It's always interesting when someone publishes scientific research that simply confirms common sense. (It's interesting because so much of the world these days needs scientific data before they believe common sense.) In this case the authors note the deterioration of males who use pornography, and excessive, violent video game consumption.

The consequences could be dramatic: The excessive use of video games and online porn in pursuit of the next thing is creating a generation of risk-averse guys who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school and employment. ...

This new kind of human addictive arousal traps users into an expanded present hedonistic time zone. Past and future are distant and remote as the present moment expands to dominate everything. That present scene is totally dynamic, with images changing constantly. ...

Young men -- who play video games and use porn the most -- are being digitally rewired in a totally new way that demands constant stimulation. And those delicate, developing brains are being catered to by video games and porn-on-demand, with a click of the mouse, in endless variety.

The thing with video games is they were all so benign 30 years ago. There was Pac-Man, Mario, Donkey Kong, et al. Even the "violence" that Mario used against Donkey Kong didn't have any detail, because the graphical quality of video games was so paltry back in the 80s and early 90s. Then enter Mortal Kombat, circa 1994, and things started to change. Suddenly your average pimple-faced boy (like me) could pull their enemy's digital spines out with impunity, all from the privacy of their bedroom. Simulated murder was officially at anyone's fingertips.



Now, nearly 20 years later, we are marching toward a video game experience that will one day be not unlike the Holodeck in Star Trek, where "game" is virtually indistinguishable from reality. Adultery. Murder. Greed. Lust. It'll all be there, and it'll seem as real as the screen you're looking at, or the cup of coffee you're sipping on.

About porn ... does anyone really try to defend that trash? I know the average American male consumes it like apple pie, but even then it's still in the dark alleys of the Internet, when no one is looking, when the the wife is asleep or the girlfriend has been pacified with vacuous platitudes of undying love. Suddenly "brave," "manly," "courageous," and "tough" guys are hiding in secluded corners, without the fortitude to step into the light.

What's more, young, developing male minds are being warped because parents don't want to deny them the "freedom" of an iPhone, a laptop, or TV in their room. Suddenly these young men assume that their female peers aren't people, but objects. Objects that are as horny as they are. Objects that care nothing for human interaction, only the instant gratification of licentiousness.

As a parent of five children, I implore you, give your kids a chance.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss linked to the above article on Twitter this morning.

The only thing I know about the book is it's been #1 in the Kindle store for a few weeks now, usurping The Hunger Games a while back.

After perusing the linked article, I read the synopsis of the book on Amazon.com.

"Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving ..."

Mkay.

"...the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever."

I'll bet.

There are a number of sasquatch DNA studies going on right now, discreetly behind closed doors and beyond the reach of media inquiry. I tend to think that the scientific community at large, though not admitting it publicly yet, is beginning to take the study of bigfoots seriously.

My guess is some compelling evidence has been submitted to the scientific community, and several scientists are hoping to be the first to have a breakthrough announcement based on DNA study. No one, though, wants to jump the gun and end up being exposed to public ridicule. Hence, the sloth-like pace of these projects.

As time goes on it's looking more and more like it won't be a corpse that proves bigfoots exist, but a peer-reviewed scientific paper.

From the University of Oxford:

As part of a larger enquiry into the genetic relationship between our own species Homo sapiens and other hominids, we invite submissions of organic material from formally undescribed species, or “cryptids”, for the purpose of their species identification by genetic means.

Timetable
The project is divided into three phases.

SAMPLE SUBMISSION PHASE May – September 2012
DNA ANALYSIS PHASE September – November 2012
PUBLICATION PHASE November – December 2012

You can read the entire piece from Oxford here.

Rich Lowry comments on the facebook phenomenon on the eve of Facebook's IPO. His article had me nodding so hard I developed a concussion. Some excerpts below (emphasis mine):

"If time be of all things the most precious,” Benjamin Franklin said, “wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.” But he had never heard of a status update.

Facebook is the world’s foremost purveyor of information you shouldn’t care about. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is to uselessness what Henry Ford was to the automobile. He has mastered it on an industrial scale and is riding it to a vast fortune. At more than $100 billion, the valuation of Facebook equals the annual GDP of Morocco or Vietnam, countries that don’t top anyone’s list of economic powerhouses, but do actually produce some things of value.

Can 900 million people, the roughly one-eighth of the planet that uses Facebook, be wrong? If they are passing around photos of pets in party costumes, telling us whether they are having a good or bad hair day, and playing the farming-simulation game FarmVille, the answer is, “Why, yes they can!”

