Tin the Tip.

If we are to be totally honest with ourselves, bible studies often oscillate between phases of serendipity and frustration. It’s like a love-hate relationship with someone who is equal parts loveliness and stomachache. Very often, ad hoc measures must be taken to oil the cogs of bible study.

Over the past five years since entering college, I have taken part in and led a good number of studies. Residing outside the circle of bible analysis techniques, the following are a scattering of thoughts that have crystallized over the years. Some may be uniquely suited to your situation; others may seem like unnecessarily dogmatic prescriptions or somewhat out-of-place. Miscellaneous and uninspired though they may be, my hope is that a few may resonate with you and prove to be helpful.

- Inductive bible study can be a very effective format for a small group. However, it needs to be done with appropriate pacing. Are people shutting up like a plate of clams when you ask questions about the passage? Give them time (10-15 min), a colored pencil, and copy of the passage to mark up. This, at least, will give them a fighting chance to find something interesting to talk over.

- Get your hands on a good commentary and crack it open before leading a study. The Bible was not printed by Gutenberg yesterday, and many people older and wiser than you have brilliant, chewy insights to share.

Tom Constable’s commentary is a resource from which some amazing gems can be gleaned. This commentary is something of a meta-commentary, featuring the best quotes and snippets of wisdom from other commentaries. It may also be found at net.Bible.

Henrietta Mears’ What the Bible is All About is a timeless classic and a great resource for gaining some much-needed context about the Bible.

Ray Stedman's expository teaching on the Bible fired the imagination of many a Stanford student back in the 70's. His sermons are simple and down-to-earth, yet brimming with insights.

- Let everyone read some of the passage, maybe two lines or a paragraph. Go around in a circle (just once!) and let whoever is last take care of any overflow. This lets everyone participate and feel that they were able to share and take part in the scripture reading. - There are, in fact, such things as stupid questions, despite what they told you in college. In bible studies, we are almost all guilty of them. They come from leaders, not members. Fittingly so, they are called “leading” questions. “Should we love our enemies?”...“YES” “Who is the one in this story who demonstrated ultimate love for his enemies?”...“JE-SUS” As the deeply profound exchanges above indicate, childish questions engender childish answers. The solution? Don't be lazy! Use open-ended questions. Look to the six W’s (who, what, where, when, why, and how) to reframe the question in an intelligent way. “Who else in the bible demonstrated love for enemies?” “Why is it so imperative that we love our enemies? What does it say about us?” “How can we love our enemies while maintaining appropriate boundaries?” These are open-ended questions that do not have an immediate yes/no answer. As an aside, it’s a lot like figuring out how to hold a conversation with teenagers, who, as we all know, are gifted elocutionists.

- Everyone has something to say – pay close attention. Maybe someone has been giving very shallow platitudes or incredibly obvious statements. Don’t fall prey to thinking that they are too dumb to contribute anything of value. One day, they might surprise you by sharing about a life experience that is deeply meaningful and relevant – it’s the Spirit working in them. Hear and learn from their experiences and listen intently.  - Don’t speak unless you have something to say. Is what you’re about to say something that almost no one present has known about this passage? If not, then refrain. “But wait, won’t this mean I won’t ever have anything to say? Will I be like one of those mystical monks in the wilderness who didn’t say anything for 27 years?” Hopefully not. If you can’t find anything worthy to share, you need to block everything out. Focus, and ask yourself “why” questions of the passage. Focus especially hard on the things that you don’t understand – something may just *click*. This concept of only “speaking when you have something to say” applies more to biblical findings, not the sharing of personal experience. Also, this may not be very applicable for bible studies where everyone collectively clams up in solidarity. You might need to put out truths that most people already know to “prime the pump,” so to speak. However, in many gregarious bible studies, there is more than enough dialogue drifting through the airwaves. On the flip side, if there's something important you feel God has placed on your heart to share, don't wait. You may never have another chance to share it. As someone who was not Kevin Bacon put it, "Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake..." - "Going off of that…" is one of the most important phrases you can say. So you’ve been finding wonderful things in the Bible and have been sharing them enthusiastically for the good of the order! Everything must be great, right? Not always. It's very possible to become so wrapped up in analyzing the bible that we become oblivious to what others are saying. If you observe experienced leaders, you’ll notice that they speak very little. When they do speak, it’s inevitably in response to someone else’s findings. This is an advanced form of active listening. For some, it’s difficult to find relevant words of acknowledgement to say off-the-cuff without forethought. However, this is an important skill worth learning. Going off of another person’s findings is not an attempt to stroke egos, but rather, an caring expression of love and identification that says “I understand and affirm what you are saying, and I treasure your input in this bible study.” - The most important thing you can do when leading a bible study is to pray. You may be the most brilliant, witty leader who ever lived, but any bible study will fall flat if no one has anything to say. Only God can put insights in peoples’ hearts and move them to speak. Before starting, say a prayer with the members of your study. Ask God for His wisdom to be revealed during the study, and that He will open the eyes of your hearts and minds.

