Picasso and God

I had coffee the other day with my friend Chumly (not really; I'm making up a story) and between sips on his grande, half-caff extra-hot latte with two (not one) packets of Equal, he explained to me there is no God because if there was, he would have designed the human eye to be like the more-efficient octopus eye.

I thought maybe God figured we could be dangerous enough with the eyesight he gave us, but instead, I stared vacantly out the window and then said, "Hmmm ... Did you know that Picasso never existed?"

"What are you talking about?" Chumly asked.

"Have you ever looked at the portraits they say were painted by him? The nose is pasted on sideways, the mouth and eyes are in the wrong places and are the wrong size and the colors are garish and not human?"

"We were talking about God, not Picasso! But I will digress long enough to urge you not to be an idiot. There are books about Picasso; there are people alive today who knew Picasso; there are photographs of Picasso. Of course Picasso existed!"

"But what about the portraits? They're all wrong!"

"Look, just because you don't understand or like Picasso's style doesn't mean he didn't exist."

"I rest my case."

"What?" Chumly said. (Chumly never was very quick on the uptake.)

"Just because you don't understand or like God's style doesn't mean He doesn't exist."

Dirty Spiritual Feet

In John 13: 2-17 is the well-known story of Jesus washing his disciples feet. At the end of this sermon-by-demonstration, Jesus tells the disciples that he has given them an example that they should follow. Most teachers I have heard understand Jesus to be saying that we should serve one another in all sorts of ways, not just by washing feet.

All well and good. I agree.

But as I read the passage recently, I suddenly noticed in the middle of the story an interesting little sermon-within-a-sermon. Jesus replied to Peter - who had in his impetuous Peter-like way insisted that Jesus wash all of him, not just his feet - that, "A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you."

As is so often the case, Jesus takes an exterior example to make an interior point. If Jesus was talking about dirt on the body, it seems unlikely he would have excluded Judas from the ranks of the clean. And this seems especially unlikely since John specifically indicates (13:11) that the reason one of the disciples (Judas) was not clean was because he would betray Jesus. So it seems quite clear that Jesus is saying that his disciples (except Judas) were spiritually clean, and - if I may extrapolate a bit - fit for heaven.

But, if they were clean, then why did Jesus need to wash their feet?

I think Jesus meant that though they were clean and devoted to God, just walking around in this dirty world tends to stain them (and us) with various sins. We say and do bad things on the spur of the moment, or in a flash of passion or anger or inattention or weariness, things that smudge us with the dirt of sin. And though we are basically clean inside - we really do love Jesus and we really are citizens of heaven - we still need to have Jesus wash away those daily sins.

Longest Words

For a project I needed to repeatedly type a word (any word) and click the mouse button. I got annoyed taking my hand off the mouse to reach over for a key, so I wrote a little program to find the longest words that you can type with a single hand on a standard keyboard (without cheating and reaching over with the other hand), thereby allowing one hand to remain on the mouse.

Here are the results of my having too much time on my hands:

Longest words for left hand typing, winner is "reverberates" with 12 characters:

reverberates
abracadabra
aftereffect
desegregate
effervesces
exaggerated
reverberate
vertebrates
aftertaste
afterwards

And a few shorter left-hand favorites:

stagecraft
stewardess
beverages

Longest words for right hand typing, winner is "hypophyllum" with 11 characters:

hypophyllum
Plinlimmon
homophony
houyhnhnm
Killymoon
Kouyunjik
monophony
nonillion
pollinium
polyphony

Awful set of words, huh?

And a few shorter right-hand favorites:

Honolulu
lollipop
monopoly
million
opinion
pumpkin

Let me know if you can find any longer words for either category, and I'll add them. And let me know if you don't want me to use your name, otherwise I may.

15-Minute Church

If I was the pastor of a little, dying church, I think I know what I'd try. I think I'd have about 12 15-minute services each Sunday morning, each separated by five minutes of coming-and-going time.

It's a shame, but people these days are so busy that I wonder if even an hour each Sunday seems like too big a committment to them. I wonder if it would be attractive for some people to be able to drop in just about any time throughout the morning, or even throughout the day, and maybe even on Saturdays, too.

People who don't normally go to church might stop by on their way to play golf, or on their way to the beach, or after Sunday brunch at the local restaurant, or whatever.

