Is That a Geek in That Chair?

Posted on February 13, 2012 | 1 Comment

Yes, and a lazy one at that.

I began reading Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything quoted in my previous post while seated at Starbucks. What does one do to access the quotes he wants to share when the only thing within reach is a venti caramel latte (yes, I was splurging)?

Turns out that there is an app for that.

The quotes I shared were lifted from the page using a free app called ImageToText. From within the app I snapped a picture of the text I was interested in. The app converted the image to text and sent it to my Evernote account (also free).

That was Saturday. Today, I opened Evernote on my computer, cut and pasted the converted text, edited out the few idiosyncrasies I would expect from a free OCR app, and pasted the results.

The geek in me feels like the circle is complete. The pragmatist says, ‘This is really useful.’

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Posted in Blog, Books, Technology

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? – Excerpts

Posted on February 13, 2012 | 1 Comment

My son (does he know his daddy, or what?) for Christmas gave me a copy of David Bellos’ well reviewed book Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything which I’ve recently begun reading. My interest in the subject of translation arises partly because I work weekly (possibly weakly as well) with a translated document whose translation is often contested or mishandled and partly because I’m just interested in lots of strange stuff. (And, I confess, the obvious reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the title was an attraction as well.)

Just a few pages in and I’m already fascinated enough to want to share a couple of random paragraphs. The first has to do with how English has become the predominant language in which scientific work is published. Its reference to an early “Writer on Scientific Topics” is intriguing:

English is the language of science worldwide; learned journals published in Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Berlin, and Paris are now either entirely in English or else carry English translations alongside foreign-language texts. Academic advancement everywhere is dependent on publication in English. Indeed, in Israel it is said that God himself would not get promotion in any science department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Why not? Because he has only one publication — and it was not written in English. (I do not really believe this story. The fact that the publication in question has been translated into English and is even available in paperback would surely overrule the promotion committee’s misgivings.)

The second has to do with the number of languages one would have to learn in order to communicate without translation with significant portions of the world’s population.

To engage with all but a tiny fraction of people in the world, you definitely do not need to learn all their first languages. You need to learn all their vehicular languages — languages learned by nonnative speakers for the purpose of communicating with native speakers of a third tongue. There are about eighty languages used in this way in some part of the world. But because vehicular languages are also native to some (usually very large) groups, and because many people speak more than one vehicular language (of which one may or may not be native to them), you do not need to learn all eighty vehicular languages to communicate with most people on the planet. Knowing just nine of them — Chinese (with 1.3 billion users), Hindi (800 million), Arabic (530 million), Spanish (350 million), Russian (278 million), Urdu (180 million), French (175 million), Japanese (130 million), and English (somewhere between 800 million and 1.8 billion — would permit effective everyday conversation, though probably not detailed negotiation or serious intellectual debate, with at least 4.5 billion and maybe up to 5.5 billion people, that is to say, around 90 percent of the world’s population.

Makes me lament my monolinqualism.

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Posted in Books, Language

Are You Faster Than a 72 Year-Old?

Posted on February 6, 2012 | 9 Comments

Hannah was a sweet 16 year-old member of my Sunday school class nearly a decade ago when I last ran with any serious intent. I frequently asked about her career as a high school cross country runner, and one day she flipped that on me and challenged me to run in an upcoming 5K, a delightful holiday affair called the “Jingle Bell Run”. I accepted her challenge.

Though I had not run in some time, I soon learned that twice around the figure 8 of our subdivision approximated the 5K I needed to master. I had no clue what kind of time I needed to beat her, but I was thinking that I’d be happy to finish and to give her the joy of beating me.

I did finish. And I finished well ahead of Hannah. And I was immediately filled with guilt. What would a more godly forty-something pastor have done? He would have circled back to cross the finish line in tandem with his young friend. But in the heat of the race, what does he determine to do? To squash her.
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I don’t know if I’ve grown more godly over the years. But I know the competitive impulse has not diminished. At all.

As many know, I took up running a year ago for reasons of health. My initial goal was to be able to finish a 5K by or near my 55th birthday. I did, with a great sense of satisfaction. My next goal is a 10K the end of March. But in between I was encouraged to run in a charity race this past Saturday for a local mercy ministry called Hope Helps.