Bible studies remind me of creative writing – it’s like extensible free association. You can bounce ideas off other people and in doing so, find insights that you would never have found on your own.

One important danger remains present. As J.I. Packer remarked in his excellent Knowing God, “One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of him.” For avoiding that pitfall, I highly recommend that book. It is intensely fun and rewarding to find new insights in the Bible, and these should help us to fall deeper in love with its Author. I am continually surprised by how the simplest passage in the Bible is inexhaustible. Amazing things are there – you need only the eyes to see.

"Open my eyes, that I may see...wonderful things in your law." - Psalm 119:18

“I came, I saw, I was reminded of Déjà vu”

Out of all of the bible study techniques I’ve used, the most effective one reduces to a simple question: “What does this remind me of?” As you perform a pass over a reading, you often feel a peculiar sense of Déjà vu. You’ve seen this story before, somewhere else in the Bible, and it brings forth vague stirrings of nostalgia. Practical nostalgia.

Playing the “what does this remind me of?” game makes the mind a breeding ground for new connections. It is fueled by experience, while at the same time empowering all other bible analysis techniques.

Passage A: “As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.” – John 7:38 Passage B: “…so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” – John 13:4 Finding: Seeing the washing of feet in one story reminds us of the other. In ancient times, the feet were the filthiest areas of the body and hence needed washing. When Jesus cleanses the dirtiest parts of us, the dirtiest part of Christ then becomes more precious to us than anything else in this world. For this reason, the woman was willing to wash Jesus’ feet with her hair.

As your sense of pattern recognition is refined by wise teachers and practice, you develop an ability for drawing out valuable abstractions that make the world turn round. It’s because of Déjà vu, naturally. You recall the pattern, and a mental unlocking takes place.

In kindergarten, we connected the dots. We formed pictures that, while unpretty, would foreshadow the full powers of abstraction our six-year old minds would soon inherit. In this lifelong pursuit of biblical insight, it is unlikely we will graduate from kindergarten. Still, in infrequent gasps and spurts, even we amateurs can attain sudden transport to high places of perspective. We see the big picture.

Passage: “He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch...” When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break…Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.” – Luke 5:3 Big Picture: The story follows a recursive pattern – the disciples are fishing for fish, while Jesus is actually fishing for them. Like a good fisherman, Jesus is crafty in the way He draws the disciples in, slowly but surely. At the end, He is essentially saying "I caught you - and now I want you to catch others in the same way I caught you!" Alternate Big Picture:The disciples tried to define themselves based on what they did, but Jesus showed them to be incompetent. They followed Him, the truer picture of what humanity should have been.

Passage: About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" (which means "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"). – Matthew 27:46 Big Picture: On a higher level, Jesus' "why have you forsaken me?" was not a cry of defeat, but a shout of triumph - His deepest identification with man, as He too, experienced complete separation from the Father.

Grasping the big picture brings a sudden joy of epiphany, something we strain towards in all our artifices of analysis. The answer to the perennial “What’s happening here?” comes into focus. At the top, we ask, “How did we get here?” It’s hard to say. But as we examine these discrete revelations with a retrospective lens, we find that getting the big picture is the cumulative result of linking patterns, applying bible analysis techniques, and feeling a touch of magic.

