Fire Near Lynchburg... Or Not

I work inside all day on Friday. So when a friend called me and asked if I knew anything about where all the smoke was coming from, I didn't know what she was talking about. But when I left work, sure enough, a bad smelling smoke was in the air.

So I did a little bit of googling, and this is what I found: it appears that the smoke is coming from a swamp fire in South Eastern VA, in a place called the Great Dismal Swamp, a wildlife refuge that crosses the VA-NC border. The fire started due to lightning, and was first reported last week Thursday (August 4th). It has grown to 5793 acres as of today. Looking at the Wikipedia article, the fire is burning about 5% of the swamp's acreage. A number of stats and an up-to-date article (as of today) are available here, including counts of personnel and equipment currently fighting the fire (230 people as of today).

The reason for the smoke in the Lynchburg area is a change in wind direction sometime within the last day or so. Recent reports of smoke in Halifax County have been tied to the fire, according to this article.

From the previous article I found out about this site, which has some original source (government) information on the fire. The best part is the map that shows the area of the swamp that is actually on fire.

However, the most impressive image, in my opinion, is this satellite photo showing the smoke visible from space. That photo appears to have been taken before the change in wind direction.

This is reminding me of a recurring thought whenever I hear of wildfires in the States--I read an article in high school that said that the "Smokey the Bear" policy on fires forests was actually leading to worse fires. The article said it is actually better to let small fires burn, because that clears out fuel that is otherwise left for larger fires. If the small fires are stamped out with German precision, the fuel just builds up, leading to larger, more widespread fires, than if the natural chain of events was allowed to follow a reasonable course. I don't know whether or not this Dismal Swamp fire is a result of the "Smoky the Bear" attitude, but I do wonder.

I tried a quick Google search on Smokey to see if that would lead me indirectly to the article I read in high school, or something similar, only to discover that even Wikipedia mentioned the concept in its article on Smokey. It appears that the article I read represents a trend over the last 10 to 20 years away from the old Smokey who said that any fire is a bad fire, to a new Smokey, focused more on preventing wildfires, than on ecologically good (and even necessary) small fires.

One of my intuitive evidences for agreeing with the idea that it is good to have small fires is that growing up in South Africa, I remember every winter there would be occasional "veld fires" that would burn up a few acres at a time and then die. It was not uncommon to drive around towards the end of the winter and see blackened fields all over the place. But we more frequently heard of wildfires in California and Australia in our local news than we heard of wildfires in South Africa. I think both of these things stem from the antithesis of the Smoky-the-Bear mindset. In South Africa, we would give fires a bit more room to do their business (within reason), and in the end we would have a number of small fires as opposed to one large fire. Again, I don't know the reality behind what I perceived, but that has contributed to my agreement with the less intense Smokey Bear concept.

Photo of the Day: Automatic Caution Door

A friend of mine recently remarked that she reads the above sign as "Automatic Caution Door." What is an "Automatic Caution Door?" Is it a door that automatically warns you that it is opening? There are a number of signs that I have encountered that don't quite make plain sense. Either for perceived impact or for brevity, they arrange words in such a way as to render the meaning of the sign rather confusing. In other words, here "Caution" is centered to give the sign maximum impact, but it ends up amusingly rearranging the word order.

Another example of confusing signs is one I used to see frequently, "School Bus Stop Ahead." I still have not been able to figure out if that means, "A School-Bus Bus-Stop is ahead;" "School Bus may be around, therefore you may need to Stop Ahead;" or, "There is a School, where there is a Bus Stop, ahead." It is rather confusing to me--the search for brevity has left meaning lurking in the shadows.