I discovered that this event would be timed with chips embedded in the number bib, and that race results would be broken down by age brackets. Suddenly, running was not about exercise and it was not about finishing. It was about winning. My age bracket, anyway.

In the course of the race, of course, I had no idea where I was in relation to anyone else. I had chosen the race wisely. It being a new venue, there were not that many participants, so my chances of winning were substantially boosted by the lack of competition.

At 4K, however, I was passed by a man sporting a gray beard. I wanted so much to ask him, “Excuse me, sir. Do you happen to be between the ages of 55 and 59?” in order to determine whether I should try to beat him. But I thought that would be tacky. So, I just presumed he was.

Had he kept his pace, I never would have been able to catch him. But when the finish line came in sight, I realized that I had a real chance of overtaking him. I dug for whatever reserve I had and crossed the finish line wasted, but 2 full seconds ahead of my competitor.

So, yes, I won my age bracket. I beat the other 55-59 year old guy who ran it. I chose my race well.

After I’d recovered, Parry, the man I passed on those last seconds, came up to me, shook my hand, and congratulated me on a good race. I reciprocated.

Later I went to the results board and discovered that my new friend Parry was not in my age bracket at all. No, he left the 55-59 bracket a long time ago. I out-raced a 72 year old to the finish line.

So my racing resume is quite stellar. I can beat 16 year-old girls and 72 year-old men and, when the competition is light, other 55-59 year olds. Be impressed.

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Posted in Life, Race, Sports

The Bullpen Gospels

Posted on January 17, 2012 | 2 Comments

Years ago when the Harry Potter phenomenon was in its rising infancy, some avoided the books judging them to be nefarious tools of the devil intent on dragging the innocent into the darkness of witchcraft and black magic. Upon reading the books I discovered that they were rather about loyalty, friendship, love, and sacrifice. Magic and spells and wizards only formed the context, the whimsical setting within which these greater themes could be played out.

So, I understand why one who is not a sports or baseball fan may pass by a book with the title The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran upon the presumption that it is a book about games and stats and standings intent on dragging the uninitiated into the darkness of boredom. Baseball here forms only a context, the whimsical setting for what is really far more a book about life and how it is lived.

Dirk Hayhurst is a minor league veteran, a pitcher recently released by the Tampa Bay Rays minor league system who is now living in Ohio with his wife and dog. While he labored in the minor leagues, and for a brief stint in the Bigs, he passed his time observing and writing. I’m not sure what kind of pitcher he was, but as a storyteller, he is among the best.

Yes, we get here stories of life on the road and in the locker rooms of single-A and double-A baseball, memorably and humorously told. Readers should know that he records what he sees and hears. Locker room topics and language can be raw. You have been warned.

The stories he tells about himself, his family, and his teammates are true. But as a skilled teller of tales, he causes us to care about these people as characters in a larger story of struggle, conflict, disappointment, and redemption. It is often funny, occasionally poignant, always full of wisdom, but never sentimental.

Last Friday I was at my son’s basketball practice, reading this book. What cooler stuff to be reading among other ‘sporting’ parents than a book ‘about’ sports. It was a good cover, until I found myself fighting back tears. It is definitely NOT cool to be caught crying in the bleachers of your son’s basketball practice.

It is, as I said, a book about life. Honest. True. I’m glad I read it.

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Posted in Books, Sports

Really Cool Grace

Posted on January 16, 2012 | 4 Comments

A casting call has been issued for replacement vocabulary for all the Christian hymns dependent upon ‘amazing’ for their power. We’re talking some biggies here. “And Can It Be” ponders God’s “amazing” love, as does “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”. And of course, there is (or was?) “Amazing Grace”.

All of them need to be fixed.

According to the arbiters at Lake Superior State University (home of the appropriately named ‘Lakers’) “Amazing” is one of the words which should be banished from use, along with “Baby Bump”, “Occupy”, “Man Cave”, and “Ginormous”. LSSU receives nominations for its annual banished word list throughout the year, and this year the greatest number of nominations mentioned “Amazing”.

