A did have pessimistic thoughts while reading this, but the feeling of amen was the overall sentiment. Part of my emotion is a genuine hope that God is really working–that this is a true spiritual revival. It would be such a good thing. Amen!
How I Take Notes by Ted Gioia, the jazz critic and music hisotrian.
Here’s one thing that stood out for me:
I taught myself how to write down everything in coherent complete sentences and integrated paragraphs. I learned how to do this in real time while the professor was speaking.
This forced me to improve my listening skills, because I was always looking for connections and coherence in what I heard. And it also helped my thinking and writing skills too.
This idea never occurred to me. It just seems too difficult. Just being able to write down what is being said is challenging enough. But to receive the information and then package it into sentences and paragraphs–that seems nearly impossible, at least for me.
On another note, I probably mentioned this before, but if schools don’t teach note taking, that’s a big oversight–if not in high school, it should be taught in college. As Gioia’s post alludes to, note taking is a critical tool for learning. I would learn and understand far less without note taking.
Only after a page or two of Fernando Pesssoa’s The Book of Disquiet, I thought I might be reading the greatest novel I’ve ever read, which is really odd. On the other hand, the book isn’t so much a novel as a fictional journal of a man who can write like a great poet, possessing insights of a great philosopher.
There are many, many great passages from this book. But here’s one I came across that I wanted to post:
#328 “A Factless Autobiography” (translated by Richard Zenith)
Join your hands, and put them in mind, and listen, my love.
I want to tell you, with the soft and soothing voice of a confessor giving counsel, how much our yearning to attain falls short of what we do attain.
With the voice and your attention, I want us to pray together the litany of despair.
There is no artist’s work that could not have been more perfect. When read line by line, the greatest of poems has few verses that couldn’t be improved, few scenes that couldn’t have been told more vividly, and the overall result is never so good that it couldn’t have been vastly better.
Woe to the artist who notices this, who one day happens to think about it! Never again will he work with joy or sleep in peace. He’ll be a young man without youth, and grow old, dissatisfied.
An why should anyone express himself? What little he may say would be better left unsaid.
If I could really convince myself that renunciation is beautiful, how dolefully happy I would always be!
For you do not love the things I say with the same ears I use to say them. Even my ears, should I speak out loud, do not hear the words I speak in the same way as my inner ear hears the words I think. If even I, when I hear myself, get confused and am not always sure what I meant, then how much more other people are bound to misunderstand me!
What elaborate misconceptions form other people’s understanding of us!
The joy of being understood by others cannot be had by those who want to be understood, for they are too complex to be understood; and simple people, who can be understood by others, never have the desire to be understood.
I watched an interview with Greg Maddux, and two interesting things he said that stood out for me.
First, his idea of trying to force a hitter to hit on an 0-2 count instead of wasting a pitch–even if he leads the leagues in hits on 0-2. His reasoning? Basically, 0-2 is the hardest situation to hit. He may lead the league on 0-2, but that’s OK if he leads the league in outs on 0-2. Makes total sense to me. But conventional wisdom is that a pitcher should never give up a hit on 0-2, which makes sense, too. I think I like Maddux’s thinking a bit more. (He also mentions that if he gets more outs on 0-2, that will likely lead to hitters seeing less pitches, which gives an advantage to pitchers.)
Second, he was asked if he said Barry Bonds was the easiest hitter to face. He confirmed this saying that it’s easy to throw 4 balls. But the next comments were interesting. He said that he’s facing a line-up, not a hitter. He needs to get 27 outs, not getting a hitter like Bonds out 3-4 times. As long as he keeps the ball in the park against Bonds, he likes his chances of winning the game. Nice.
Good food for thought about living in your later years.
‘No Celebrities Except Jesus’: How Asbury Protected the Revival from Christianity Today
This reporting on this event moved me. I actually first read about it in the Atlantic—When a Christian Revival Goes Viral. (Strangely–although maybe not so strangely–Tim Keller wrote a piece in the Atlantic a few weeks ago entitled, AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY IS DUE FOR A REVIVAL
A did have pessimistic thoughts while reading this, but the feeling of amen was the overall sentiment. Part of my emotion is a genuine hope that God is really working–that this is a true spiritual revival. It would be such a good thing. Amen!
How I Take Notes by Ted Gioia, the jazz critic and music hisotrian.
Here’s one thing that stood out for me:
This idea never occurred to me. It just seems too difficult. Just being able to write down what is being said is challenging enough. But to receive the information and then package it into sentences and paragraphs–that seems nearly impossible, at least for me.
On another note, I probably mentioned this before, but if schools don’t teach note taking, that’s a big oversight–if not in high school, it should be taught in college. As Gioia’s post alludes to, note taking is a critical tool for learning. I would learn and understand far less without note taking.
Only after a page or two of Fernando Pesssoa’s The Book of Disquiet, I thought I might be reading the greatest novel I’ve ever read, which is really odd. On the other hand, the book isn’t so much a novel as a fictional journal of a man who can write like a great poet, possessing insights of a great philosopher.
There are many, many great passages from this book. But here’s one I came across that I wanted to post:
#328 “A Factless Autobiography” (translated by Richard Zenith)
I watched an interview with Greg Maddux, and two interesting things he said that stood out for me.
First, his idea of trying to force a hitter to hit on an 0-2 count instead of wasting a pitch–even if he leads the leagues in hits on 0-2. His reasoning? Basically, 0-2 is the hardest situation to hit. He may lead the league on 0-2, but that’s OK if he leads the league in outs on 0-2. Makes total sense to me. But conventional wisdom is that a pitcher should never give up a hit on 0-2, which makes sense, too. I think I like Maddux’s thinking a bit more. (He also mentions that if he gets more outs on 0-2, that will likely lead to hitters seeing less pitches, which gives an advantage to pitchers.)
Second, he was asked if he said Barry Bonds was the easiest hitter to face. He confirmed this saying that it’s easy to throw 4 balls. But the next comments were interesting. He said that he’s facing a line-up, not a hitter. He needs to get 27 outs, not getting a hitter like Bonds out 3-4 times. As long as he keeps the ball in the park against Bonds, he likes his chances of winning the game. Nice.
Here’s the interview:
Here’s a cool story that Javier Lopez tells: