Avoid Top Job Interview Mistakes

Some of you may not know this, but page hits on this blog are extremely important to me. As a result, I closely examine the content on top sites to see what they are doing to get all their hits. I saw this article on the front page of Yahoo News and was struck by the insight, expertise, genius, and literary prowess of this article - Avoid These Top College Admissions Interview Mistakes. I will try to imitate the brilliant techniques employed by the author and hope to give super helpful advice and draw in millions of clicks!

Acing a job admissions interview is exactly what you need to do to get hired, but having a bad interview will sink you. Don't fall into the latter category. The following are several of the top job interview mistakes - and ways to avoid making them.

1. Insulting your interviewer. While honesty is a trait looked for by most employers, insulting your interviewer is not the correct avenue to displaying this trait. No matter how overweight your interviewer is or how much you dislike their haircut or outfit, try your best not to insult your interviewer. Attempt to find other avenues of exhibiting honesty, perhaps by displaying your self-awareness by admitting to your own weaknesses (e.g. cheating, stealing, pornography).

2. Neglecting to wear clothes. Most employers nowadays prefer their job candidates clothed while interviewing, so it is of utmost importance that your body is covered. The temptation may also be strong to remove articles of clothing during your interview, but studies have shown that candidates that strip during their interviews are less likely to receive job offers.

3. Failing to follow directions. When you interview, it's possible that you will be given specific tasks to accomplish, be it problem-solving or writing code on a whiteboard. It is of utmost importance that you accomplish these tasks within the constraints given you. Many first-time interviewees make the mistake of using the white board to draw dinosaurs and panda bears instead of programming and throwing pens and pencils at the ceiling, but unless instructed to do so, refrain from such activities.

4. Telling lies. We all are prone to hyperbole especially during interviews, but over-exaggerating is a big risk that needs to be avoided. Resisting the impulse to tell lies will save you the trouble of attempting to explain how you managed to finish college in 2 years despite your extensive time overseas helping the poor and the time machine that you built in your back yard.

5. Going overboard with the bragging*: While you shouldn't be so humble that you don't say anything positive about yourself when asked about your accomplishments, be careful not to go overboard. Going on for too long about how great you are and how many amazing things you've done can be off-putting. It's okay to let some of what you've done speak for itself. If certain achievements are really that incredible, the interviewer will show genuine interest and have follow-up questions, allowing you to expand on your experiences in a more natural way.

*All of point 5 copied verbatim from Avoid These Top College Admissions Interview Mistakes

Caleb Tseng is a professional mediocre blogger at fobbymaster.blogspot.com. He earned his B.S.E. from the University of Michigan and his master's degree from the University of Michigan.

Weighting Attractiveness Ratings

For those of you who haven't seen on my Facebook, I'm conducting a survey of the attractiveness of starting NFL quarterbacks (survey here!). As I was thinking about the analysis of the survey, I came across the idea of having different weights for each rating. The naive value for each rating is its own numerical value (1=1, 2=2, etc), but I believe that this doesn't accurately capture what each rating represents. I've made my own value system which which I'll apply to the data along with the default values, and I can't wait to see what changes, if any, it will make to the data. Of course, I'm probably overthinking things, but whatever. This was fun to think about.

Ratings and their Corresponding Values
Attractiveness Rating	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Value	-7	-5	-3	-2	0	2	3	5	6	9

Explanation/Rationale

1) Shifted down - I've shifted all the values down so that any negative value indicates someone who is "unattractive" and any positive ranking indicates someone who is "attractive".

2) Rating 5 is the center - When we say "Rate someone on a scale from 1-10", I believe that most people subconsciously make 5 the center, neutral value, without realizing that the center between 1 and 10 is actually 5.5.

3) Ratings 4 and 6 are +/-2 away from 0 - While 5 is neutral, ratings 4 and 6 are indicate someone who is definitively attractive or unattractive.

4) "Buckets" - When rating attractiveness, I believe that ratings of 3 and 4 (kinda ugly), 6 and 7 (kinda attractive), and 8 and 9 (very attractive) are very close and almost interchangeable. As a result, each of these buckets differ in rating only by 1. However, the difference between each "bucket" is greater, warranting a difference of 2 between each bucket.

5) The unattainable 10 - Rarely is a perfect rating of 10 ever given to someone's attractiveness. Ten is in a class of its own, yielding the difference of 3 between 9 and 10.

Rejected Ideas for Iris' Wedding

Iris (my little sister) is getting married in exactly a week, and I'm totally pumped for her wedding. Since Iris and James have been engaged, I've been throwing them a bunch of ideas that I think would spice up the wedding. Most of them (actually all of them, thinking about it) have been rejected. But here's a list of the things I proposed to Iris.

[Note: If you are destined to be my future spouse. Please stop reading here. Thank you.]

Embarrassing Toast - In Review

I've been threatening Iris for months with telling all the embarrassing stories of our childhood for my toast. I still have a week of leverage to use this threat!

Wedding Gifts Commission - Rejected

I would graciously take on the responsibilities as the person in charge of collecting gifts, and as a token of gratitude for my service, Iris and James would "reward" me with 10% of the total gifts. Unfortunately, Iris and James have already found people who would do this task for free...

Pregnant Sumo - Rejected

Iris: Yes Sheila is coming!
Iris: she will be very pregnant
Iris: like sara
Caleb: for some entertainment
Caleb: there should be a pregnant sumo
Caleb: stomp...stomp...SMASH
Iris: you are so terrible...

Have Timmy be a Centerpiece - In Review

Who knows. Maybe Tim will agree to this!

Poop bouquet toss - Rejected

Picture this. Iris is turned around, and all the single ladies are crowded behind her in anticipation of the bouquet toss and the chance to be the next one to marry. Iris hands suddenly lift from in front of her, and all the girls scream in delight, until they realize that it's not a bouquet that has been tossed, but a pile of stinky poo! The screams of delight quickly become screams of horror, as all of the girls try to run to avoid the poo. Some girls, however, are not so lucky and are trapped in the middle of the panicking crowd. The original pile of poop separates in the air, greatly increasing its area of effect. Any attempt to flee is now futile. The poop rains down from above, spoiling the new, hundred dollar dresses on the unfortunate upset, once-hopeful girls. What a glorious scene it would be.

Daddy-daughter dance to dad's own singing - Rejected

Few of you probably know this, but despite being as close to tone-deaf as someone possibly can be, my dad loves to invent his own songs and sing them repeatedly until he gets tired or my mom tells him to stop. Iris and I have obviously memorized many of the numerous songs he likes to sing, and I thought that it would be fitting, hilarious, and emotionally moving to record my dad singing his silly songs and have Iris and him dance to it. Unfortunately, neither party agreed.

Nose Pore Cleaner Wedding Favor and Guestbook - Rejected

Recently, my mom has been on a mission to clear the dirty pores in my noes, so she bought those strips that stick to your nose and pull out all the gunk from your pores. Iris and I have both used them, as they're pretty fun to use and it's amazing the stuff that can get embedded in your nose. After Jenny and Steven's wedding, we were discussing how much we liked the stamp guestbook idea, and thought that maybe we could give each guest a nose pore cleaner, and then paste it onto some sheet and write their name next to it, kind of like Jenny and Steven's thing!

    

[This photo stolen from Jenny's Facebook]

Now try to imagine around 200 of these things
on a sheet of paper!

Kinda hard to believe that this girl is getting married in a week!

And her big brother is totally excited for her!