I wonder if these confusing signs are actually effective. Is the loss of meaning really catastrophic? Or is it possible that the strangeness of the wording is actually a working component of the sign? It could be argued that the sign loses effectiveness by obscuring the meaning. Because the sign is potentially confusing (or even just amusing), it loses its power to warn. However, I think it may also be possible that the strange wording contributes to the effectiveness of the sign by making the reader think about it. The fact that you are thinking about the oddness of an "Automatic Caution Door" actually draws your attention to the sign, and makes you more aware that there is an automatic door in front of you. With the human tendency to take things for granted, it may be that a sign that said, "Caution, Automatic Door," would pass through our minds unnoticed, because there would be no awkward grammar to catch our attention. A normal sign would fail to warn us at all, whereas an awkward sign would catch our attention, and while a processing delay may be experienced, at least the message is being processed. Since humans tend to ignore things they become accustomed to, an awkwardly worded sign may be more effective, because it confronts us with its strangeness at every opportunity.

Photo of the Day: Oily Rainbow

My car has an oil leak that is pretty bad. I am planning on getting it fixed pretty soon (it has just been a matter of making time to actually go to the mechanic), but I have driven my car for a number of months with the leak and no major issues. It does feel somewhat comical to pull up at a stop and look to the side to see smoke wafting up around the car, but that's just from the oil hitting the exhaust pipe and burning up.

My thought about this picture is not the oil but the rainbow. I came out of church on a gloomy, rainy day to see that the oil from my car, mingled with water running down hill, had created this mini-rainbow. And the thought that struck me today when I saw this photo is that God provided for rainbows even in situations like this, where the oil leaking signifies a need for a somewhat expensive repair job. The rainbow has, since it's Divine instantiation, been a symbol of hope, a symbol of the peace that comes after the storm. It is precisely because it is a Divinely created symbol that it symbolizes such hope. God is the one who brings us through the storms of life. He is the One who gave Noah the plans for the ark, He is the One who kept the Ark safe, and He is the one who brought it in the end to dry ground, where He gave the rainbow symbol. In the same way it is God who carries us through the difficulties we all must face in life, and the rainbow in the oil leak is just another reminder of this concept. The rainbow in my situation is hope that some day soon, thanks to God's provision, I will get that fixed and I will no longer have a car that smokes.

Pennies

I have often heard people express disgust at the idea of picking up pennies from the ground. I have never had an attitude of disgust towards the practice. My reasoning for being someone who will gladly pick up pennies (often pennies that others do not wish to pick up) is as follows.

How much time does it take to pick up a penny? If we estimate that it takes 2 seconds to pick up a penny, that means one has earned 1 cent in 2 seconds. Someone working for minimum wage earns 7.25 an hour. If you divide that by 60, you get 12.1 (approximately) cents per minute. They only earn one cent every 5 seconds. To look at it another way, picking up a penny in 2 seconds is the equivalent of 30 cents a minute, or $18 an hour. So if you take the extra 2 seconds it takes to pick up a penny, you are, for those two seconds, earning $18 an hour. Granted, it's only two seconds of work, whereas even a minimum wage job will give you hopefully at least 20 hours a week. But I would imagine you wouldn't slight the idea of earning $18 an hour for at least a small sliver of your life.

So next time you see a penny on the ground, I hope you consider picking it up and earning $18 an hour.

Caveman Economics Part III: Needs and Wants.

This post is Part III of the Caveman Economics series. You can view the other posts in this series here.

Work is the fundamental principle of economics. Energy and time place a cost on any work done by a person. Whether or not a task is considered worth that cost depends upon it’s perceived value or importance. That perceived value is tied tightly to a person’s concept of needs and wants. Needs and wants is the first concept I remember learning about in economics. It is a concept that probably every human being understands--there are certain things you need to survive, and certain things you want, even though your survival does not depend on them.

Needs are those things upon which your survival depends. They are relatively limited, and are universal to all humans. Everyone needs food and water, shelter of some sort, and clothing of some sort. However, needs are not entitlements--the fact that we need food and water does not mean we deserve them. We need them to survive, and therefore must provide them for ourselves. Let us go back to the Caveman Economics approach. Imagine you are a caveman alone on a deserted island. There is no government that will step in to help you. You are the one responsible to do the work needed to keep yourself alive. You need food, so you need to find berries or fruits so that you can eat. You need shelter, so you explore your island and find a cave that protects you from the elements. Needs may be limited, but they require work to fulfill.

