Annual post

A couple of years ago I had an encounter with Amazon. You can read the story here.​

Last year, I posted about it here. ​

All of this to say, and in the event you did not read the previous posts, Amazon's customer service is excellent and I delight in the day that they will have retail shops (are you listening Radio Shack).

Get yourself a Kindle.​

The wisdom of Men in Black...

If you have ever seen the movie Men in Black, then you may recall this scene after "Jay" fires his weapon called the "noisy cricket":​

KAY We do not discharge our weapons in view of the public.

JAY Can we drop the cover-up bullshit?! There's an Alien Battle Cruiser that's gonna blow-up the world if we don't...

KAY There's always an Alien Battle Cruiser...or a Korlian Death Ray, or...an intergalactic plague about to wipe out life on this planet, 

​There always something that is threatening to be the end of the world.

In fact one fella has created a little infograph called Mountains out of Molehills​ which charts global media scare stories and the deaths related to those stories.

There is always a threat to our way of life. Today it is "the sequester"​. Before that it was the "fiscal cliff". Which was not long after the "debt ceiling crisis". 

What I think is interesting is that the thing that really was a threat to a way of life was something that was overlooked in its time.

The death and resurrection ​of Jesus Christ changed the world. It is a threat to all those who rule with violence, fear and oppression. It is a direct threat to empires and those who believe in their authority.

So, while there will always be "Chicken Littles"​ who believe the foxes that the sky is falling. But Christians know that the greatest agent of change was not a fox, but a lamb.

Do not listen to the foxes.

Negative feedback and the church

Freakonomics is a wonderful little source that gets me thinking and if you are not hipped to it, you may just be missing out on some greatness. ​

Recently they posted about how important negative feedback is. Here is the excerpt from the full transcript: ​

DUBNER: ...Positive feedback is really helpful when you’re trying to increase someone’s commitment. So let’s say, you know, someone new to a job or a project. Here’s Stacey Finkelstein, a Columbia management professor who’s been studying feedback.

FINKELSTEIN: For these people, positive feedback is most motivating. It’s what signals that there’s value to what they’re doing, they like what they’re doing, or that they might achieve their goal at some point.

DUBNER: ...once somebody really buys into that goal, positive feedback has diminishing returns. So if you’re looking for actually improvement you’ve got to start going negative. Okay? Here is Heidi Grant Halvorson, she’s a psychologist also at Columbia.

HALVORSON: Look, doling out negative feedback is not fun.  It’s embarrassing.  We feel terrible.  We feel guilty.  So we love hearing, ‘hey, maybe I don’t have to give negative feedback.’  ‘Maybe I can just say positive things!’  ‘If I just keep saying positive things, then somehow this person will work to their fullest potential and everything will turn out fine. ’  And that just turns out to not be the case.

​The church is great at giving positive feedback. But you know what? Jesus was not just giving positive feedback. In fact, to those whom were deeply dedicated, he gave negative feedback. From telling a pious man that he should sell all that he has or even when he yells that his disciples have little faith. Jesus understands that positive feedback is helpful for motivating people to commit, but to improve those already committed, you need to give negative feedback.  

No truer words have been spoken then by Dubner when he says, "you can either look at trying to make people happy or trying to make people better."​

God wants to make us better, not just happy.​