Becoming Discontent in 7 Easy Steps

Are you tired of being happy with your life? Sick of living an anxiety-life? Worry about your worrylessness no more! Here's 7 easy steps to living a perpetually discontent life, a process I personally perfected after a honeymoon-like week of hanging out with old friends July 4th week, where my yearning for deep community (and other less honorable desires) was rekindled and set ablaze. All the suppressed dissatisfaction with my life ate away at my heart, and I found myself coveting the lives of some of my old friends and dreaming of my own imaginary perfect future.

And so here, free of charge (for the first 30 days), is this 7-step EZ-Discontentment system. Enjoy.

1. Create a mental picture of your unattainable ideal life.
   
   
2. Compare yourself to other people, especially people that seem to be living a better life than you.
   
   
3. Think about all the possessions you don't have and all the experiences you're missing out on.
   
   
4. Puff yourself up and list the things you think you deserve but don't have at the moment.
   
   
5. Ignore the blessings in your life and the struggles of others.
   
   
6. Neglect your relationship with Jesus.
   
   
7. Repeat daily.

Utopia, IRC, and Global Friendships

Some of you may know the old school in-browser, text-based game called Utopia. I picked up Utopia again around a year ago after getting an email from them, landing in a super-ghetto kingdom that worked its way up to be a decent kingdom. The king was insistent on using IRC for kingdom communication, which has let to real relationships and conversations with the different players in our kingdom (which is Moar Pink Kittehs Nao aka MPKN).

And it's been awesome. It's awesome to get to "meet" people from all over the world. I got to know people from the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Israel, China, etc. Urbana, along with Paul Borthwick's globally-minded missions book, grew in me a desire to get to know people from different parts of the world, as I became convinced that I could make a global impact without even going overseas, as the displacement of peoples and immigration along with the worldwide connectedness via the Internet is bringing the world to our fingertips.

Using IRC to connect with people through the game has been priceless. As I'm typing this up right now, a veteran in our kingdom from the Netherlands is chatting with a newbie from Australia, as they just found out that they are both marine biologist divers, and actually worked on the same small island at the same time (though they didn't actually meet there)!! I must admit that this is what has finally driven me to stop procrastinating and write this post that I've had sitting in my head for some time now. It's just been really fun listening in on a British guy and an Australian guy argue about how racist Australians are, and it was fun for me to argue with both of them to argue about our American measurement system.

It's just been a joy getting to know people in other countries. It's been fun hearing about different jobs that people have, from the "boring" ones to the interesting stuff - sports rehab with the disabled, coral reef restoration, construction work, etc. It's awesome hearing about other cultures and ways of living - to hear about an Israeli's opinion on Americans, a Vietnamese's experience of living Australia, and a Westerner's approach to learning Chinese while in China. It was surprising how good everyone's English was, even if English wasn't their first language, and it is also very interesting to observe linguistic differences in the way we all speak/type English.

My kingdom is in a rebuilding phase right now, as we've had a couple of tough losses these last few months. A bunch of our previous players have left the game or are taking a break from it. It's been hard losing contact with real people that I've talked to and built friendships with, knowing that I may never speak to them again. As stupid as it might sound, the relationships we build are real - people share real-life struggles like disease and grief. Maybe I'm just more prone to relational attachment so losing players and rebuilding the kingdom has been tough on me emotionally, but I'm so thankful for this opportunity to get to build real relationships with people from all around the world. It's been awesome.

[In the slight chance that any of you, whether veterans or newbies, are looking for a Utopia kingdom, ask for fobbymaster on #pinkkittehs on UtoNet, or just holler at me.]

So this just happened. I mention church every so often (to the collective internet groans of my kingdom mates), but I don't think I've ever had anyone say "Jesus may bless ur fuckin ass before" to me before!

fobbymaster: i gtg sleep. just past midnight, and i gotta get up for church tomorrow 
Israeli: holy man!!
Israeli: jesus may bless ur fuckin ass (: 
fobbymaster: lol  gotta get my Jesus time.
Israeli: iam jew 
Israeli: but! 
Israeli: go get ur jesus time (:
fobbymaster: haha. so was jesus.
fobbymaster: lolol
Israeli: send a pray for me too (: 
Israeli: any god will do 
fobbymaster: hehe okay
Israeli: gn mate
fobbymaster: talk to you tomorrow

The Harlem Shake and Cultural Sensitivity

If you haven't seen the "Harlem Reacts to Harlem Shake" video, watch it below.



For all you Chinese people, how would you react to a party where a bunch of white people dressed in stereotypical Asian garb and spoke with Chinese accents? [This actually happened at Duke.] Or maybe a Chinese version of the Harlem Dance - perhaps a "Ribbon Dance" where a bunch of white people dressed in panda suits threw rolls of toilet paper around and waved it around as some sort of ribbon? How would you react if this video went viral and there were "flash mobs" of people doing the "Chinese Ribbon Dance", and the only thing people know the Chinese Ribbon Dance to be is large groups of strangely dressed white  people and a lot of toilet paper everywhere?

For those of you who don't feel any connection to your Asian heritage, you may not feel  strongly, but I'm getting riled up even just writing that. You see, when we "borrow" things from other people and cultures or label them a certain way, it is easy for them to feel like their culture is being attacked or made fun of, especially if it is a group of people that has been marginalized and picked on through the decades and centuries. We need to realize that even if we don't take things seriously, others might, so we need to be aware of how our actions are perceived and received by others.

It's not enough to be well-intentioned if we are ignorant. And yes, we are all ignorant about some things, so when our ignorance is pointed out, we shouldn't just brush it off, remaining ignorant. So yes, the Harlem Shake videos are fun and not intended to be a representation of Harlem, but if there are people in Harlem who feel dissed by it, we need to listen to them and stop it. Ignoring those who feel offended and writing them off as uptight is tempting, as it's much harder to admit to ignorance, but doing so would be a big mistake. Ignoring them would be ... wait for it ... ignorant.

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."

- Philippians 2:3-4

Highly recommended post - Some People Have Just Never Had To Take a Joke

Watching Movies - My Mom

Like most 20th century American families, my family watches a lot of movies together, and each one of us has particular movie-watching habits and preferences.

I tried to make a flowchart for each member of the family, but I don't have Visio on my computer and I realized very quickly that making flowcharts in Word is a huge pain, and the end result is much uglier than expected. So here's the one for my mom, and the rest will come later, probably after Urbana. Hopefully I can figure out a way to do it on Visio or something else so it's not so darn ugly.

Merry Christmas, all.

AOE and The Importance of Reflection

I recently rediscovered Age of Empires after many years of not playing, and I discovered a fairly large, vibrant community of people who still play, and I've started playing online. This is actually the closest I've become to a "gamer", as I've also started watching recorded/commentated games online in addition to playing a good amount. [As an aside, I never used to understand what the appeal was in people like Sam Li watching recorded games, but now I understand].

I was listening to an interview of one of the top AOC players (I think it was FeAge) by ZeroEmpires, and he asked FeAge if he had any tips for getting better. FeAge gave the following two tips -

1) Play against people that are as good or better than you.
2) After every game, spend 5 minutes and think about why you won or why you lost the game. 

I've been practicing the second tip, and while it might not seem like such a big deal, it has actually helped my game tremendously. Thinking about the one or two things I did right or wrong and either applying or avoiding them in future games has helped me improve dramatically. I've improved from being a "Super Noob" with twice as many losses as wins to simply being a "Noob" with as many wins as losses (though I definitely had to win much more than I lost to get here). I didn't realize at first how much I was improving until I realized that I had jumped much higher in rating than I ever thought I would. At first I thought this was a fluke, and that I must have just gotten lucky a few times, but after a while of maintaining my rating and outplaying players of lower rating, I think I can say with confidence that my rating isn't a fluke.