Say the judges,

Many nominators mentioned over-use on television when they sent their entries, mentioning “reality” TV, Martha Stewart and Anderson Cooper. It seemed to bother people everywhere, as nominations were sent from around the US and Canada and some from overseas, including Israel, England and Scotland. A Facebook page – “Overuse of the Word Amazing” – threatened to change its title to “Occupy LSSU” if ‘amazing’ escaped banishment this year…

Pretty intense.

So what are we to do? Send Wesly, Watts, Newton, and Co. back to the drawing board, I guess.

Awesome grace, how sweet the sound…

Love so mind-blowing, so divine…

Stupefying love, how can it be.

Hmmm. This presents a potentially ginormous problem.

—–

As a footnote, let me praise the folks at LSSU. I am generally in total agreement with their judgment. Last year’s list included “epic”, “fail”, “man-up”, “viral”, and my personal dis-favorite, “the American people”.

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Posted in Words, Worship

Theological Soundtrack

Posted on January 9, 2012 | 2 Comments

Monday morning is my day to pull up to the fuel pump and top off a depleted tank. Sunday takes a lot out of me.

I ordinarily make no appointments other than to spend the morning reading. And I read devotionally, theologically, historically, and practically, normally running four or so books at a time.

You will find me more often than not doing this reading at a local Starbucks. I will run into a few friends, and perhaps make a new one or two, but generally I’m left alone and the ambient noise while sufficient to keep me focused is not so overwhelming that it distracts.

Now and then, however, a conversation arises at a nearby table which is either loud enough or interesting enough that I can’t help but listen and hence be hopelessly distracted. This is particularly difficult when the work I’m reading demands a high level of concentration.

When that happens, I pull a set of earbuds (of which I’m not fond) from my case and queue up a classical playlist in iTunes. The classical music can be turned up to a sufficient volume to obscure the conversation around me while being itself generally non-intrusive. And choosing shuffle keeps it interesting.

So it was that I found myself reading this morning Fred Sanders’ The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything with earbuds uncomfortably in place.

Slowly, I became aware of a serendipitous overlap between the words I was reading and the music I was hearing. A soundtrack to my theological reading was forming.

As Sanders made much of the dramatic centrality of the Holy Trinity of God in our salvation, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture was building to a noisy climax. Theological and musical drama fed each other.

And then, as Sander’s content drifted into a consideration of the meaning of grace in trinitarian terms, J. S. Bach took the stage with the appropriately chosen Sheep May Safely Graze.

I’m not so mystical as to say that the Holy Spirit would have chosen that moment to serve as something of a divine DJ (or ‘iTunes Genius), but it would not take much to push me to that conclusion.

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Posted in Books, Music, Theology

Turtle Life

Posted on December 22, 2011 | 3 Comments

On the theme of ‘doing less‘, and ‘doing other‘, comes this E. B. White (of Charlotte’s Web fame) New Yorker column, published on January 31, 1953.

Enjoy. Reflect. Preferably relaxing in the sun on a partly submerged log.

We strolled up to Hunter College the other evening for a meeting of the New York Zoological Society. Saw movies of grizzly cubs, learned the four methods of locomotion of snakes, and were told that the Society has established a turtle blood bank. Medical men, it seems, are interested in turtle blood, because turtles don’t suffer from arteriosclerosis in old age. The doctors are wondering whether there is some special property of turtle blood that prevents the arteries from hardening. It could be, of course. But there is also the possibility that a turtle’s blood vessels stay in nice shape because of the way turtles conduct their lives. Turtles rarely pass up a chance to relax in the sun on a partly submerged log. No two turtles ever lunched together with the idea of promoting anything. No turtle ever went around complaining that there is no profit in book publishing except from subsidiary rights. Turtles do not work day and night to perfect explosive devices that wipe out Pacific islands and eventually render turtles sterile. Turtles never use the word ‘implementation’ or the phrases ‘hard core’ and ‘in the last analysis’. No turtle ever rang another turtle back on the phone. In the last analysis, a turtle, although lacking know-how, knows how to live. A turtle, by its admirable habits, gets to the hard core of life. That may be why its arteries are so soft.

“A turtle, although lacking know-how, knows how to live.” Something to be said for that.

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Posted in Anxiety, Disciplines, Pursuing Dreams