And as for content, I actually think a lot can be packed into 15 minutes. A couple good songs, a prayer and a short sermon. Shortening things often makes them better, more pointed.

I know! I know! It seems this encourages a rather casual, uncommitted attitude toward gathering together. It may, but I'd rather have 15 minutes of their time than none of their time, and I'm not aware that the Bible says exactly how long a church meeting has to be. In any case, I envision this as an introduction, and that some people would step up from this into a deeper and more active level of commitment, perhaps by getting involved in a Bible study group.

Just an idea.

Galatians 2:17-18

In rereading the book of Galatians, it suddenly struck me what Paul was talking about when he wrote in verses 2:17-18 (NIV):

If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker.

This has always been a bit perplexing to me. Why would it become particularly obvious that we are sinners while we seek to be justified in Christ? And why would anyone think that if we slip up in trying to follow Christ, that this means Christ promotes sin? Also, why does rebuilding what I destroyed prove I'm a lawbreaker?

I was reading the passage rather quickly this time, so I still had in mind Paul's rebuke of Peter (verses 2:11-14) for encouraging Gentiles to live like Jews when he himself had been living like a Gentile... at least until some Jews belonging to the "circumcision group" came along and he began to shy away from the Gentiles.

It occurred to me that in verses 2:17-18 Paul is still talking about Peter, or rather, about the type of sin Peter had committed.

So if I might paraphrase the passage, I would say:

If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are "sinning" by violating the old ceremonial law, such as the law of circumcision, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! In fact, it is the other way around: If I rebuild the old, ineffective, ceremonial law that I destroyed - the way Peter has just been doing - that would really make me a lawbreaker.

Evil and God's Existence

One of the arguments I've heard repeatedly - and recently - is that the existence of evil in this world shows that God does not exist.

The argument is essentially parallel to this: "I've heard that there is a guy named Andrew who stabs people with knives. Stabbing people with knives is evil, therefore Andrew doesn't exist."

Sigh.

It may be that this argument is evidence that Andrew is an evil person (or is a heart surgeon), but by no stretch of the imagination is it an argument that Andrew does not exist. In the same way, the existence of evil in this world is not evidence that God does not exist.

I think people can legitimately look at evil and ask whether God is good and wonder how a good God can permit evil, and if they do this I think they will find answers to those questions since the whole Bible is essentially about that topic. All that, I think, falls into the category of reasonable questioning, but if they use the "evil-means-no-God" argument, then all they do is make themselves look exceedingly foolish.

Is Religion the Chief Cause of Suffering?

I just read yet again about how religion is the main cause of inhumanity in this world.

This is such an absurd contention that I don't understand how it survives. But it does. So in what is probably a vain attempt to counteract it, I did a quick Internet search to compare Christianity (since it is Christianity that most concerns me) against the only specifically God-free political philosophy I am aware of - communism.

So, my question was this: Which has caused the most human deaths, Christianity or communism? I am very sure I have left tragic events out here, but even if I missed a lot, I don't think it would come anywhere close to changing the outcome. I am also including just events where the motivation for the killings was mostly Christianity. Frankly, I think that even in this list the motivation was not always purely religion. For example, in his book, For the Glory of God, Rodney Stark points out that the killing of witches was most frequent in areas where the church had less influence and was often done despite the church, and while religion was involved in the 30 Year's War, the fact that France (a Catholic country) often supported the Protestants in Germany in an apparent effort to weaken Germany suggests that nationalistic forces were perhaps stronger than religious forces in that ugly conflict. Nevertheless, I'm throwing them all into the pot because religion is generally considered to be the major factor in these events.

Okay, for Christianity:

Number Killed	Event
1-5 million	Crusades
20,000-900,000	"Witches" killed
14,000	Jews killed, scapegoats for Black Death
1 million	Albigensian Crusade
2-4 million	Catholic vs. Huguenot (France)
900,000	Waldensians
100,000	Peasants War (Germany)
31,912	Spanish Inquisition
11.5 million	Thirty Years War
13,445,912	High Total
6,565,912	Low Total

Now let's take communism:

Number Killed	Event
20 million	Joseph Stalin
40 million	Mao Zedong
2 million	Pol Pot (Cambodia)
62 million	Total

Source

Okay, so if we take the most wildly generous estimates of people killed by those who claim to be Christians, it is 13.5 million. For communism it is 62 million.