I've always assumed that just playing the game a lot will somehow automatically make you better at it, and to some extent, that's true. Joshee once mentioned to me and he was frustrated with someone who had played LoL for a long time and still wasn't very good, and I remember wondering to myself if that guy was just incompetent and kind of stupid. But now I guess I've realized a bit more that to become a better player, there needs to be some intentionality behind it and improvement doesn't just come by "playing a lot". Either that, or I'm just stupid and not as talented as everyone else.

Obviously, this lesson on reflection can be applied to many different arenas in life, and this practice of reflection has also helped me specifically in my ultimate play. But whatever. This is an AOE post, so here are some of the random reminders and tips that I've picked up that have really helped my gameplay:

• You are going to need to transfer your villagers from one resource to another, so don't be afraid to do it. Start sending your lumberjacks to seed farms once you have your extra Town Centers up. Don't wait until you've saved up a ton of wood to do it. You'll end up with too much.
• Start trading before your gold runs out. When it runs out, it will already be too late.
• When playing Turks, don't forget that the Light Cavalry/Hussar upgrades are free. They make for a great meat shield for your Janisseries/Hand Cannoneers.
• Don't be afraid to ask for help from your teammates. If you need resources or military support, ask immediately.
• Do your military upgrades before you need them. Especially the upgrades to Champion. Those take a while.
• Don't forget to make siege. Good use of siege seems to actually be the difference between noobs and better players.
• Anticipate what your opponents are going to make, and make the hard counter to them. Don't forget about Hand Canoneers and how much they tear through infantry.
• Build an extra Blacksmith or two to get all your upgrades faster.

There was a time when I thought that any decent RTS player who decided to pick up AOE could still beat me because I simply wasn't very good at AOE, but not anymore. So if there are any of you people out there who still play AOE or want to get back into it or want to challenge me, hit me up so we can Wololo together.

My Pro-Life Defense on Reddit - My Stance

As you may have seen on my Facebook, I posted in on reddit in response to the question/prompt: 

Okay conservatives, post your rational arguments that we constantly bury here. I won't downvote any of them. Hopefully others will follow suit.

[Here's the link] of my response and the literally hundreds of follow-up comments. In this post, I'm going to outline some of the basics of my stance on abortion, and will continue to clarify my position further in future posts.

Introduction
As I began responding to the hundreds of responses I got, my stance on abortion became increasingly clear to me. Believe it or not, I was largely unconvinced that abortion was wrong until only a few months ago. To me, the Biblical support that the soul begins at conception is shaky and unconvincing. Not only that, I objected to the idea that abortion is murder and that those who have abortion are murderers, because to me, a genuine belief in this morally justified things like the bombing of abortion clinics or the murder of doctors who perform abortions. Also, if abortion truly was murder, why don't the anti-abortion conservative evangelicals care more about the issue? I just didn't believe that the pro-life rhetoric that abortion is murder was genuinely reflected in their belief systems or in their actions. All this paired with the lack of any sort of emotional attachment to "clumps of cells", I could not bring myself to accept the pro-life side.

So as I began writing back to my millions of fans around the world, my stance became solidified. To me, these stances are coherent and internally consistent, and it seemed like many of the pro-choice people were satisfied with many of my answers. That said, some of my beliefs are non-traditional, especially for an evangelical Christian. I haven't really run these arguments by many Christians, so tell me what you think.

Abortion is a violation of human rights.
The following is the response that I submitted, to which I got over a 1,500 upvotes and hundreds of responses. This line of thought came to me as I was reading about William Wilberforce in the book Amazing Grace (thanks, Knox!). I thought to myself, "How could they not see Africans as people too? Shouldn't it be so obvious?" I've actually never heard someone give the following argument, and from some of the responses I got (which I will post later), it seems like it's the first time that others may have heard it as well.

"I think abortion is a violation of human rights. I'm actually a little surprised that most progressives are so adamantly pro-abortion, as I think it's actually the next human rights hurdle that needs to be overcome. In Roman times, infantacide was common, because children were perceived to be property of their parents, without rights for themselves. Now, we recognize the personhood of children, and killing children is universally accepted as morally wrong. Two hundred years ago, slaves were considered as the property of their owners, and had no human rights. Killing a slave was merely just destroying something that you owned. Now, it's nearly universally accepted that those slaves were persons, and deserved their own human rights.
Which brings us to today. I understand the argument that a woman should be able to do what she wants with her body and I agree with it, so long as it does not infringe on the basic human right of life of someone else. I know that all (if not most) pro-choice people out there do not consider a fetus as a human life, deserving of human rights (if so, I don't think you would be pro-choice!). However, 200 years ago, slave owners viewed slaves as sub-human, as did parents to children even longer before that. Slave owners would have objected that they should have the right to do what they wanted to their property. 

Yes, I understand that infantacide, slavery, and abortion are all different issues, with different societal implications and cultural nuances. However, the point is that we see in history that society has progressed to recognize various "peoples/groups" to be persons deserving of human rights, and I think/hope that the same will be true for unborn babies. These changes come not only with legislation, but with a general shift in thinking. It goes much deeper than just politics to general worldview. 

Progressives have led us in the fight for human rights in so many different areas, and it is a little surprising to me (and a little sad) that for the most part, they aren't also fighting for human rights in the realm of abortion. 

Edit: sorry for using "pro-abortion". It is a poor choice of words, and should be "pro-choice" instead."

A baby's personhood begins at conception
This is the underlying assumption I hold. I will elaborate more on this in the next post, but I just wanted to make this clear.

The moral heinousness of aborting a baby and murdering an adult are NOT the same.
I do not believe that aborting an unborn baby is of the same moral weight as murdering an adult or even of the same weight as murdering a born baby. So while it could technically fit the dictionary definition of murder, I think that the word "murder" is too loaded and has moral implications that I do not think necessarily apply to abortion. You may object that if it is essentially the same action of ending the life of a person, it should carry the same moral weight. Here's an argument against this that I posted -

I think that two identical actions with two different subjects/victims can hold different moral weight. For example - adult rape is morally wrong, but in my mind, raping a 2-year old (and it does happen), is indescribably worse. Another example would be robbing the house of a rich person and stealing $1000 of cash seems "less wrong" than knowingly stealing $1000 from a poor family. From many perspectives, the crime is the same, and both are morally wrong (taking this at face value), but one seems to carry more moral weight than the other. 

This of course does not add to the idea that abortion is less morally weighty than murder of a toddler, but it feels that way, and that's the best I can give you at the moment. I need to give it a little more thought, but I hope this kind of gives you some of my premises and framework of thought.

As I mentioned above, I have a real problem with the implications of considering abortion as morally equal to the murder of an adult. Would it be morally justifiable to murder an abortion doctor, who may have "technically" murdered hundreds of people? Would it be morally justifiable to treat those who have abortions as true murderers? In my opinion, no. However, most pro-choice people don't consider it any sort of moral transgression if a baby is aborted before the third trimester, and I've found this observation of different moral "weights" is a reasonable, appealing one. The abortion has been framed in such a polarizing way, where abortion is either murder, and mass genocide is happening, or there hasn't been any moral transgression at all. I find this to be unnecessarily polarizing, and I believe there is a middle ground.