Facebook has transformed oversharing from an annoying habit of the poorly socialized into the very stuff of daily interactions. No thought is too banal, no event too minor, no mood too passing, no photo too embarrassing to be posted on Facebook. One of the great self-regarding egotists of all time, the late author Norman Mailer, might have blanched at the unrelenting self-exposure of it.

The article's conclusion is below. I recommend you read the whole thing.

The designation “friend” is often a poor simulacrum of the real thing. In a notable Atlantic magazine cover story, Nicholas Carr asked, “Is Google making us stupid?” but compared with Facebook, Google is the King James Bible. Google is the entry point to a world of news and information beyond what leftovers your old college roommate is eating for dinner tonight before taking her papillon, Princess, for a walk.

The T. S. Eliot line “distracted from distraction by distraction” could have described the temptations of 21st-century social media. Other technologies — the telephone, television, e-mail — have had the same double-edged capacity to enable work and bring people together, or fritter away time on nonsense.

Facebook tilts toward pure distraction, which is one reason a pall of doubt hangs over its post-IPO future. About half of the people in one poll say Facebook is a fad. Mark Zuckerberg is mentioned in the same breath as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but his product is considerably more vaporous. The threat to Facebook will always be the advent of some new and even more alluring way to waste time.

I'm already on record saying that in five years most people will have moved on from Facebook. By the way, thus far, Facebook's IPO has been less than stellar.

Baylor -- do what you want with it but they have won my heart. Not only do they belong in the Big 12, they are running the Big 12.
-- Jim Rome

We compete. We win. We are Baylor.
-- RG3

This culture is media-saturated. Mindless media consumption -- especially among the young who are, by all accounts, more impressionable and pliable -- is a contributor not only to general moral and ethical decay, but to childhood obesity as well.

Here are some frightening statistics from Weight of the Nation (click on the graphic to enlarge):



(A link to the full size graphic.)

'Cause it's been a while.

[Hat Tip: The Rabbit Room]

Part of the reason I love John Piper so much is he's not afraid to tweet something like this:

You don't want to hear God speak these final words: "Fool, how did all that pointless play put my glory in display?"

What's more, he's one of the few (only?) mega-popular preachers out there who would even have the courage, or inclination, to say such a thing.

I had a sick day today and I thought a lot about my own mortality. Compared to this earth, and certainly to God, our lives are short. We are - all of us - mortal. In all honesty, we don’t know how much time we have. Many of you reading this know exactly what I’m talking about. One day you were going about your business when you got that piece of bad news that changed everything.

Today I forced myself to leave my sickbed long enough to conduct a funeral for a dear lady that lived a long life and was well-loved by her family and her friends at the Senior Center. This Saturday, our family will be participating in a walk-a-thon at our school for an 11 year old girl battling brain cancer.

It’s not fun to think about, but life is short. Sometimes we all forget that, especially during times when things are slow. Other times we forget because things seem to be going so fast, because we are busy.

Old cemeteries remind me how brief life is. I like to look for really old gravestones and calculate in my head how old the person was when he died. I am especially moved by those who died young. The family members who once stood around that gravesite and mourned the loss of one of their own gone too soon are now long gone themselves.

I also like to look at old photographs from generations long past. As I gaze into the faces of children, teenagers and young adults, I imagine what they were thinking. For them at the moment their whole life was ahead of them. And now decades or even a century later, they are gone. You and I will one day be like the people in those photographs. Someone will look back at our pictures and wonder what our life was like and our present will be for them the distant past.

None of us really knows how long we have. But even if we have a long life, it’s still short. “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-16).

What do we do then? Sit around and be depressed? No! Make the most of what you have been given. Every day you have is a gift from the Lord. Enjoy each of them. Use them wisely. And know that for the Christian, this life is not all there is.

I got wireless working on my Lubuntu machine. Thanks to the help from Ubuntu Forums.

Geekiness, thy name is Bird.

Has anyone else seen the Avengers movie? Saw it tonight - loved it.

Did you like it?

Does anyone else beside me think that Loki looks like a malevolent 1980's Bono?

Our in-house emoticons are a hat tip to our classic Gatorade post, since they feature a bottle of green Gatorade next to each smiley. Now, for no other reason than to simply waste time, I'll post all of our emoticons along with a little explanation. . . .