Communism wins! In less than 100 years it killed about 62 million people, more than four and a half times the number of people those who claim to be Christians have killed over the course of nearly 2,000 years, or more than nine times as many if you accept the lower estimate for Christianity.

My suspicion is that a lust for power and fame and loot and glory are far more central to man's inhumanity to man than every religion in the world added together.

So PU-lease! Don't tell me how religion is the major cause of violence or suffering in this world. It is nonsense.

Ministering to Poor Governments

It occurred to me this morning just how much suffering in this world is caused by inept government and how much could be avoided by competence.

A lot of us in the United States think we know all about inept government (FEMA during Katrina, for instance), but I'm actually thinking of a level of ineptitude that is somewhere in the middle between, say, the old Katrina-FEMA on the mild side and Zimbabwe on the extreme side.

I'm thinking of nations whose officials are at least kinda-sorta trying to do a good job, but for lack of training they simply don't have the best skills.

It seems that for cases like this it would be good to have a Christian ministry made up of government officials from countries around the world who would occasionally take some of their vacation time and spend it with their governmental counterparts in poor countries. Public works directors matching off with public works directors, planning department officials spending time with planning department officials, ministers of finance hanging out with ministers of finance. They could just spend time with each other talking about how they do their jobs and how they might do them better.

Having suggested that, a big red flag comes to mind, which is that often ideas that seem good to western visitors are not good at all.

For example, I have a friend with a large organization that was doing work in Africa. The westerners had finished their work in the country and were leaving but still had a lot of their food left over, so my friend gave it to his driver, a national, who gave it to a group of nationals. They all ate the western food and all got sick because they were not used to such a high protein diet.

My point is that good intentions need to be matched with good understanding.

But having said that, it seems that with some cultural training and a large dose of humility, a ministry by government officials to government officials in poor countries might be very helpful. In fact, though I haven't heard of it, maybe it already exists. If you know about such an organization, let me know; I'd be interested.

UPDATE: After watching FEMA performing quite well during Hurricane Gustav, I felt I had to update this post to make clear that I was talking about FEMA during the Katrina hurricane. I'm delighted to see how much the agency has improved!

Top Christian Colleges - 2008

I just saw a rating of colleges by Forbes Magazine and thought it would be interesting to pull out the Christian colleges and see how they compared.

I found a list of Christian colleges and was surprised how few (just 32) were on the Forbes List. Not even Point Loma in California. Weird. I think they need to expand their list a lot. Also, I don't think the Forbes rating considers all the factors a Christian would consider in looking at a Christian school, but still, I find it quite interesting. I would have thought Wheaton would have come up first on the list, but it doesn't. It is second, with a college I hadn't heard of, Huntington University, coming in first.

So, here is the list. The number at the beginning of each line is the Forbes rating:

65 - Huntington University Indiana
89 - Wheaton College Illinois
95 - Erskine College South Carolina
116 - Carson-Newman College Tennessee
117 - Covenant College Georgia
129 - Mississippi College Mississippi
131 - George Fox University Oregon [added in update]
149 - Master's College California
159 - Goshen College Indiana
163 - Oklahoma Baptist University Oklahoma
165 - Whitworth College Washington
185 - Oklahoma Wesleyan University Oklahoma
191 - Houghton College New York
205 - Biola University California
211 - Northwestern College Iowa
213 - Asbury College Kentucky
257 - Westmont College California
271 - Northwestern College Minnesota
281 - Grove City College Pennsylvania
282 - Union University Tennessee
308 - Taylor University Indiana
340 - Cedarville University Ohio
343 - Gordon College Massachusetts
352 - Baylor University Texas
357 - Messiah College Pennsylvania
358 - Vanguard University California
372 - Calvin College Michigan
374 - Dordt College Iowa
435 - Seattle Pacific University Washington
443 - Corban College Oregon
444 - Abilene Christian University Texas
456 - John Brown University Arkansas
465 - Azusa Pacific University California

Church Architecture

I recently stumbled upon a curious old volume on Google Books called Housing the Sunday School, which you may wish to read if you are on the planning committee to design a Sunday School building, but it reminded me of a really excellent book I read a long time ago by 19th Century art and architecture critic, John Ruskin, called The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

I'm sure there are excellent newer books with a wider perspective, but I thought Ruskin's book was excellent. Even though it isn't exclusively about church buildings, a lot of it is. I highly recommend it, especially if you are on a church building committee.