Should abortion be criminalized in the US? 
As in all things, I believe that Christians should not put hope in any legislation to be the solution, and I really don't believe that an all-out ban on abortion is the solution, at least right now. I don't actually think that the legislation is the root problem at all. If we ask ourselves, "Why are people having abortions? What is the root cause?", I don't think it's possible to just point at Roe v Wade and say, "If that law wasn't passed, no one would be having abortions right now." There are various root causes, ranging from poverty to inadequate sex education to a disregard for the unborn. All of these need to be addressed.

That said, do I believe that abortion should be criminalized? First of all, I don't think it ever will. I don't believe that Roe v. Wade will ever be overturned, so I think it is somewhat futile framing the debate in such all-or-nothing terms. That said, given a choice, I don't think that the US is ready for a ban of abortion, especially in how people in the country view abortion. It was brought up multiple times that abortion rates go down in countries that legalize it fully, and that abortions remain common in countries that criminalize it. Until abortion is widely seen as more of a last resort, I don't think banning abortion will necessarily have the desired effects that so many pro-life people hope for. In addition, I feel like there are just too many special cases that may make abortion morally justifiable, which makes legislation even more difficult to write and pass.

However, passing legislation to curb abortions is still beneficial, as it does help shape the culture. A great example of this is the ban of third-trimester abortions, where tons of the liberals that responded agreed that this was a necessary restriction on abortion. So just in summary, I believe that legislation is one answer, but not the answer, and the pro-life movement needs to bring answers to some of the other root problems that cause abortion.

The pro-life should be truly pro-life, not just anti-abortion.
You will not believe how many people asked about my stance on universal healthcare,
war, and capital punishment. While my stances on those issues does not have a real bearing on the validity of my arguments, people just wanted to make sure that I was holding an internally consistent worldview.

I think it's very important for pro-life people to be pro-life, not just pro-unborn-life. One of the major complaints that I read over and over is how the same conservatives who claimed a regard for the unborn showed no regard for the lives of the poor or the lives of soldiers. While I think all of these issues are more nuanced than simply being pro-everything, we really need to think about whether or not we display a sufficient care for the poor, the elderly, and people in other areas of the world where we are invading.

Below is one of my responses to a question about the pro-life movement.

I totally agree with you that we need to address why unplanned pregnancies happen. The pro-life movement has yet to show an appropriate concern to these issues along with an appropriate concern for those who are stuck making the difficult decision of whether or not to keep their baby. 

That said, I don't think it's an either-or thing w.r.t more restrictive legislation. I believe that it's a both-and thing. But yeah. The pro-life movement (along with all of us citizens of the world) needs to pay more attention to the root cause.

So this concludes my first post. What are your thoughts? Do you have objections? I hope some of you do. Because I've been thinking through the holes and perceived holes in my arguments and have tried to formulate counterarguments for them.

Coming up next - When does personhood begin?

Then after that - Answering the tough questions of rape, mother's safety, and other objections.

It's been a while, Barnes and Noble.

I went to Barnes and Noble the other day to look for a book to give to my Little Brother as a birthday gift. I had already bought him a Calvin and Hobbes collection from Amazon, but I wanted to also get him something more "productive" like an interesting history or science book, because he's mentioned before that he really likes to learn. 

Walking through the store, I couldn't find the science section for the life of me, as the entire store seemed to be either recent bestsellers, teen fiction, or non-book products. I eventually gave up my quest for the science section and just asked one of the employees there, and she led me to this hidden corner of the store, a crevice with only two bookshelves worth of books. Many of the books there were by Dawkins and Hawking and dealt with topics relating to science and religion, sparking my long-neglected intellectual interest, so I momentarily paused my gift shopping to go see if there were any philosophy books I could take home to read. Again, after trekking through the store many times, I couldn't find the philosophy section. Asking the attendant to help me again, she led me to a literally waist-high, half empty bookshelf. This was the philosophy section.

I'm convinced this is an accurate representation of the Barnes and Noble I visited.

I tend not to be one of those generational, temporal snobs that goes "OMG KIDS THESE DAYS. FAITH IN HUMANITY LOST. EACH GENERATION GETS WORSE AND WORSE. I DONT WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE", but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little sad for the state of our society.  I don't care much what kids read, because they're just kids. But it was really weird walking through the store and seeing so many adults browsing the teen fiction sections and sitting down reading near those sections. Maybe this all has to do with the relatively lower education level here in Fort Wayne.

On a somewhat more positive note, it was nice walking through a bookstore again. Browsing in an actual bookstore is so much better than browsing an online bookstore like Amazon. It's nice to actually see how thick a book is, to pick it up and feel its weight, and to flip through the pages. This may sound kind of weird, but it was a nice feeling being able to once again "judge a book on its cover" (along with its back cover and infolds). Amazon is great, but it's often impossible to tell what a book is like and if its good or not, even from reviews (there are a lot of dumb reviewers out there).

After an hour and a half of wandering around and looking at my own stuff, I finally found a book to get Jobe. It's a non-fiction book on ninjas that was surprisingly heavy, with a lot of drawings and illustrations and stuff. It was pretty cool, if I can say so myself.

11111 Pageviews - Thanks for Reading!

We did it everyone! 11111 pageviews! Special thanks to whoever was the 11111th viewer, as I frantically kept on refreshing to make sure I captured this important moment. Maybe I should have put up a "Congratulations, you're the 11111th viewer!" that flashed different colors, and said you would win a PS3 if you clicked on it.

For all of you who regularly visit and read what I write, thanks! My blog doesn't really get that many hits, and most of the pageviews seem to come from image searches that lead to some of my more image-heavy posts (like this one on Lebron and this one on the Lakers). I actually think that this blog only started gaining some more traction this past summer when I updated a lot when I was in Taiwan and posted the fun Iris' Taiwan Documentary videos, and I'm glad that whoever of you have started reading this recently has decided to finally click this link or subscribe or whatever. Some of you may have only met me in these last year or two, and may not know me as well and may not have been following this blog for that long, so in commemoration of this awesome milestone of 11111 views, which took four years to get to (but hopefully less to get to 22222), I've compiled a list of some of my favorite posts for your viewing pleasure (some of which I think are my better posts, but that's for you to decide).

[Reading over a lot of posts of the pasts, I realize how knuckle-headed I was in a lot of different places, and how crappy of a writer I am, but whatever. I'm sure I'm gonna look back at me now in five years and marvel at how dumb I am now! ]

I know that a lot of you are studying for finals right now, so I thought it best to give you more stuff to waste your time with, as I know many of you are just sitting in front of your computers bored, just waiting for your distraction. Well, wait no longer! Your distraction is here!


If you want to know a little bit about my church and family history...

• I love my dad (and God)
• I love my family (and God)
• Being an Asian American Christian
• Why I sometimes (okay...often) "tease" Canto people

If you want to know what I do for fun...

• What my friends and I did during summer 2010 (hint: it includes a lot of punishments...and embarrassing videos of Iris!)
• "Funny" videos with a Penguin

If you want to read about some of the cool evangelistic experiences God has blessed me with...

• How I gave away a brand new Bible to a stranger on the bus
• Interesting conversations with two cab drivers from completely different religious backgrounds
• A little lesson on God's sovereignty

If you want to know my stance on some controversial sports topics...

• Why I think college football playoffs is a bad idea
• Some thoughts on the use of technology in sports (with some case studies here)
• What I think about Lebron going to Miami

Some miscellaneous posts that I like ...

• Why Asians are bad drivers
• The future of auto transportation - automated driving
• More than slactivists
• My one haunting college decision
• On quoting Scripture in evangelism
• Kobe's work ethic
• Prayer in sports
• Thoughts on 1 Samuel (and my first series ever!)