For Christians in the Western sphere, a particular and peculiar danger is always present. As if vaccinated with a drug of familiarity, we have become inured to the piercing wonder of the Bible. “I’ve read this story a hundred times – why are we going over this again?” Sometimes we think it is obvious and old, that there is nothing left to learn. This, however, is a great fallacy. It is not like other books. It was penned by an Author of infinite depth. Studying the Bible is just one way we explore the infinities of His person. At closer look, even simple passages of the Bible become fractal-like in complexity. Déjà vu is the infection that breeds metaphors; it is the very fabric of parables. There’s a reason why Jesus is referred to as the “bread of life”, the “lamb”, or the “living water”, among other things. When we follow the linkages, they flow back to a common source, like a delta. This is why friends seem abnormal at times, causing us to ask with sudden awe and clarity, “Who are you?” Though shattered and imperfect, as you are, they are reflections of someone greater. And everything in life is a metaphor for God Himself.

Maybe it was a certain fondness for his duck-like voice. Maybe it was a fierce love for how he taught us to integrate helpless trig functions with extreme prejudice. Whatever the case, my Calc II professor’s teachings haunt my subconscious like poltergeese, hatching analogies like bad egg puns en masse.

Integration by parts is one such technique. It involves splitting an equation into two parts, u and dv, in such a way that the problem can fit a new form and be integrated easily.

Take the example of integrating x * cos(x). It looks vaguely hard and somewhat intractable. However, defining u = x and dv = cos(x), we arrive at the answer easily:

Pattern recognition is the lifeblood of integration by parts – finding a workable pattern and massaging it to fit the mold. Finding insights in the Bible is all about pattern recognition. You find a pattern that seems to match, by hint or hunch, and look deeper to see how the passage fits it…or not.  

You can look for progression and see the flow of interaction in a story. Along these lines, some bible study leaders will encourage people to divide a passage into sections and perhaps give each a title. If there are multiple distinct features in a text, how are they related (by time, stage, or causality)? There may be a lot of different parts or people. How do the parts relate to the whole? A few examples are given below:

Passage: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” – Matthew 13:4 Finding: The three failures of the seed in the parable are carelessness, shallowness, and distraction. These three all failed to feed from the root; they represent pitfalls at early, middle, and advanced stages of one’s growth with Christ. In addition to following this time progression pattern, the story is also recursive. The people listening are self-selecting themselves into one of the four categories of seed in the parable.

Passage: “I thank God every time I remember you… It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight…” – Philippians 1:3 Finding: (via Tom Constable) I remember you (in my mind), I have you in my heart, this is my prayer (from my soul) – these three things are the best we can wish for any believer.

Passage: “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree…So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth…And there were shepherds living out in the fields…Magi from the east came to Jerusalem…” – Luke 2 and Matthew 2 Finding: High or lowly, the characters in the Christmas story are all reflections of Christ; they all pay homage to Him. The earthly things are copies of the heavenly Thing. Caesar is a king, a weak reflection of Jesus, the true King. Joseph was a husband who endured shame for God’s purposes; Jesus was the bridegroom of the church, who endured the ultimate shame of the cross. The shepherds had come to see the One Great Shepherd, and the Magi were wise men who came to pay homage to the source of all Wisdom.

Passage: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread”…Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”… “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down.”… Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”… “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” – Matthew 4:3 Finding: In these three exchanges, Jesus’ answers are especially fascinating because they apply equally to his human and divine natures. For example, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” is a command that Jesus obeys in his human nature, but it also is an injunction against Satan, since Jesus is, in fact, God!

I like enumeration – it reminds me of kindergarten. The following is a non-exhaustive enumeration of patterns to test against any given passage. As you discover new patterns, you’ll soon have your very own bag of tricks to bring to bear. It’s in essence, a reversal of a technique used by Richard Feynman, who would keep around a dozen “favorite” problems in mind and test new tricks against each one of them.

time progression

humanity vs. divinity

recursion

inversion

Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)

body, heart, and soul (or heart, mind, and soul)

individual vs. community

parts vs. the whole

foreshadowing/reflection of Jesus

Mosaic law vs. the law of Christ

Patterns are easy to come by, but often hard to apply. You might suddenly see the three persons of the Trinity in a verse about virtues, or maybe glimpse a foreshadowing of Jesus in an Old Testament story or Psalm. Many other patterns exist. You may ask “What’s the point?”