In Praise of Mindlessness

I am really not very tidy. And I come from a family of not-very-tidy people (my mother even has a sign that says "Neatness causes cancer in laboratory rats"), and generally I've considered neatness to show a certain lack of creativity and of a mind in a rut.

Well... I've been rethinking that and am now prepared to say I was wrong.

I think what changed my mind was reading David Allen's fine book, Getting Things Done, in which he advocates a very rigorous tidiness. One of his main themes, as I recall, is that if you put (and keep) everything in its place - especially schedules of things to do - then your mind can switch itself off on these topics because it knows that your "system" is doing the remembering. (My wife looked at the book and kind of yawned. She's been living this for years and kind of wonders what's taken me so long to see it.)

Anyway, so now I realize the value of mindlessness. If I'm tidy, I won't have to think about where I put my pen, or the sander, or the crescent wrench, or the computer files I've been working on for Ann. If I just put things where they belong, I can mindlessly grab them and do what I need to do with them. If I already thought once about where to keep the harmonica, why waste my time thinking about it again? Just put it back in its place when I'm done with it!

So I was wrong. Tidiness doesn't cause me to be uncreative or put my mind in a rut or cause cancer in laboratory rats. In fact, it helps by giving me more time to think and be creative; time I wouldn't have if I always had to spend it thinking about where I put stuff.

Why Have You Forsaken Me?

I just finished a book by a notable Bible scholar who at one point discussed the difficulty of Jesus' words on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

He gave a long and scholarly answer, basically saying that Jesus' words were a quote from the opening line of Psalm 22 and that they reflect the depth of his passion.

Well, yeah, that's true and okay as far as it goes, but it should go a lot farther.

To me, it seems the question is, Did Jesus' cry mean that he didn't understand what was happening to him?

And the answer is a very straightforward no; it doesn't mean that at all. In fact, it shows that he understood very clearly what was happening to him.

I'm quite sure that Jesus - who in these last moments of his life was probably incapable of giving a lengthy sermon, but even then yearned to reach out to people - quoted the first verse of Psalm 22 as a way of saying: Psalm 22 is all about me and I am fulfilling it in your sight. Go back and read the whole thing and you will understand.

Encroaching on Charity - Hooray!

I've always believed that charity should be mostly reserved for tasks that cannot be dealt with by profit-making businesses. So, for example, I'm not sure that stamping out smallpox throughout the world would pay a direct monetary dividend to the organization that did the stamping out, so that seems like a good project for a non-profit group.

But it always excites me to hear of someone figuring out a way to tackle a beneficial but seemingly money-losing task and still make a profit, because if they make a profit, they'll keep doing it and do more of it, and other people will do it, and relatively scarce charitable money can be redirected to those areas that can't be handled by profit making organizations.

With that lengthy preamble, I really want to recommend this article, Babble Rouser, a Forbes article about Denis O'Brien, who empowers poor people with cheap cell phone technology - often in defiance of their own corrupt governments - and thereby boosts the living standard of whole countries, and in the process makes a profit!

I wouldn't have thought it could be done, but I'm delighted to be proven wrong.

How to be Happy

Yes, I'm serious. I'm going to talk about how to be happy, but just to clarify before I get started, let me lay out a few qualifications.

First, even though I'm a Christian and am tempted to talk about the ultimate happiness of heaven, I don't mean that kind of happiness (but if you are interested in becoming a Christian, see here).

Second, I don't mean swooning bliss; all I mean is the everyday kind of happiness that millions of people already have but is a little harder for some of us.

Third, there are some people who have an talent for being happy while laying on the beach or watching television all day. I'm not talking to them. I'm talking to people who start to get a bit antsy after spending an hour and a half in the cool breezes watching the palms sway and the waves crash on a beautiful beach in Maui. In other words, slightly driven people who are kinda like me.