Some Interesting Dreams

Recently, I've been having some especially vivid dreams, of which I've been trying to keep notes of. These dreams have been so vivid that I've often spent my mornings thinking and reflecting on the dreams. There isn't really a "point" to this post, but I just thought that the dreams were pretty interesting and worth sharing. In this post, I describe four dreams that I've had, and after each dream, I add a short blurb on the emotion I was feeling as the dream ended (which I'm sure you can relate to when you have a really vivid dream that just ends) along with a short analysis of the dream.

I guess I should also say that while I do believe that God speaks to us in many different ways, I don't believe any of these dreams to be prophetic in any way. Another disclaimer - the dreams may not make a lot of sense and it may seem like I'm jumping around a lot, but that's kind of the way dreams are! I've tried to make them flow as well as possible, but dreams are dreams - the settings and details are constantly changing and they don't quite make sense.

Forgiveness for a Pedophile in a Wheelchair

I was reading a newspaper about this pedophile, a child-snatcher that would kidnap other people's kids and do bad things to them. His photo was in the paper, and it was common knowledge that this guy is the scum of the earth.

I am in church, and I see this guy in a wheelchair. I walk up to him, and I recognize his face. Holy crap. He's that guy from the paper! He explains to me how sorry he is and how all that stuff he did was in the past, and he wanted to learn how to be forgiven. He is clearly a broken man. I explain to him that because I'm at church, there's a lot of "better" people he could talk to. Lloyd appears, and I think it's perfect because he can probably relate to the wheelchair, but Lloyd just disappears all of a sudden as we're approaching him (as people do in dreams). I then go find an IV staff worker I know whom I regard highly. The man in the wheelchair follows me, using his arms to push the wheelchair (as a normal person in a wheelchair would do. I don't know how else to describe it). I tell her that this man in the wheelchair is that child-snatcher and that he wanted to find out about forgiveness and I asked her to tell him about Jesus. She refuses, saying that she doesn't want to talk to someone like him, and she starts to bolt. I follow her, begging her to talk to him, but she says that she needs to go to the beach, and putting on her sunglasses and grabbing a beach ball, she gets in her SUV and drives away. I'm left standing in the parking watching her drive away. I decide to go talk to the pastor, who is John Piper. I walk to John Piper with the man wheeling in behind me, and ask John Piper to explain to the man the gospel and forgiveness, and John Piper refuses. He says that people like this man don't deserve forgiveness for the horrible things he has done. I argue with him because I know he knows the gospel and that he was treating the gospel with contempt. He walks away. I have no one left to ask.

Ending emotion
Totally, completely disappointed and directionless. I had thought that this staff worker, who I had known to be super loving, and John Piper, who supposedly has a deep understanding of the gospel, would be able to lovingly forgive this man and point him to Jesus. But everyone refused.

Brief analysis
The whole moral of the story is quite obvious. It's that even the best human beings, the best Christians in the world have trouble forgiving the wickedness of an individual, so Jesus is the only one we can approach for forgiveness. Random sidenote: after writing this, I realize how close this story is to the story of the Good Samaritan.

Unfortunate Car Accident

My dad is driving my family in my car, and it is snowing. I had argued with him that it's my car, so I should drive, but he's driving anyways. We are on some sort of curvy road, when all of a sudden we lose control of the car, blast through the guardrail, and end up in a snow bank. The car is damaged, but everyone is okay. The police arrive and say that the penalty of reckless driving is a jail sentence, and before asking any more questions, I'm hauled off and thrown in jail.

Ending emotion
A huge sense of injustice. It isn't fair that I get thrown into jail for my dad's mistake. Not only that, it was my car, the car that I'm paying for, that he's destroyed, and I still get punished for it.

Brief Analysis
The lesson here again is obvious. Jesus suffered the ultimate injustice for me. He didn't screw up the perfect creation of God, so he didn't deserve to be nailed on that cross, but he was anyways. That deep sense of injustice that I felt gave me a better understanding of the sacrifice of Christ for me.

Awkward DPM

I'm walking in a street with some of my AIV friends (don't really remember who, but at the moment I think one of them was Besha), when I get a call. It's my friend (we'll call her Emily), and she's speaking to me in Mandarin. She informs me that something came up, and she can't go to the Daily Prayer Meeting (DPM) that she normally goes to, but she doesn't want the leader (we'll call her Sheila) to feel bad about not having anyone at DPM, so she tells me to go. I told her that I didn't really want to go, but after a little prodding, I agree to go. We hang up (the entire conversation was in Mandarin, by the way). She texts me the address of the DPM, and I walk there with my friends. Her apartment was in an interesting location. We knock on the door, and the door opens. I say "Sheila! I haven't seen you in forever!!". She awkwardly informs me that she's actually Sheila's sister (even though she looks exactly like her), and that she is taking off, but Sheila was in the shower and would be out in one sec, and she leaves.

As a little background, this "Sheila" individual is a fringe member of AIV, one of those people that I'm not sure if she's really saved or not. Anyways, I was excited that she would be leading a prayer meeting, so with my friends, we wait in the living room for her to finish her shower. It was a really nice apartment - really bright with nice carpeting and nice couches. We wait a little bit, then get bored and decide to play some games while waiting for her. We hear some strange noises coming from the shower. Then I remember that she has a boyfriend. Could they really be...? ...in the shower? Right before the DPM that she's supposed to be leading? We sit there and look at each other awkwardly, as each of us knows what's going on. She comes out, hair wet and all, and greets us. I give her a hug to say hi, but I'm not sure what to say or how to act. Her boyfriend walks out a few seconds later. It was awkward.

Ending emotion
Awkwardness, disappointment, and not knowing what to do.

Brief Analysis
There really isn't any deep gospel realization in this dream as there had been in the previous two, but I found it very interesting that I dreamed partially in Mandarin again (I do it every so often). It wasn't until I was eating breakfast that it hit me - in real life Emily is Canto and can't speak Mandarin! It was one of those facepalm moments where I felt like my entire dream was just foolishness. Nonetheless, I think this dream reflects the fear that I have (and that I've shared with some of you) that some/many of the leaders in AIV now may not actually be saved and are living a lie. I also think it's very interesting that this dream features two current non-Christians, but in my dream, one is a real Christian and one is a fake one. This dream really reflects the thinking I've done recently on assurance of salvation and how even those who serve God may be rejected by Jesus, who will tell them "I never knew you."

Seeking Reconciliation

We were in a Bible class in a big lecture hall, and the professor was talking about human rights and America. My friend (an old friend of mine) raises her hand and says, "I wish America would just have something like a French Revolution, where everyone was equal and we had no president or king or whatever." I then proceed to look at her kind of stupid and basically start ranting at her in front of everyone. "Are you an idiot? Do you have no idea of what a French Revolution would mean? And it's completely unbiblical! Do you not realize that the Biblical model is that Jesus is the king and that there will always be hierarchy? Jesus will be our king for eternity in the new kingdom! Trying to get rid of hierarchy is totally foolish!"

She looks at me kind of stunned and just looks down and goes back to writing in her notebook. The guy that I am, I keep on thinking in my head, Wow. Why would she suggest something so stupid? Then she passes me a note from across the table (yes, we are now no longer in a lecture hall but sitting across from each other at a table). The note on the table says, "I may have been wrong, but you didn't need to be such a jerk about it." Staring at the note, I all of a sudden realize the wrong that I did her. I feel horrible. But I'm not sure what to say. I close my eyes for a bit. And I write a note back, apologizing for it. We exchange a few notes, and after a little bit, things seem to be okay between us.