In an ideal, fairytale bible study, we would steadily climb up the tower of understanding and rescue beautiful insights. Our brains would finger a continuous hairstream of logic and make steady upward progress. But sans Rapunzel’s dreadlocks, we must instead rely on discrete and incremental leaps in reasoning. We stumble around like Cinderella with insoles. As with integration by parts, we try recognizing patterns in what may be an initially difficult step. However, in the end, we find what we have been looking for and perhaps something more – a real application for life.

U-sub. The name dredges up a motley set of thoughts, ranging from German unterseeboots to luminous footlongs from Subway. Inductees from the secret order of Calculus II, however, view it as a powerful weapon in their arsenal. In a nutshell, by defining a new variable called “u” (carved out of part of the original expression), integration problems can be recast in a different light. They can then be solved with relative ease. A brief example, using u = sin(x) and du = cos(x), is shown below:

Defining u makes a seemingly intractable problem trivial.

In Bible studies, I sometimes encounter a similar concept. Maybe it was a word your leader just said, or a concept your friend has been pondering offhandedly. 

In any case, it’s in essence something like this:

A “word portal.” It transforms and casts new meaning on the passage. It opens new paradigms of thinking. Because you have fallen down this rabbit hole, you now perceive the passage in a peculiar way and can continue along in a particular vein.

A couple of examples:

Passage: "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength." – Philippians 4:10 Word portal: apathy Finding: When does "settling for something" entail apathy and when does it translate to contentment? The difference between apathy and contentment is that apathy is being numb and not finding meaning in things that have real meaning; contentment is finding meaning in the right things – an active act of appreciation.

Passage: "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you." – James 1:5 Word portal: action Finding: The transfer of wisdom is a two-way exchange. It requires your action (asking God, not doubting) and God’s action (giving generously).

Passage: "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation." – 1 Peter 2:2 Word portal: desire Finding: Desire is not a bad thing in itself. Desires should not be shut off; instead, they should be intensified for the right thing.

Passage: “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see… In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.” – Daniel 1:12 Word portal: academics Finding: Daniel cared more about pleasing God than he cared about academics. In this passage, God cares more about Daniel’s academics than he does. Similarly, for those who are in school, you can infer that God cares more about your academics than even you do!

It’s akin to asking “why” of a specific word in the passage, only this particular word is not actually in the passage, only implied. They arise from ping-ponging ideas against random people with random ideas. Much like the u-subs of yore, word portals are subtle and difficult to lock on to. More often than not, they go undetected till the last moment - a parting shot fired from retrospect.

If you’ve taken calculus, you’ll no doubt recall the “shell method” for finding the volume of a rotated object, such as a torus (a fried 3D object parameterized using equations defined by Krispy Kreme). The method works by adding up infinitesimally thin shells, from the inside to the outside. Think of blasting off of Saturn and passing through the widening rings.  

  Making a similar voyage in Bible studies can reveal some fascinating patterns often only uncovered by theologians. It helps to be curious. Given a topic or person, you can begin by looking at the same or related things a little bit further out in expanding rings of focus – a chapter, a book, or maybe a couple books away. What happened to this person as time went on? Where have I seen this name or idea before?

If you ping the Bible with a broad search and see the relationships change and maturate, you can gain some rare insight. It happens when we encounter two paired ideas - similar, but slightly different - striking out an octave on the keys of our understanding.

  Here are some examples as applied to biblical, non-toroidal objects:

Passage A: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” – Matthew 4:19 Passage B: “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” – John 21:22 Finding: “Follow me” was Jesus’ command to Peter from the very beginning; with these words, he first called Peter, and with these words, he commissioned him to become the rock of the church.

  Passage A: “He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.” - Mark 4:39 Passage B: “When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.” – Mark 5:15 Finding: Jesus calmed the man just as he had calmed the sea a few hours before.

  Passage A: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”).” – Matthew 1:23 Passage B: “… And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” – Matthew 28:20 Finding: Matthew both begins and ends with Immanuel (God with us).