The above paragraph does raise the question of the person who cannot provide for himself. There are many in this world who cannot survive on their own--children, many elderly, and many disabled. These people survive either on the provision of others, or they die. This may sound cold, but it is a fact of life--needs would not be needs if they were not necessary for life. Hopefully, this harsh reality should motivate us to help others who cannot fend for themselves, either through teaching them and enabling them to fend for themselves, or merely providing for them if they are unable to be taught. For example, a child can be taught to fend for himself. As he grows older, that teaching will translate into actual ability, and hopefully some day the child will be completely self sufficient. However, an aging parent is likely losing the ability to survive. This person doesn’t need to be taught how to survive. He needs to be cared for and provided for. Since needs are not entitlements, no one is automatically going to provide for those unable to provide for themselves. Someone has to step up and do the work.

Wants are those things you desire, but things you could physically survive without. Wants are pretty much unlimited (unless you have developed an amazing level of contentment) and can differ vastly among humans. We all have desires, and those desires are not universal--I may want things you abhor. Whatever the desires, the satisfaction of one want leads you to want something greater than the previous want. If you survive as a caveman for long enough, after a while you may begin to get really good at catching squirrels. However, squirrel meat every night is going to get boring. While it may once have been something you really wanted (since your need for food was met with berries), now catching squirrels is something you do with your eyes closed. You want something more. But in order to chase something meatier than a squirrel, you are going to have to work harder. Even something as seemingly basic as higher quality food, if it is not necessary for survival, can become a want. Wants also require work to fulfill, and greater wants require more work to fulfill than lesser wants..

Needs and wants alike require work to fulfill. However, thanks to the unlimited nature of wants, and the fact that our time and energy with which we can work to fulfill those wants is limited, we have to choose. That is the essence of the Economic Problem, which will be Part 4 of this series.

Diary of a Blogger: Day 7

About a week ago I was reading an interview by Jesse Gardner with blogger Tim Challies, who has been blogging daily since 2003. The thought struck me that I might like to try blogging every day. I decided I would give it a try--write one blog post every day for the rest of the year. Thus far I’m a week in. It hasn't gotten too exciting yet, but it has been interesting.

I have had a blog for over a year now, and I have always had ideas of things to post on it. However, I was rarely able to take the time to work on an idea that I had until I felt ready to post it. Now, I know I have to post something, so I am finally putting pen to paper on ideas I have had for over a year. I have found this phenomenon to be the most interesting part of blogging daily. Nothing else has worked to get me blogging. It has never been for lack of ideas--I just never made the time to do it. Now I have an outlet for what I have wanted to write, because I know I have to write something.

At this stage I am not really worried about the people reading the blog. My main motivation is for my own personal development. After reading the Challies interview, ideas that had been floating around in my head for a few months came together. I suddenly saw blogging as being a way to do three things. The first is to develop my mind. I expressed in a previous post that I was disturbed by what I perceived to be the effects of social networking--shallowness. I see blogging as a way to develop my mind in the opposite direction. The second thing is discipline. I saw in blogging an opportunity to develop discipline through doing something daily that is public, something where people will ask me, “Why no post today?” The third thing is writing. I have read before (it was a post by Jesse Gardner, actually) that he found that practicing writing was the key to being able to write well. Combine that with the ideas put forth in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, that practice is one of the keys to success at something, and you get what I am thinking--blogging every day gives me the opportunity to practice writing and thinking as never before, and practice it in such a way that it bears some sort of fruit.