Okay, ready for the very simple secret? Here it is:

Make a daily to-do list and work through it.

Wait! Don't go away yet. I know it sounds stupid, but hear me out.

For some of us, there is a lot of satisfaction in accomplishing tasks and scratching them off our list. It's what makes us everyday-happy. Maybe we're psychologically stunted, or maybe other people are. Whatever. But we gotta work with who we are.

Here's a little more detail.

Get a little notepad (I use a 3" x 5" spiral notepad) and in the evening (or early morning), write down everything you want to do the next day, from the important to the trivial. Then put an A, B, or C in front of each item, depending on its level of importance. (Or, sometimes, I number them in the order that makes sense to do them.) Then, start working on the most important item (or the first item if you number them) and work your way through the list, scratching each item off the list as you complete it.

It may not sound exciting (who said anything about excitement?) but there is a lot of satisfaction in scratching off each item and at the end of the day seeing a bunch of completed tasks.

Now the really interesting thing that I've discovered is that it really doesn't make much psychological difference how important the items are! It is as satisfying for me to scratch off "Have coffee with Dad" as it is to scratch off "Complete programming task for Ann."

I have had long periods of not having a regular job and therefore not having anything important to do, and yet if I write a list of trivial tasks and mark them off throughout the day, the psychological effect is much the same as if the tasks were actually important.

Now, one objection I can anticipate is that I'm suggesting we all become workaholics. No! Not in the least!

I already mentioned "Have coffee with Dad." I assure you, that is not work. How about these:

Take nap
Go swimming
Go on bike ride
Paint cat (a picture of a cat, not a real cat)
See Batman movie

See? Just list goofing-off things along with the productive things and you get the pleasure of taking a nap and the pleasure of marking it off your list as an accomplished task.

What could be better?

Explaining Variations in Jesus' Words

There are several good explanations for why each of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) sometimes carry slightly different accounts of what Jesus said: In some cases it could be that it is a different event being recorded and that Jesus said similar things on differerent occasions (just as any traveling preacher might do); in some cases one writer may have recorded one part of what Jesus said and another writer may have recorded another part of what he said; or it could be that the Aramaic words Jesus used could be translated into the Greek of the New Testament using different (legitimate) words, and the gospel writers chose different words to bring out a different emphasis in what Jesus said; or, finally, it could be that the authors are paraphrasing - legitimately giving the meaning of what Jesus said - but not always giving the words verbatim.

All of these are good possibilities and probably they all apply in various situations.

But in reading the letter of 1 John it occurs to me that there may be another good explanation, and that is, simply, that Jesus said the same thing multiple ways on the same occasion.

Listen to 1 John 2:12-14:

I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

And then it repeats, but with differences:

I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father.
I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

So, here we have John, one of Jesus' main disciples, who may well have picked up some of his teaching style from his Master, saying one thing and then immediately repeating it with some variation.

I suspect that Jesus may have done the same thing; say things one way, then immediately say them in another way. Then - in some cases - one gospel writer may have recorded one of Jesus' comments and another writer may have recorded another.

As I reflect on this, I recall that just this last Sunday the pastor at our church said the same thing four or five times in a row, sometimes repeating what he said verbatim, sometimes with variations, as a way of emphasizing his point.

If my pastor did this, and if the apostle John did this, I'm sure Jesus may have done it as well.

Accidentally Obedient

Usually I'm a bit quiet among people I don't know, and, well, sometimes I'm quiet among people I do know, so obeying Jesus' command to let the world know about him has always been rather difficult for me to obey on a personal level. I'm okay with supporting missionaries financially and things like that, but personally talking to people about Christ ("witnessing," in Christian jargon) has always been very difficult for me.

But over the past few years I've discovered - accidentally - that it can be done without any difficulty at all. So I thought I'd pass along what I've learned for other Christians who are on the shy side.

Fortunately, in addition to being a bit shy, in some ways I'm also boringly predictable. I wake up early and go out to a coffee shop (the same one all the time) to have a cup of coffee, read my Bible, pray, and plan my day. I don't approach anyone or really attempt any conversation, though I try to smile at people who walk by.

Well, it turns out that other people are also creatures of habit, and a lot of them come to the same coffee shop every day at the same time. So after months and even years of just being there you get to know people by face, and eventually somebody is bound to come up to you and say something like, "Can I use this chair?" and I say "Sure!" But one way or another, you slowly get to know people.