  Passage A: “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” - 1 Corinthians 15:9 Passage B: “Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ…” – Ephesians 3:8 Passage C: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” – 1 Timothy 1:15 Finding: As Paul’s life went on, he realized more and more how inadequate he was before God. Paul shows a progression of humility (i.e. from “least of apostles” to “chief of sinners” from Corinthians to Timothy).

  Passage A: “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” - John 4:24 Passage B: “…God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” – 1 John 1:5 Passage C: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” – 1 John 4:8 Finding: John reveals three key themes of God's nature in his letters – God is Spirit, God is light, and God is love.

Narrowing your focus, you might be able to even apply the method within the same story:

Passage A: "Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die…”" – John 11:24 Passage B: "When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled…Jesus wept." – John 11:32 Finding: Martha revealed Christ’s deity as He spoke of Himself, and Mary uncovered Christ’s humanity as He wept.

Passage A1: When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” – John 4:7 Passage B1: Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. – John 4:34 Passage A2: “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. – John 4:16-17 Passage B2: Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him. – John 4:28 Finding: The Samaritan woman inadvertently fulfilled every single request Jesus made of her. By believing in Jesus, she responded to his first request, allowing Jesus to save her and do the will of the Father; by bringing her entire town to Christ, she answered the second.

Applying this technique for Bible passages makes some very high-level strokes stand out on the canvas of the Bible – things conceived by God to marvel at. I still have great difficulty in finding and linking concepts from across “far distances.” It’s likely due to my need of a firmer grasp on scripture. But it’s a diamond mine for theologians, I would guess. Fortunately, no license is required to start digging.

After plunging through the culture shock of a mandatory switch to Internet Explorer, I realized how much I missed the sparkly extensions that can be tied to the tail end of Samson's all-time favorite browser, Firefox.

Listed below are the ones I keep close at hand, listed in order of importance.

Vimperator

Though I lisp love songs at the window of Emacs at night, Vim keybindings are also very dear to my pinky’s soul. This plugin lets you control your browser mouselessly, as with Vim. I cannot stress how wonderful Vimperator is, and I now feel a bit awkward using any browser without either it or its evil brother, Pentadactyl (although Chrome has the slightly less wonderful *sigh* Vimium).

  Some of the most useful shortcuts are listed below:

hjkl                     Vim movement keys gg, G                 beginning/end of webpage Ctrl-f, Ctrl-b      move down/up a page d                        delete tab o                        open in current tab t                         open in new tab r                         refresh Ctrl-n OR gt      next tab Ctrl-p OR gT     previous tab f                         follow hint (open a link by pressing the corresponding number that pops up) ;t                        follow hint in new tab gi                       set cursor to the current webpage's search box y                        copy link for current page H, L                   go backward or forward in history /                         find text (press n to search forward, N to search backward) Esc                   cancel INSERT mode or cancel current action Shift-Esc          disable Vimperator (aka cease vimperating?)

Pentadactyl is the slightly unstable fork of Vimperator that's more Vimish and customizable, but also less intuitive and slower to get updates. On the bright side, you can have more hint customizations and a nice heap of colorschemes. For advanced users only.

LastPass If I spent as much time blogging as I did entering my password for checking email, I would be well on my way to conquering the blogosphere. Now you too can take clicks toward this lofty goal with LastPass, which automatically fills in your password on any website. Like world domination, hard to live without once you have it.

If that's not enough of an attraction, LastPass can also help you generate long, unpronounceable hex passwords that sound like deadly curses.

“Sure, let me give you my password. It’s 'onecreluthle fiz43HbXi0tp' …that’s O as in onerous, N as in neurotic, E as in exasperating…”

  InstantFox

InstantFox lets you search on almost any website with a query box. Want to Wikipedia something, like kumquats? Just enter “w kumquats” into your address bar and it’ll search directly on Wikipedia. You can define your own custom websites too by replacing the standard search string with “%q”. Here are some example mappings:

d mapped to https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%q k mapped to http://www.wordnik.com/words/%q a mapped to http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%q t mapped to http://topsy.com/s?q=%q

  AdBlock Plus What ads? It’s a question you will be asking yourself after installing AdBlock Plus. Or not, because you’ll probably forget all about that time when ads walked the earth. Some nice related addons are Ghostery (blocks cookiees and trackers), and HTTPS Everywhere (ensures sites use encrypted HTTPS requests). So yeah, more power to the people! Paranoid people, that is.