We are catching up, and she tells me that she just broke up with her boyfriend and that she's single for the first time in a long time. I think to myself, Could I be with her? But she's backslidden, and I don't actually really know if she's a Christian or not.

We are at an aquarium, in one of those basement-type rooms where it's relatively dark, with one of the sides of the room being completely water. It's like one of those underwater views of the pools at places like Sea World, where you can view the animals from either above water or underwater (we are at the underwater one, obviously). She's still mad at me for what I did to her. I try and ask her how she's been spiritually and try to share the gospel with her again. But she's still mad at me. We're about to get to the moment of both reconciliation (and possibly romance?) between the two of us and also really sharing the gospel with her, but as that happens, a bunch of elephants swim in, with their trunks above the water line so they can breath. As this happens, a lot of people rush in, and our conversation, which had been deep and serious, is cut off. We both stare at the elephants for a little bit as they play underwater, and then I turn back, and she's not there. I see her far away, and I chase after her to finish our conversation, but I never catch up with her.

Ending emotion
Loneliness. Lack of closure. Sadness.

Analysis 
There isn't really much intellectual analysis for this dream, but I just woke up with a real sense of burden to catch up to and pray for this old friend of mine who I haven't talked to in forever and really haven't even thought about for years. I think that I dreamed about her because back in the day, when I really didn't have any really close friends, I think she was the first really, really close friend that I had. In my current situation without really any close friends here in Fort Wayne, I probably remembered her in my loneliness. Also, she showed up on my Facebook feed the previous day (and the elephants are from this video).

Closing thoughts

I hadn't realized that all of these dreams ended sadly, because normally my dreams never end sad. I tend to win in everything. I always get the girl, make the last shot, and destroy the enemies. I'm not going to read too much into it, but I find it interesting that even though the dreams seem to end sadly, I actually tend to have quite joyful mornings after having these vivid dreams, as I'm just excited that I got a good night of sleep and have something to think about for the morning. It's really been a blessing that God's been able to teach me various lessons through these dreams. It's amazing how God can glorify Himself in my life even when I'm asleep!

As an aside, I actually had another dream this morning that was pretty cool but unfortunately, I can't remember it at all and I didn't write it down. Hopefully I can remember it and post it up later. I also have this weird irrational fear that because I'm posting this, my awesome dreams will stop. I have no idea why I feel this way. I guess it's kind of like how if you tell your birthday wish to anyone, it won't come true. Whatever. I'm off to sleep again. And hopefully dream. Goodnight.

"My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, 

and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, 

when I remember you upon my bed, 

and meditate on you in the watches of the night; 

for you have been my help, 

and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. 

My soul clings to you;

your right hand upholds me."

- Psalm 63:5-8

More than Slactivists

Social justice starts with you. Social justice starts with me. It's easy to share a video on Facebook. It's just as easy to throw a Christian fundraiser or awareness event. It's much harder to practice what we preach and to be men and women of justice. It's much harder to care about and confront the poverty, loneliness, cheating, and sexual immorality that we see around us and deal with every day.

If we say we care so much about world poverty and world hunger, why are we so reluctant to give a few dollars to the homeless guy on the street? If we say we care about the widows and orphans of the world, why is it so difficult for us to approach that girl sitting by himself at large group or sit down with that lonely guy in the cafeteria? If we say that we care about the cheated and those we take what isn't theirs, why is it that so many of us "Christians" still cheat on homeworks and projects and tolerate others cheating on exams? Yes, I'm telling you to be a rat. If you see cheating, report it. If you see your friends cheating, confront them about it, and if they don't stop, report it. Do you think the social justice workers that prosecute the oppressed aren't hated and persecuted themselves? If we can't even deal with the trouble of reporting someone for cheating, do we really think that we will be able to report criminals when the consequences are that much more serious? If we say we care about sex trafficking and child prostitution, can we not stop watching porn and contributing to the industry that drives these atrocities? Aren't we, just like those sick people we hear about, imposing our sexual will and fantasies on other children of God, created in His image?

All of these things, God hates. God hates apathy, cheating, lying, stealing, pride, sexual immorality, and he hates it as much inside of our hearts as out in the world. If we leave the sin in our hearts undealt with and claim to care about the apathy, cheating, lying, stealing, oppression, and sexual immorality of the world, are we not being hypocrites of the most epic kind?

But thanks to God, there's hope for hypocrites like you and me, and that hope is in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus was born into a poor, refugee family of an oppressed people that had been ostracized from the community. Jesus was the kind of person that slactivists like us are supposed to get all riled up about - a son in a single-parent home of an oppressed people. But we didn't make an emotionally-manipulative video about him, we didn't send him a shoebox of goodies every Christmas, we didn't send $30 a month to sponsor him. No, we religious folk, we "activists", we giver of alms - we killed him. Friends, apart from the saving grace of God, we have no power to do any good or think any good thoughts, much less make a "positive difference" in the world. We ended up killing the most postive influence the world could possibly imagine! In the end, it is only Jesus that can redeem the world. It is on the cross that God's righteousness, justice, love, and mercy met, and it is only through the cross that we can have any hope for the evil, sickness, and wickedness in the world and the evil, sickness, and wickedness in our hearts.

By the grace of God, we can be more than slactivists who only care about justice when it's convenient and when it feels good. By the grace of God, let's learn to hate sin as God hates sin, and by the power of God, let's be men and women of justice, men and women of integrity.

"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
- Micah 6:8

Being an Asian-American Christian

I know I'm late to the party, but for those of you tired of seeing Jeremy Lin links on Facebook, this post isn't really going to be abount Jeremy Lin, I promise.

This morning, I finally read the Gospel Coalition post on "Linsanity and Asian American Christianity", and it really struck me just how much I resonated with all that the author was saying. This guy gets it. I almost cried at work because of how much he gets it. I grew up in a church with a super-conservative and fundamental head pastor with a heavily charismatic-leaning youth director. I grew up hearing more about Hudson Taylor than John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards combined. I didn't know the difference between Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists until college (and I still don't really know much about it). I've never cared too much for politics, and while I leaned right, I didn't really learn to care about abortion until just a few weeks ago, and I'm really still working through it. I wore T-shirts and shorts to church as a kid and played with all my friends, and I never really understood why so many white kids absolutely hated going to church. I've played at eaten dinner at nearly all of my family friends' houses, and I couldn't imagine a church where people (and kids especially) didn't break bread together. I now hang out with friends that have heard of but still don't really know who Pat Robertson is (Nathan, Jonny, Cory, and I were debating who/what he worked for just the other day). I grew up listening to James Dobson (or at least my parents did, much to my dismay), and I didn't really learn about his politics until college. I didn't know that cessationists even existed. I didn't know that people who didn't believe in the Trinity or in the resurrection could still call themselves "Christians". I never bought into the whole "this country is going to hell" argument of the degradation of the church. And until now, I never really realized how similar my childhood church upbringing was to so many of the Asian-Americans around the country.

Part of the recent Jeremy Lin fanatacism has made me realize how much (white) people just really don't get it. Most just don't understand what it means to be an Asian American.I was reading a Reddit thread about Lin's ethnicity, and one commenter said he was Chinese, and the next (who later revealed himself to be an Asian-American) corrected him and said he was Taiwanese-American. Then there was this storm of downvotes and comments that simply declared him "American", and that any other description of Jeremy Lin was inaccurate and offensive. Obviously, the Asian Americans on that thread tried to explain to the ignorant Redditors (kind of a redudant, I know) the dynamics of being Asian American. It's really become clear to me that people that don't regularly interact with Asian-Americans really just don't get what it means to be Asian-American. The more "progressively-minded", in their admirable desire to be inclusive, simply disregard our ethnicity, heritage, and cultural differences by welcoming us into the open arms of their proudly held identity of "American". The more segregated white, American-flag-on-their-pickup-truck types who rarely deal with us yellow people are surprised that we can speak English fluently and without accents, and immediately ask us if we were born in the States, if we speak Chinese, and what our favorite foods are.

