sure we can all think of times when a "Cadillac" solution has been suggested when a "Kia" would be sufficient.) However, when budget constraints overpower sound engineering judgment, the consequences can be devastating. We probably won't really know what happened in this case for many months, but we all can learn some lessons here.