One last piece of armor for your little Firefox to wear is NoScript, an addon that requires you to activate every potentially ferocious piece of active content with approving clicks of your mouse. Eh, but let's face it - checkmarking every single YouTube video and Flash item you visit is about as fun as repeatedly dropping a Xeon-powered server on your foot. However, some folks consider wearing NoScript to be haute couture for the browser and a speed optimization, so to each, his/her own.

Speed Dial This lets you set up a series of frequently accessed pages in new tabs (optionally). A more useful feature is that you can call up any preset webpage with Ctrl-1 through 9, however you like. Great for launching email sites over a bowl of oatmeal.

DownThemAll Before you start weeping to dramatic Spotify music at the sight of 231 data set links for your latest research project, take DownThemAll for a spin. It lets you select many files and download them in one shot. It even has filters that you can use for especially content-rich pages, if you want to download a particular file type (e.g. *.png).

A couple other useful, but not necessarily essential addons include FEBE (backup utility), Perapera Pop-up Dictionary (comes in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean flavors), Evernote Web Clipper (save full webpages or articles to Evernote), Diigo (superb bookmarking utility with lists+search+tagging), and DownloadHelper (for YouTube videos). Some people also swear by the pickled brains of Greasemonkey (dynamically alter websites with Javascript), but I personally haven't found many useful scripts thus far.

Do appearances really matter? It’s all about what’s in the heart, right? (Most people just want a heart that doesn't break after the heartbreak of the latest build) Nonetheless, it doesn't hurt to look nice. Firefox addons offer a cornucopia of new customizations, like ColorfulTabs, Personas, and other fun stuff.

Something often happens when we single out patterns in the Bible and try to make sense of them by connecting them to pieces of our own experience or thinking more deeply about them.  We sometimes come to succinct realizations, which roll out as crunchy axioms.

The most apt term for these epiphanies seems to be “extensions.” If a verse was like a mathematical theorem, this type of finding would be a corollary. For those acquainted with propositional logic, it's a simple form of modus ponens - P→Q, and P is true, therefore Q. The hard part is finding Q. It may not be something directly implied, but perhaps a truth that is hidden. But in a number of cases, the relationship between a verse and an extension maps closely to implication. 

So in the verse-extension pairs below, the => “implies” notation appears to be fitting.

“Because of the LORD’s great love, we are not consumed…” – Lamentations 3:22      => We consume ourselves; apart from God, we are consumed by our desires.

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples” – John 15:8      => Not as assertions of our own uniqueness, but as reflections of One greater.

“…but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” – 1 John 4:12      => We cannot make love complete by our own power; we know and rely on the love God has for us.

“…Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him” – 1 John 4:16      => This is what mankind has always longed for – the touch of the divine.

“But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” – 1 John 4:18      => Jesus’s life was the perfect example of this concept, since death is the ultimate punishment, but Jesus overcame the fear of the cross because of His perfect love for us.      => We seek perfect love in our relationships – in relationships, what we seek is total acceptance, without fear of rejection.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world…” – Romans 12:2      => We become the things we conform around; we become our desires.

“Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds” – James 1:2      => To have a perspective of pure joy in pain indicates either being out of touch with reality, or being a possessor of a far realer reality.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes…” – Revelation 21:4      => Jesus endured more suffering than any person alive; He offers empathy of the first degree.

We or others come up with these extensions, and in sheepish retrospect, wonder how on heaven or earth they were ever found. It calls to mind that old cartoon where the start of a proof is written on a blackboard, a large gap is shown, and the words “magic happened here!” are scribbled out right before the solution. It’s difficult to figure out what inspired the charge of inspiration to jump across the bandgap.

But maybe these things can be discovered by asking good questions of the passage. Think of how this idea would play out in reality and ask why – why would this be? If you find a train of thought that differs from ordinary thought, try to discover why.

As always, it's critical to check the accuracy of your findings. The mechanics of bible study are akin to the much vaunted scientific method. Hypotheses are formed, but results must be verifiable and *reproducible* by others in the bible study. The path remains clear. Find the logical extension to what is already said and perhaps you will find an implicit, unspoken meaning – something to treasure.