I don’t know if I will make it all the way to the end of this year. The rest of the year is a long time, and the hard part--the fall semester--is yet to begin. That may well kill my blogging. But I hope it doesn’t. I see blogging as a chance to practice doing a specific thing daily. That is a skill that applies to many other things in my life that I need to improve on by doing them daily. So keep checking back here at the Alien Thinker. Caveman Economics is the main series I am working on currently, so you should see those posts come out every few days. Other than that, I have a bunch of ideas for different themes up my sleeve. A couple have already appeared, such as the “Photo of the Day,” or “Song of the Day,” but I also hope to do reviews of books when I finish reading them (or thoughts as I read them). One theme I am particularly excited about is my (hopefully) soon-to-be-launched “Electronics Dissassembly” theme, where I blog about my experiences while taking apart, and maybe putting back together, an old electronic device (complete with gory photos of dismembered circuit boards...). Also, keep your eyes open for the occasional poem or other fictional work--Adventures in Flandendale would be my most recent one (although I do like Lyrical Lemonade--over on my literary blog. I don’t plan to continue posting there, at least not for now).

Adventures in Flandendale

Garon walked up the rocky path towards the top of the mountain with a well-worn wooden staff in his right hand. The sun was setting in the West, and he was headed in that general direction, although the path wound back and forth around trees that had probably been there for centuries. The leafy canopy above him  protected the lush, low bushes that hugged the forest floor, but the path he traversed was too well-traveled by men to be populated by any flora.

The trees also proved to be a theatre for myriads of singing birds, whose calls back and forth flooded his ears. In addition to the birds, insects, such as the ubiquitous cicada and the occasional cricket, lent their raucous sounds to the orchestral performance. And although the forest was peaceful at this time of the evening, it was by no means quiet.

He came to the top of the mountain, where a clearing sloped gently towards more trees and the valley beneath. He looked west over all the land of Ashbon, a vast, fruitful valley between two major ranges of mountains. The people of this valley, by virtue of the mountains surrounding them, were rather isolated from the rest of the country. They had their own ways of living, and were seldom influenced from the outside. Most who travelled through Ashbon saw its isolation as a good thing. Not much good can be said for the moral development of a society as it grows more interconnected and more urban. Ashbon had avoided the moral degradation that afflicted much of the world outside the valley, and was consequently home to many pious and wise philosophers--old men who had tired of the wild and fast-paced world their former homes had become.

His journey today took him to the home of one such man, Elendor of Flandendale. Elendor was an old man now, slow moving and grey-haired, but still one who silenced a crowded room with a single word from somewhere behind the grey mass of beard that extended halfway down his torso. His words were rare and significant, always clearly and precisely pronounced. One knew when Elendor had spoken. Garon had been Elendor’s apprentice many years back, when Elendor’s hair was only speckled with grey. That was back in the country to the east, a land that was now no longer named in polite society. Elendor had left the land to the east shortly before the Great Revolution, and found his solace in the hills above Ashbon. He preferred to live away from people, not wanting to have to move again from a dangerous society. Thus he built a small cottage on the mountain tops, and lived overlooking the valley, unable to see or hear any squabbles between the peoples, but available to those who sought his counsel, if they would take the effort to come visit him.

Garon studied the cottage as he approached it. Smoke still twirled listlessly upward from the chimney, and the garden was still lush with crops--Elendor had cultivated vegetables from his youth, and found great enjoyment in the practice. The picket fence that protected his plants was looking a bit out of shape, but Garon knew Elendor would not leave it that way for long. He always mended his fence in July. The stone walk had been extended slightly, and was still precisely straight. Garon opened the gate, and it creaked, but only slightly. Although he usually walked quietly, he measured his steps even more carefully inside the garden, as if the beauty of the garden demanded reverence. He closed the gate behind him and moved to the porch, where he ducked his head under the low roof and used his staff to knock on the door.

As the door creaked open, the old man smiled widely, and said, “It has been to-oo-... lo... ng... si...n...ce I...”