It might just be me being second generation, and it might just be my more conservative leaning, but the former error annoys me much more than the latter. It really bothers me that there seems to be a shift towards being "color-blind" for the sake of political correctness, but in it, our culture and heritage is really lost. Preaching "American" homogeneity and being "inclusive" isn't respectful to our culture or identity, and while we don't want to be called "chinks" all the time, we want our cultural differences to be recognized and accepted as well. We are different. We know we look different. So don't pretend that we aren't. I'm not telling white people to throw rocks at Asian-Americans whenever they see us, but just like with any other cross-racial and cross-cultural interaction, trying to celebrate differences is greatly appreciated.

Moving to Fort Wayne, I've experienced a lot of people who treat me much more as an Asian than as an American, many of whom assume that I'm an immigrant. I really don't mind it too much, because most are well-intentioned and it does provide a venue for some interesting conversation (the pastor of one of the churches I visited was actually a missionary in Taiwan for some time!). That said, being Asian-American in a place like Fort Wayne really leaves me without people that worship in the same way as I do. I love great teaching, but I also like my Hillsong. Familiar hymns and classic Christian contemporary are okay, but there often just feels like something is missing for me to really feel comfortable in worship. I'm looking for a church that's interested in social justice, but I'm really not interested in mixing politics into my religion, as most of the Bible-preaching churches seem to do here. The families at the churches here seem nice, and I really don't know enough about the churches to really judge them, but it doesn't seem like "the church family" is really a family at all, compared to the tight-knit family back home in my Chinese church, with all the "Shu shu"'s and "Ah-yi's". All in all, being an Asian-American Christian here in Fort Wayne without many other Asian-Americans Christians, I feel like I'm different and alone, without others that have a similar background as me or people that worship God the same way that I do.

For those of you looking for some big new idea or grand conclusion that I'm going to make, sorry to disappoint. This was more of just a reactionary post, as the author of that GC blog post really hit the nail on the head in his description of Asian-American Christianity. I'm beginning to realize just how deep my Asian-American Christian identity is, and how it affects my worship and my church searching. I am proud to be an Asian-American Christian, and it isn't because of Jeremy Lin. Thank you God for creating me this way!

Thanks for the memories, MCCC!

Fun, semi-related post - The Origin of the MCCC Mando/Canto Divide

Stupid Me, Stupid Bee

Something crazy just happened.

I'm sitting here on the floor with my back to the couch watching the Yankees beating the White Sox 4-1. I lean back and extend my arms on the couch, as I often do on church pews...or just chairs in general. My pose is sort of hard to describe, so I hope the following picture illustrates it. I looked something like this (also, this):

This guy isn't as good-looking as me, but this picture will have to do.

A few seconds later, I realize that my left hand kind of hurts, with a piercing sort of pain. I pull it back, wondering why my hand is hurting. I played with my hand a bit, but it didn't seem to hurt when I applied pressure to the pain. It hurt a lot when I clenched a fist, but would then disappear for a little bit. I thought it was a splinter, so I examined my hand under the light, but there doesn't seem to be any cut or any splinter. I spent a bunch of time looking for it, but as you can see pretty much, nothing:

I should be a hand model, yes?

By now, my hand was really throbbing, and the pain was becoming unbearable. I went to the freezer to get myself an ice cube to numb the pain. Walking back to the couch area, I find this on the pillow sitting on the couch. :

This is the thorn in my hand's side. Ouch. 

Yes, that is a bee, and yes, it is dead. Then hit me. When I stuck my arm back and rested it on the pillow, I inadvertently rested my hand on the stinger of the dead bee. I can't believe that just happened to me. I stung myself with a dead bee. The bee didn't sting me, I literally jammed my hand into the bee's stinger. I essentially ran into a parked car. Stupid bee. Stupid me.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I stung myself with a dead bee.

Medical update for all of you who are deeply worried about my well-being: 
My hand hurts a lot. I need to ice my hand twice a minute or else the sharp pain in my hand is more than my low pain tolerance can handle. I'm not positive, but I think I'll make it through this one. But hey, at least the Yankees are about to win the game 7-1!

Dang it. 7-2 now. Mariano just gave up a 9th inning HR? It has been a weird day.

Google+ Immediate Reaction

Thanks to an awesome friend, I just got a Google+ invite, and I've been messing around with it for a little bit. Here are some quick thoughts.

Brief intro to Google+:


Con: Google+ works with the assumption that most of the things you share are meant for only a certain group of friends.

For kids who don't want to let their parents see they were drunk last night, this is nice. However, in my experience, the majority of the posts on our social networking sites aren't about getting drunk or kicking babies. They are about sports, school, frustrations, and general emotions - things that most people won't have a problem sharing with other people.Google+ makes you make the conscious decision who to share things with, which is a good thing in most cases, but really just ends up being extra clicks when you don't really care.

Con: Assuming Google+ gains some momentum, the content shared to us will be very limited.

One of the awesome time-wasting qualities about Facebook is that when you go on it, there is almost always a new update. There's always something to look at or comments on or read. Because others select what groups to share their update with, if you aren't in a group that someone shares with often, you may just end up not ever getting updates from that person. This seems intuitive (because that's generally how friendships work in real life), but it really takes away from the general feeling of connectedness I feel with my friends on Facebook. There are many times when I see an update from an acquaintance about something random that is interesting or beneficial to me. There are times when an acquaintance posts pictures of travel somewhere, and even though I may not know the person well, I could go look at the photos just to see what New Zealand looks like. It is equally satisfying when someone seemingly random "Likes" a post of mine, even if it wasn't necessarily intended for them.

My prediction is that Google+ will end up as everyone sharing things to only one or two groups, and just neglecting the other ones. This may connect us to maybe around 40-50 people, which is far less than who we are connected to Facebook on. Say what you will about Facebook, but there is always stuff to do and things to look at on Facebook, which is why we keep going back. I doubt Google+ have enough content to keep us interested and coming back.

Con: Lack of features

This is something I'm willing to give Google a pass on, simply because it is still so new and in development. That said, one of the things people like about Google+ over Facebook is how uncluttered it looks. I hate to say it, people, but if you want more features, there inevitably is going to be more clutter. Do you want to integrate Google Groups, or create events, or even integrate Google Calender? Do you want any sort of applications, the ability to play games with friends, see others' birthdays, or sell football tickets at a Marketplace? All those features need to be put somewhere, and Google+ will need to make a decision on how many features it wants to integrate.

Also, don't forget that there will definitely be ads. Where are those going to go? All I'm saying is not to expect Google+ to be this simple and bare for a while. And if it remains this way, we may be deprived of some basic and essential features.

Hopefully it doesn't end up looking like iGoogle:

Pro: Integration

This is probably the only reason I can see Google+ succeeding. Integrating Gchat and video chat into one nice spot is very nice and convenient. Could this be the Skype killer? Who knows. That said, Google Buzz and Google Wave were also pretty well-integrated, but those failed majorly too.

