Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

What's your first thought?

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I would suspect the thought of the person who created this (and shared this) was something along the lines of, "You believe in God?  Why would you believe in a deity who clearly dislikes people?"

However, my first reaction to it was, "Good!"  I would hope that the God of the universe is dictating when people should exit this little blue orb, otherwise it's a pretty wimpy God that I would rather not have anything to do with.  In fact, more disturbing to me is that anyone other than God (in this chart, Satan) would be responsible for, or have at least allowed/known about/been able to prevent, anyone's death.

I have a lot more thoughts on this, but just wanted to throw the question out there for now.

Somewhat related: I'm currently reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller (I'm a third through it), and it is excellent.  Will probably write a review in the near future.  His book is all about Story...in our lives.  In real life, as opposed to what we see on screen or read about.  Here's a quote I like:

When we watch the news, we grieve all of this [unjust tragedy], but when we go to the movies, we want more of it.  Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in.  We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.

If you want to learn more about the book and hear the opinion of a far more prolific book reader than myself, you can check out Chris Brogan's video review.

 

Finally "getting" this Twitter thing

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Photo credit Satoru Kikuchi

Oh, just about three years into it.  I’m getting this.

Twitter is this giant organism.  And really, maybe it’s not just Twitter.  Probably giving too much credit to one app here.

But all of our technology today is enabling information to flow around this huge human organism, allowing it to attempt to find its most useful destination.  Educating, informing, and yes, probably sometimes annoying people all along the way.

Not long ago I connected with a friend (Bret) on Facebook, who you can tell cares deeply about the value of education he is providing his students.

Also not long ago, I connected with a friend (Matt) in the community who is also in education.  Today I saw him tweet (actually, retweet).  Immediately, my thought went to my friend Bret, who I immediately found on Twitter, so that I could share it with him also.  Will he find it useful?  I don’t know, but I’m hopefully connecting him with information he wants to help him with his desire to provide the most value to his students.

What enabled all this?  Google Reader.  Facebook.  Twitter.

But more importantly, people enabled this all to happen.  So, really, maybe it’s not that I’m getting this “Twitter” thing…I’m understanding this new “people” thing that happens to involve tech.

So in the future when I see something interesting I learn about on the Interwebs, I’m going to feel less hesitant about sharing it (and annoying people), because if it helps someone out, it just might be worth it!