As most directly espoused by the likes of Yogi Bear, déjà vu is a recursive cliché that “everyone’s seen before”, yet it holds true for bible analysis. The following are patterns I have seen often in Bible studies, but like the unmarried socks in my drawer, just a small subset of the vast amount that must surely exist…  

Inversion This is a pattern that is akin to that seen in Boolean logic and number systems, for those with a background in computing. The gist is simple – while you are considering an idea, think of what negative or opposite action might apply. Is an action applied to an entity? What happens if you reverse the action and apply it to the actuator, or perhaps someone else in the story? In the latter case, the pattern may not be strictly inversion, but it can give up something unexpected and valuable.

Maybe that lengthy phrase about virtues that goes on like a run-on sentence has an evil twin brother—a list of behaviors to avoid. There is often an implicit parallel case that can be found. If an action is applied, what is the opposite of that action, and how would it tie into the story?

In my mind, this often seems like a “cheap” avenue of analysis – something you replay for each passage like an awful Russian reversal joke (In America, you watch Big Brother. In Soviet Russia, Big Brother watch YOU!). But I’ve come to the conclusion that a better question is not whether it is a cheap tactic, but whether the insight it unfolds is valuable. A few examples:

Extract: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” – Isaiah 42:3 Finding: (via Tom Constable) “Not only would He not break or extinguish others, but the pressures and blows of others would not break or extinguish Him.” Approach: apply the actions (break, extinguish) to the actuator (the Messiah).

Extract: “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.” – Romans 2:7 Finding: those who are self-seeking seek glory, honor, and immortality as ends in themselves. Approach: consider the negative, parallel case and how glory, honor, and immortality relate to it.

Extract: “…so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” – Ephesians 3:17 Finding: It is appropriate for Christ to dwell in our hearts, just as we dwelled on His heart. Approach: invert the roles of the actor and the recipient.

Extract: “…and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” - Ephesians 3:19 Finding: He emptied Himself so that we might be filled. Approach: invert the action (“filled” -> “emptiness”); consider who executed this action.

Extract: “’ My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” - Luke 15 Finding: We often think the parable of the prodigal son only demonstrates that sinners are loved by God, but the Father in the story was loving not only to sinners (the younger brother), but also to the Pharisees (the older brother) as well. Approach: consider the most literal meaning and apply to another character.

Now if ideas were currency, this act of mechanically applying inversion to patterns may seem somewhat mercenary. Obviously, it is important to verify the results of your pattern findings. Does it make sense in the context of the passage, or are you projecting meanings onto the passage that were actually never intended?

I often wonder why we see so much inversion in Bible passages. A very notable case is Jesus’ prayer for the disciples in John 17 – it’s a beautiful intercessory prayer that is filled with this pattern as Christ reflects on his time with the disciples and their future callings.

School has been busy, but I will keep trying to update with other patterns as I find time.

The Why? Question In my albeit limited experience, the most important question to ask in any Bible passage is “Why?” It can be asked on many different levels and in many different ways. It’s often the gateway to understanding particularly difficult passages or extracting more from a seemingly simplistic chapter. As with more explicitly academic topics, I have a bad habit of inventing and adhering to superficial hypotheses to gloss over topics I don’t immediately understand. But rather than treating a confusing idea as water under the bridge, the more rewarding (not to mention intellectually taxing) approach is to fixate and grapple with the question, until “either you or it has been exhausted,” as Mortimer Adler would say.

The approach can, but doesn’t have to be systematic; when acquired, it often becomes second nature. However, a systematic breakdown can be instructive for the purposes of description.

You can first consider the smallest unit—a word idea or short phrase. A host of little questions congregate around the bigger question of why. Why was something used or not used? Why was this number/setting/detail used? What if this were not so? For what purpose was this said? What are this word’s qualities or attributes? If it seems confusing, find the answer - why does it make sense? Um, it is supposed to make sense, right?

Even on this level, it can lead to some surprising findings. Here are a few examples; some from myself, some from others:

Extract: “My son, keep my words…write them on the tablet of your heart” – Proverbs 7:1 A Question: Why a tablet; what does it signify? An Answer: This is a very permanent act (writing on tablets in ancient times required engraving).