Really cool: Google+ integrated in your Google search menu

Conclusion

All in all, Google+ looks like a nice tool for video chat and very specific kinds of updates, but I don't see it replacing all the features and friends of Facebook. I can see people use Google+ to stay in touch with a close group of friends or a very specific network, such as a frat or a fellowship, but I doubt that anyone with over 100 friends on Facebook will find Google+ comparable to the real social networking that happens on Facebook. In the end, Google+ could be a good tool to keep in touch with friends you already know and people you normally keep in touch with, but I don't think that it will be as effective for branching out to acquaintances and people you just met (aka social networking).

Favorite Android Apps

This post is dedicated to Iris and all of those late-comers to the smartphone revolution. I think of it as a "start-up kit" for Android phones. If there are any apps that you guys use that are awesome, please comment so that I can have a chance to use it too! [Here is the Oatmeal's take on the pros and cons of owning a smart phone. Hilarious.]

Must-have Apps

Swiftkey
Price: $2.00

Swiftkey is an awesome keyboard that does word correction and word prediction. The idea of this app is that it remembers sequences of words that you type and tries to predict the next word for you, allowing you to choose words without even typing them out. For me, I usually don't need to type more than 3 or 4 letters (no matter how long the word) before it knows what word I want to type, even if I have typos in those previous letters. The absolute best feature of this keyboard, however, is the nifty swipe-delete feature. All you need to do to delete a words it is to simply swipe backwards. This lets you delete large amounts of text extremely quickly instead of needing to hold the backspace button and wait. If you don't want to pay for it, try out Swiftkey X Beta. I haven't actually tried this new version, but the reviews seem pretty good. Swiftkey may seem inaccurate at first, but give it some time to train and learn how you text, and you'll find that it improves dramatically.



Dolphin Browser HD
Price: Free

This is the best browser I've used by far. The stock browser is okay, but Dolphin offers a lot more features, is much more aesthetically pleasing, and is incredibly intuitive to use. The pinch-zoom is extremely smooth, switching tabs is easy and intuitive, and the novel gesture browsing is surprisingly robust. Dolphin HD is also very fast, having a speed comparable to that of Opera Mini, which has nowhere near the number of features Dolphin has. Dolphin is also very customizable, as there are a lot of different skins and such you can download, even though the color scheme for the stock Dolphin browser is already pretty sweet (green on black).

Handcent SMS
Price: Free

Handcent epitomizes the power of customization of Android. You can make your text messages look basically however you want. You can set your own background, choose your own font, and mess with the color scheme until your eyes explode. Because the stock SMS app is pretty bland, you have nothing to lose from downloading this free app and customizing your SMS to look the way you want it. Handcent also offers some nice layout changes and functionality (like splitting up group texts, batch mode, and calling), but the customization really is what makes this app special. Hopefully I'll get a chance to take a picture of my Handcent layout and post it here.

TeslaLED
Price: Free

TeslaLED is the most practically useful app I have, and the one I probably use the most often. It basically conveniently turns your camera's LED flash into an extremely bright flashlight. I use it when walking around in the dark when there are no streetlights and for illuminating my room at night without having to get up and turn on the lights. You also have the option of doing fun things like using it for a strobe light or sending messages using Morse code. TeslaLED also provides a handy little widget so that you can turn the LED on and off without needing to actually open the app. If you ever carry your phone in the dark without a flashlight (or enjoy watching your friends get seizures), you need this app.

Highly Recommended Apps

Twitter
Price: Free

The inclusion of Twitter here isn't as much for the app (even though it is very nice), but for the use of Twitter itself. I really think that everyone with a smartphone should use Twitter, where you can shamelessly update where you are, where you're going, or what you're doing. This kind of posting isn't as accepted in Facebook, but you really get to share about the little things on Twitter. Also, you get the awesome opportunity to have an look inside of the lives and thoughts of famous people you see on TV and in movies. When you have a smartphone, you are always connected, and Twitter is one of the ways you stay connected to the world.You hear the latest news and the latest jokes (about Lebron) faster than you would anywhere else. You don't need to hear the jokes and the news from your friends or on Facebook. You get it before that. Twitter rocks.

Twitter also gives you the opportunity to directly correspond with celebrities you wouldn't have a chance to talk to in real life. LOOK. DESMOND HOWARD REPLIED TO ME!

BatteryTime Lite
Price: Free

Every phone's battery meter is less descriptive than we would like it to be, and it would often be nice to exactly how much battery we have left instead of just "green", "orange", or "red". BatteryTime Lite gives you the exact percentage of battery you have left, letting you know when you may need to turn your 3G off or stop watching some video to preserve your battery for the rest of the day. BatteryTime adds a nice indicator in the notification bar of how much battery you have left, so you never actually need to open the application.

PowerAmp
Price: $5.15

One of the weakest stock apps of Android is its stock music player, which is primitive and, more importantly, ugly. PowerAmp is the most-bought Android app in the Market, and it is for a reason. PowerAmp is highly customizable and has a bunch of really useful features. For example, PowerAmp automatically downloads album art for your songs. You can also tweak the audio settings, which I don't do because I have no idea what I'm doing. All this said, the main reason I use PowerAmp is the awesome full-screen widget it provides and the neat feature of automatically playing songs when I stick my headphones in. It's really worth the five dollars; just take a look at the following sweet photos.

Good Time-Killer Apps

ESPN Radio
Price: $2.99

If you are a working sports fan that can't or don't want to access the radio at work, this is the app for you. It conveniently aggregates every ESPN radio station in the country and every ESPN podcast in one place so after listening to Mike and Mike live in the morning, you can listen to the podcast of yesterday's 1st and 10 or Around the Horn so you don't have to listen to Colin Cowherd and his ridiculous show. However, be warned that this app is far from perfect. If you are listening to a live stream of the radio, the radio will stop every time you get a text. It also stops randomly sometimes for no good reason. It also likes to keep its notification on the notification bar even after you have stopped listening or force killed it.

Reddit is fun
Price: Free

Take Reddit with you with this app. Many of us favor the funny pictures and rage comics on Reddit, but the small screens of our smartphones really hurts the viewing experience of images. For rage comics, I actually need to scroll from the left panel to the right panel and back to be able to read the words on them. That said, it's nice being able to check my inbox and the threads I am active in on the go, and viewing monster threads from AskReddit are actually quite rewarding. I know a lot of you go on Reddit, but don't have accounts. Stop lurking. Get an account...and be my friend.

Google Reader
Price: Free

Do you want to be able to follow this blog everywhere you go? Do you read stuff online? Can you read? If you've answered "yes" to any of those questions, this is that app for you! Like my little blurb for Twitter, this is as much a push for the use of Google Reader as it is for the mobile app itself. Google Reader basically aggregates all of the new articles and blog posts from your websites of choice, and it tells you when there are posts that you haven't yet read, and you have the option of sharing the pages you like with others (there's a link of the stuff I am sharing on the list on the right. It basically makes following a bunch of different sites extremely easy, but there's really no good way to show it here. A screen shot won't do it much justice, so just go to www.reader.google.com and try it out for yourself!

Funny Jokes
Price: Free

Funny Jokes is basically a collection of different walls where everyone rates and comments on the jokes that people post. Even though it seems like most of the users are middle school boys, there is surprising amount of original content, which is often actually quite funny. Most of the stuff I read on this app I've never read anywhere else before, and most of my "material" comes from this app. If you download this app, I highly recommend the "One-Liners" section, as it has probably the funniest stuff. If you can tolerate the adolescence of the users of this app, there's a lot of chuckling-on-the-inside moments to be had.

So that's a short rundown of my favorite apps. What are yours?