“Why is Windows doing updates in the middle of my game?” exclaimed a perturbed George. His favorite game, Adventures in Flandendale, was about to get to the best part--the voice of old Elendor. But no, Bill Gates software decided that it knew better how to run a computer, and was doing automatic updates just to kill CPU time. He hit escape to pause the game, and irately grabbed his wallet, slapped his bedroom door open and stepped onto the sidewalk of the bustling city street where he lived. He was supposed to meet his girlfriend for dinner at the quaint Italian restaurant on twelfth street, and he might as well be early. “At least Bill Gates isn’t making me late for my dinner dates,” he thought to himself as the sound of horns and the whine of a diesel engine attacked his eardrums.

Caveman Economics Part II: The Requirements for Work

Caveman Economics is a way of looking at complex economic concepts by taking them down to the simplest possible level--the solitary caveman on a deserted island. Part I explored the first principle of economics--that work is the basis of all economics, because work is required for survival, or the satisfaction of wants and needs. Before building up from the first principle, I would go a little lower and look at the requirements for work.

Returning to the Caveman Economics approach, imagine once again that you are a caveman trying to survive on a deserted island. You have to do a number of things to ensure survival, all requiring work. However, the amount of work you can do is limited by two things: energy and time.

All work requires a certain amount of energy. Without energy you cannot do work. Some tasks are more energy intensive than others. A task that requires more energy would be considered to take more work. The energy used to accomplish a task places a cost on that task. Chasing a small bush pig would take more work than picking berries. But it could also be more rewarding at the end of the day to have some meat to eat. If you only have a certain amount of energy, you have to choose what you want to use your energy to accomplish. Do you want to chase the bush pig, or do you pick berries and work on your shelter? Essentially, you decide how important a task is, and whether or not a task is worth the energy it would take to accomplish.

Time places a second value parameter on work. Each day has a certain amount of time, and in that time, there are certain things you need to accomplish, and certain things you want to accomplish. Each task takes a certain amount of time to complete, so one must decide which tasks are worth the time they take and which tasks are not worth the time they take. Going back to previous example, is the potential reward of eating a bush pig for dinner worth the extra time it takes to chase one, or are berries acceptable because they only take a few minutes to pick? Once again, one must decide whether or not the result of the task is worth the time it will take to accomplish.

Time and energy are limited resources. Thanks to their limited nature, they place a cost on any work that one performs. In order to survive, one must weigh the time and energy costs of various tasks against the importance of those tasks. The importance of a task stems from its position on the list of a person’s needs and wants, which will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Photo of the Day: Keys

I interrupt Caveman Economics to post a photo--something I have wanted to do for quite a while. This photo is of some of my keys. As I was looking for a photo that I could post, I saw the keys. Somehow my keys seem to come out well when I photograph them. Looking at the photo, I began to reflect on keys, and what keys mean.

Keys essentially mean responsibility. Think of the keys you encounter in your life--house keys, car keys, work keys, friends’ keys. Each of these keys opens a door somewhere, and gives you the power to enter that door, and bring with you anyone you choose. That power requires great responsibility. Think more specifically of car keys--those keys give you the power to enter and drive a car. Teenagers around the age of fifteen (sometimes even earlier) begin to experience an itch in their fingers for car keys. They want the power to drive. But that power to go from place to place requires responsibility for one’s own life, the lives of other passengers, the vehicle itself, and the lives of other drivers on the road. That’s pretty big responsibility for one key.

The amount of responsibility, and consequently the number of keys, tends to increase proportionally with age. I am reminded of something off of Jeff Foxworthy’s album “Totally Committed.” He says “Whoever's stealing my good sunglasses and my cassette cases is leaving me keys. 'Cause I've got keys. I've got keys to crap I've never owned! You put all my keys together, I could be a high school janitor tonight.” As one grows older, areas of responsibility increase. One buys a car, a house and gets a job as a supervisor. One gets married and has children. Each one of these areas gives you added responsibility and usually keys. I have found the same trend in my life--as I have grown older, I have gained more and more keys. And with that growth in keys has come more responsibility.