This is a basic smile. Sure beats :-)

Not much cause for using this one around here. We're always happy!

I think of this as the Jared emoticon, though I think he's off tabacky now.

This is me. I'm not sure anyone else has ever used it.

This is, um, a little too flamboyant for me.

An emoticon for our oldest fan.

A happy version of the previous smiley.

This is how we feel about all you egalitarians out there.

Ahoy, matey!

This is our very own Blo, a mythical, elusive sasquatch.

This is what I want to be when I grow up.

This is who you all love and blindly follow.

This is my new favorite emoticon.

This is our "Wild at Heart" smiley. Since WAH dudes have a tendency to fly off the handle, we thought this was apropos.

Our very own pastor Phil.

This was an emoticon for a one-time honorary Thinkling.

That's it. Go back to your busy lives now.

About 48 hours ago I installed Ubuntu on my five-year-old laptop. It was slow. Very slow.

After doing a bit more research, I came across Xubuntu, which was supposed to be faster for older systems. At first blush, it appeared quite spry. After the first date, though, I realized Xubuntu and I weren't going to work out. Dang it.

Alas, I have discovered Lubuntu. It is, I think, the most scaled down Ubuntu version you can get (perhaps with the exception of mobile versions?), and it's fast and furious. I'm talking to you via Lubuntu right now. :-)

I mentioned this foray into open source OS software to my wife a couple of days ago and she asked me why I'd want to use something like Ubuntu over Windows. I mumbled something about stability, virus immunity, etc., but I failed to mention the number one reason -- stickin' it to The Man. Ultimately she said it's because I'm "really a geek."

Yeah, right. If I were really a geek I'd be able to get my wifi working with this thing.

Today Justin Taylor highlighted a two year-old post from Phil Johnson, in which Johnson responds to a question about the process of turning a preacher's sermons into a polished book manuscript. Justin called Phil's post a "reality check," and it is. There is good, hard advice there to anyone interested in what it might take to do this sort of editorial work. But as one of the commenters in that old post pointed out, Phil didn't exactly answer the question: How does it work? So I'll be your huckleberry.

Over the last 6-7 years, I have worked on numerous book projects for pastors, some you're familiar with and some you aren't. I'm not new to the work. (Matt was just the first guy to put my name on the cover; I've never ever asked for that recognition.) I have worked on bad books and good books -- which is to say, I've worked with bad sermons and good sermons. So the level of work it takes sometimes to turn a sermon transcript (the word-for-word script of what a preacher said from the pulpit) into a book chapter (a polished work of composition suitable for submission to a publisher) changes from project to project, but the process itself is fairly standard. Here's sort of how it breaks down.

1. Know what good writing sounds like and how to produce it. This is the first hardest step, and there are a billion little details involved in getting there. Lots of guys write books who have no business doing it. And anybody with a basic grasp of grammar -- and plenty of people who don't -- can take a transcript and noodle it around to look like a book chapter. But it will sound less resonant than the original sermon, not more. I call this the "toaster manualization" of Christian literature. You know, when you pick up a book by a famous Christian preacher and it doesn't sound much like their preaching? And in fact, it doesn't sound like a particularly interesting book at all? And you're like, but I love this guy's preaching! Why is this book so . . . bland? It's because some guy with good technical writing skills but little familiarization with the white-hot furnace of essential speech (to paraphrase Lewis, natch) has hammered the sword into a ploughshare. That's why. He made a toaster manual. If that's you, you can probably eke out a good living doing it. That's the good news. But if that's not you, or if that's you and you stared at my toaster manual lines like a dog at himself in a mirror, it'd be equally awesome if you decided to do something else. We don't need any more toaster manuals.

Pardon the manifesto. Ahem.

2. Underneath the ability to write well, however, is the foundation of good mechanics. Could you turn out a decent toaster manual, if you had to? Know yeself some grammer, duh. Are your word processor's spell and grammar check functions your first line of defense? Then this work is not for you. If you're a good writer, you can fudge on this a little bit. For instance, I like to make words up. And play with sentence fragments. Et cetera. If you happen to be an excellent writer, you can even convince the publisher's editor(s) that that's okay. It's art, for Pete's sake! But as my 11th grade English teacher Mrs. Woolley once taught us when we objected to Faulkner's getting away with all the same stuff she marked up with her red pen on our papers, once you know what you're doing, you can not do it now and then. But you gotta know the laws before you can play around with them. And knowing them means knowing which ones not to play with. Like, for instance: Its/it's. Their/there/they're. What commas do. What semicolons do. What exclamation points do. (That last one was a trick question. Don't use exclamation points!)