And people see you reading your Bible, and when they know you a little bit they comment on that and you can respond. I've had spiritual conversations with several people and got one guy a Bible by just - basically - sitting there minding my own business.

And, of course, occasionally Christians will see you with your Bible and will say hello and sometimes share something from their own lives. I've prayed with people who have endured some deep pains (one woman lost her husband in a traffic accident and another was in real financial trouble).

But my point is that it all came about by just quietly sitting and reading my Bible. But - and here's the secret - doing it for a loooong time.

God of Mystery

Speaking of mysteries (as I did in my last post) the thought occurs to me that if I believed in a God in whom there was no mystery, I'd probably be believing in a made-up God.

Why?

Because I think a made-up God would be a god who makes sense within the everyday knowledge that we have. I just don't think we'd make up a god who didn't fit our notions of reality.

Instead, the Real God must be greater than everything we perceive, or He couldn't have made everything.

And if there is mystery in what we perceive - and when we come to the edges of our perception of reality, things do begin to get really weird - then the God who created all this stuff, from the commonplace to the incomprehensibly baffling, must have a nature that in some ways is far more baffling than the weirdest mysteries of the universe.

His nature is true and constant and good, but to us limited human beings elements of his nature must be impossible to understand. I guess that's where faith comes in.

Mystery for Christians and Atheists

Whenever either Christians or atheists get to a certain point in a logical examination of their beliefs, they find mystery.

For example, let's take the topic of free will.

For the Christian there are two seemingly incompatible truths:

First, that human beings have a free will and can make real decisions. You can see this throughout the Bible in every command and every bit of praise and every bit of blame. If we were mere puppets then we couldn't make real decisions - for good or for bad - so there would be no need for commands and no point in praise or blame.

Second, there is the truth that God is in control of everything, down to the last little thing.

So how do those two beliefs fit together? I don't know.

But the atheist faces a similar dilemma.

On the one hand, most atheists seem to believe that people can make real free-will decisions, otherwise, why would they write books and give lectures and otherwise try to persuade people to become atheists?

But on the other hand, athiests believe that everything is based on purely natural processes: one thing leading to another to another to another, the previous things causing the next things, from the beginning of the universe right down to their lives. But that means their decisions are not really decisions, but are just the inevitable result of preceeding events.

So, they believe in free-will and they believe that free-will is impossible, two clearly contradictory beliefs.

Okay, so what is the difference between the Christian's dilemna and the atheist's?

Well, as a Christian, what makes the seeming contradiction acceptable to me is that I know the One who understands how they fit together and who wouldn't have told us these two truths if they did not fit together. So I can reasonably assume that the logical conflict I face is resolved in dimensions or ways that I can't begin to imagine.

But the atheist - by definition - cannot appeal to God or any "higher power" who might assure him that, despite appearances, his contradictory beliefs fit together. Therefore he has no reasonable cause for believing that the logical conflict he faces can be reconciled, and he is left with nothing but contradiction.

Where Did God Come From?

I thought this question had been adequately dealt with years ago, but it seems to have made a reappearance, so I thought I would address it.

If you ask, "Where did God come from?" you are incorrectly including in your question the idea that God is a part of time, rather than the creator of time.

It does not make sense to ask what came "before" God because words like "before" and "earlier" and "previous" and so forth are all about time, but God made time and therefore is separate from time. And if something is separate from time, then there is no "before," and asking what is before God is as silly as asking, "What is before blue?" It is not a time question so you can't get a time answer.

Think of time as a line you draw on a sheet of paper. If someone asked what comes before you on that line, the question wouldn't really make sense because you are not part of the line. It's the same with God.

Encyclopedia Trivia

I've been slowly adding an old encyclopedia to the web, reading it as I go along, and occasionally stumbling on interesting tidbits.

For instance:

- Did you know that "Captain Bligh ... betrayed a singular capacity for making himself disliked by his subordinates." Oh, you did know that.

- I like James Brindley's method of solving problems.

- Did you know that a French engineers' report concluded that it would be virtually impossible to build the the Panama Canal?

- Did you know Sunday School had an inventor?