My last thought about keys is something that most people may don’t realize--passwords are the same basic concept as keys. Passwords give you access to and power over something. If you think about your password more like it is a key, does that change the way you view it? The most popular password is “password.” No joke. That’s like taping the key to the door handle so that you don’t lose it. Passwords are like keys, and should be treated as well as, if not better than, physical keys.

Think about the keys (and passwords) that you have in your life. What responsibility do they carry?

Caveman Economics Part I

The concepts of economic systems can seem rather intimidating at first--supply and demand, unemployment, inflation, money supply, GDP growth, and so on, can seem comparable in complexity to computing jargon. This is not helped by our current government and media who seem to throw around vague economic concepts as if they have such great complexity that no mere mortal can dare to attempt to understand any of them (only our beloved “experts” can give us even a sliver of enlightenment). But economics is actually really simple. You see, a large economy like the US is simply made up of millions of individuals and corporations who interact on relatively simple terms. Economics happens when you go to Walmart and buy groceries or even a TV. Even if you were to be stranded on a deserted island, your very survival depends on economics, but in a vastly simpler, less interconnected way.

Once the grand economic concepts are brought down to the level of the solitary caveman, they are relatively easy to figure out. After figuring out how these concepts apply at the caveman level, you have a basis to scale that understanding upwards, seeing a large economy as simply a vast number of interacting cavemen. This is a calculus-style approach--understand the problem in one instance, and scale it up to a very large number of small instances. I plan this post to be the first in a series of posts using the Caveman Economics (calculus-style) approach to explain economic principles from the ground up.

I don’t remember when I discovered what I consider to be the foundational principle of economics, but it wasn’t in school. Somehow the textbooks seem to have missed the most important concept. This most important thing is that all economics is based on work. How can this be so? Let us take the Caveman Economics approach. Imagine you are marooned on a deserted island. Essentially, you have just been made a caveman. How does a caveman survive on an island with no-one around (think Castaway starring Tom Hanks)? Obviously there are certain needs that must be met. You will need water, food, and shelter. How do you go about obtaining these things? You will have to explore your new home to find a freshwater stream that you can drink from. You will probably then look for a cave near the stream, so that you don’t have to try to build something without tools. You will also look for some fruit or something that you can eat without having to cook it. That will get you through the first day. Every single thing you have to do to survive (even for just one day) requires work. If you don’t work, you won’t eat, you won’t sleep safely, you won’t drink; you will die. The Bible said this years ago: “If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” (II Thessalonians 3:10). Work is necessary for survival, and is thus the cornerstone of economics, because the first concern of economics is satisfying the needs of man.

Stay tuned for more Caveman Economics...

Song of the day: How B.o.b Airplanes relates to American Christianity

I enjoy poetry. I haven't always enjoyed poetry, but I have come to appreciate its significance as a means of symbolically communicating that which one cannot necessarily communicate with prose. But this post is not totally about poetry--it is about a song. I like song lyrics for some reason--maybe it’s because they are essentially poetry. But I think it is more because I like to engage with song lyrics--that is, ponder the meaning, intention and ramifications of the philosophy espoused by the lyrics. I see this as a legacy of my upbringing, where even the philosophical significance of a road-side billboard was free game to be called into question. For example, on seeing a billboard that said, “All you need is love,” my father might ask, “Is that statement true?” and for the next five minutes or so we would discuss the elements of truth and limitations of the statement, “All you need is love.” In a similar manner, I ponder within my own mind the elements of truth and limitations of song lyrics I hear.