3. Take the transcript and delete any "church business" or prayers that appear in the introduction or conclusion. You may have to also delete the entire introduction and conclusion, because preachers don't often introduce or conclude sermons the way book chapters are introduced and concluded. The guys who tend to manuscript their sermons often do; but most guys don't. If the transcriber is a legalist, you'll also have to delete a bunch of "uh"'s and "um"'s. But most transcribers know not to include those.

4. Listen to the actual message, perhaps several times, to get an ear for the fellow's voice. This is less necessary if you're already familiar with his preaching voice. As an example, I only listened to a couple of the audio versions of the messages Matt preached that became The Explicit Gospel. I've been listening to Matt's preaching for several years now, so I hear him when I read him already. And some of the material in the book, as others have noted, is not new to those who are familiar with the theme of his ministry. A couple of other guys I worked for I had never heard or even heard of, so it was a lot more work. But knowing the preacher's voice will help you find the holy grail of this entire process: making the sermon read like a quality book while simultaneously sounding like the preacher, not the editor. So find some fairie dust or scrounge up some magic beans if you need to, but get into the preacher's voice as best you can.

5. Know what to add and what to subtract. We're talking editing now. Many good sermons have decent illustrations but books require better ones. And documented ones. This is probably the chief work of actual writing I do. There is also the fleshing out of existing points and the shaving down of unnecessary tangents. Preaching and writing are related arts, but they are also quite different. What may fly from the pulpit may not from the page, and vice versa of course. Sometimes you've got an extraordinary bit of preaching that sings extra well from the page -- I felt that Matt's "Jesus wants the rose" bit was like that. I didn't want to mess with that too much. It was near-perfect as it was, plus it had the added benefit of being so iconic, so widely-recognized that to mess with it seemed anathema. This is why it's an art, not a science. But you will also need to know the science of research. Sermons don't often come with documented quotes or lengthy passages from secondary sources. In most respects, this process is about making the sermon better -- not as a sermon, but as a message. You're allowed more length, so there's more room to develop engaging narratives in illustrations, defend claims with research, do more exegesis, and the like. You also have to work at weaving into every chapter a continuity that often doesn't exist in individual sermons, even if they're in the same series. Many times, the preacher's attempts at creating continuity between sermons in a series are just plain clunky in a book. The continuity is more explicit in a sermon; in a book you want to get into the "narrative" of the work. Even non-fiction books tell a story. That's what you want to find and ride like a hawk on thermal wind. When you get better at this, you can take a 4-page sermon transcript and a 14-page sermon transcript and turn them both into subsequent 20-page book chapters without losing the preacher's voice or adding too much of your own.

6. Don't ghostwrite unless you want to feel dead inside. I define ghostwriting as actually writing a book or most of a book for somebody who then contributes little more than their name to the project. Ew. If you're fine with ghostwriting, you're probably already dead inside.

That's a start, practically speaking. Go revisit Johnson's piece for the Scared Straight version. Phil says this work is "literally harder" than writing your own material from scratch. That isn't always true in my experience, but it is at least equally hard. And many times, the actual physical labor in this work is less time-consuming than writing my own stuff, but the emotional toll is heavier. As a writer, it is wearying trying to write in someone else's voice.

Why in the world does anyone still use Yahoo mail or Hotmail? Every single time I get an email like this, it's from a Yahoo or Hotmail user:

this is interesting http://www.gotothisvirussite

Not a joke. Watch this.

'Cause it's been a while.

There's so much right with this picture, I don't know where to begin.



[HT to Becky.]

So this made my Monday. A follower on Twitter hipped me to this clip from a recent Graham Norton show where Norton interviews actor Mark Ruffalo, one of my all-time faves. The clip begins with Norton referencing Ruffalo's legendary niceness and then brings up an old blog post of mine. They then reenact the script of the conversation I wish Mark and I had had, lo, those seven years ago.



The Jody mentioned is Becky's sister. Amazing that Mark remembered her name! But Jody is a memorable person.

If you're interested in my original post, which also includes a re-creation of how I remember the conversation actually going, you can go here.

That was before gospel wakefulness corrected my fear of man, by the way. ;-)

But I've had the signed boarding pass he gave Jody to give me on my office bulletin board for the last 7 years.