Today’s song is B.o.B’s Airplanes. It’s a very romantic song, in the sense of romanticism--seeking to return to a better past. Whenever I hear this song, there is one line that catches my attention every time: “But nowadays we rappin’ to stay relevant.” This line comes from the following part of the song:

Somebody take me back to the days

Before this was a job, before I got paid

Before it ever mattered what I had in my bank

Yeah back when I was tryin' to get into the subway

And back when I was rappin' for the hell of it

But now a days we rappin' to stay relevant

I'm guessin that if we can make some wishes outta airplanes

Then maybe oh maybe I'll go back to the days

Before the politics that we call the rap game

And back when ain't nobody listened to my mix tape

And back before I tried to cover up my slang

But this is for the Cada, what's up Bobby Ray

So can I get a wish to end the politics

And get back to the music that started this s**t

So here I stand and then again I say

I'm hopin' we can make some wishes outta airplanes

Somehow I always think of American Christianity when I hear these lines. I think of television preachers and famous speakers; megachurches and seeker-sensitivism. And I want to go back to the days before church was a business. Before it ever mattered how many people sat in the pews on Sunday morning, or how much money came into the offering plate. Back when it didn’t matter whether you gathered in a school gym or a tall cathedral. Back when it was all about the truth and how God applied it to the heart.

You see, now a days, we preachin’ to stay relevant.  American Christianity has become largely all about covering up, not slang, but the offensiveness of its message. Seeker-sensitivism says that we can attract people to Christ. Unfortunately, the very message of the Gospel is offensive. To cover up its offense is to dilute it. Instead of diluting the truth, we need to speak the full truth in love.

With that said, though, “going back to the days,” is really a misnomer. Throughout church history, there have been those who have compromised the truth in their quest for outward results. Thus, “going back to the days,” even if it was possible, is not the real answer. The answer lies in “going back to the truth.” The truth is always with us in the Scriptures--no time travel necessary. There are churches in America that aren’t focused on numbers or statistics or a business model, but on faithfully proclaiming the truth in the Scriptures. Those are the places we need to go back to, because they will lead us back to the truth.

The Power of Words

I've been thinking a lot about words recently. I've come to believe that words have power. Words have power because they carry ideas, and ideas motivate actions. Words have the power to carry ideas because they carry meaning. Words are used by one person to communicate meaningful ideas to another person.

Today, however, our postmodern culture teaches us to use words vaguely. When we communicate, our words are less precise in meaning, and more steeped in connotation and innuendo than denotation and precision. We talk of feeling more, and thinking less.

Our culture today is addicted to social networking. It has become an almost sad irony that it is difficult to have a real face-to-face conversation with someone without them pulling out their phone at some stage to perform some social-networking function. And homework is always performed as a multi-task between writing the paper, and placing one’s two cents on that hilarious status that everyone is commenting on.

I am convinced that this social networking addiction is having an effect on our minds. I have read articles about how the way we use the web is changing the way we think. Think about the way you look for information on the internet. There isn’t much reading going on until you find what you are looking for. Until then, it is just skimming to find where to click. The same occurs, I think, with social networking.

Think about the general gist of most tweets or facebook statuses. Generally speaking, they probably end up being a random funny statement, followed by likes and witty comments in response. Everything is short, not much meaningful is exchanged, but everyone has a good laugh while staring at a screen.

This focus on the trivial and witty seems to be spilling over into real conversations. Think about the general pattern of your conversations with friends. Someone says something funny, and others respond in a series of witty comments. The pattern may just be a human pattern, but I think the spillover really shows in the triviality of those verbal exchanges. We have a good laugh, but in the end of the day, what have we really done? We have communicated meaningless trivia, rather than deep significance.

I have decided to focus on blogging as a way to train my mind away from the shallow trivia of status updates, and toward the deep thoughts that really matter. I hope that this focus will spillover into my conversations with others. I hope that by focusing on thinking more deeply, I will seek to talk about deeper things with others, and thus in turn encourage them to think and talk more deeply.

This is not to say that social networking is useless. I plan to use social networking as a tool to share the deeper thinking of my blog. But social networking is a tool, not a destination. I want to use it as the tool it should be, and keep ideas in their proper place.