Extract: “I have called you friends…” – John 15:15 A Question: Why does Jesus call us friends? What does it mean for Him to apply this relational status? An Answer: - friends have equal standing, unlike servant and master. We, like Jesus, have holiness before God. - friends have the same great love.

Extract: “…and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over” – Matthew 14:20 A Question: Why were 12 baskets left after the feeding of the 500? An Answer: The 12 baskets were left for the 12 disciples, a divine commission – so that each of them might be a continuation of Jesus’s miracle and bring Him, the bread of life, to the entire world.

Extract: “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger…” – Luke 2:7 A Question: Why was Jesus born in a manger? An Answer: (amazing finding via C.L., the artist) The manger is where the animals eat. Already, the stage was being set for Jesus to be food for humanity and his sheep.

For those leading a Bible study or similar group, asking simple questions is not always such a bad thing—it is important to grok the intention of the author and grasp the literal meaning. Asking leading questions will draw tepid answers from shallow waters. On the other hand, asking simple, open questions can dredge up some very deep findings.

On a slightly higher level than a single word, asking why questions like those above can result in similar findings – not necessarily deeper or less deep. A few examples:

Extract: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope…” – Ephesians 4:4 A Question: Why one body and one Spirit? An Answer: (via Tom Constable) This also implies that there is one heart, for two hearts in the same body would be monstrous.

Extract: “and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” – Matthew 2:11 A Question: Why did the Magi offer these gifts? An Answer: The Magi were king-makers; their gifts forshadowed Jesus’ life. - Gold was reserved for royalty – it emphasized His kingship. - Frankincense was reserved for the worship of God – it emphasized His divinity, and His life was to be a fragrant offering to God. - Myrrh was used as perfume for burial – Jesus was destined to die.

Extract: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Then he rolled up the scroll…” – Luke 4:18 A Question: Why did Jesus roll up the scroll after reading only part of Isaiah 61? An Answer: He rolled up the scroll, leaving out the phrase “and the day of vengeance of our God” because His mission was not to condemn the world, but to save it.

Have you made these connections before? It’s kind of mysterious how they come to mind - a flash of insight from outer space, as it were. Much like induction proofs. In any case, they can only be first acquired by focused and diligent study.

There many ways to ask why – let curiosity run wild!

If you were a cell in Excel, what would you do to survive? The first thing that might come to mind would probably be to find a good gamer’s pad to walk through the four corners of the Excel environment, or at the very least, a WASD control mapping to avoid possible deletion and the unwanted romantic attentions of mice. This matter of practicality led me to dip into some Basic programming. Excel is a great tool for scheduling and keeping track of data. I’m by no means a Visual Basic power user (goto gotoJokeHere), but I’ve found a few macros useful for daily operations. Here’s a couple modules I’ve made that I find particularly useful.

But first, to add a macro in MS Excel 2010, head over to the Developer tab on your ribbon. Follow the sequence Visual Basic -> Right-click Module -> Insert -> Module. Then you can type or paste in code in the blank space.

After saving your module, you can assign a shortcut to its macros by going to Developer -> Macros, selecting a module macro, and clicking on Options to assign a hotkey (it must begin with Ctrl+Shift).

Navigation: Beloved by avid video gamers across the globe, the one-handed WASD control scheme has been adopted by everything from 2D games to RPGs. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could control cells with the same easy mappings? With the following submodule commands, you can select a cell and walk it through your tables with Legend-of-Zelda-like precision. People have programmed Pac-Man in Excel before (http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/). My code is somewhat less ambitious.  

Sub UpShift() ' ' UpShift Macro ' shift line up ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+W ' ' To overwrite cells with contents, delete 2nd If statement '  If (ActiveCell.Row <> 1) Then   If (IsEmpty(ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 0))) Then    Selection.Cut    ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 0).Range("A1").Select    ActiveSheet.Paste   End If  End If End Sub Sub DownShift() ' ' DownShift Macro ' shift line down ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+S ' ' To overwrite cells with contents, delete 2nd If statement '  If (ActiveCell.Row <> Rows.Count) Then '  If (IsEmpty(ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0))) Then    Selection.Cut    ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Range("A1").Select    ActiveSheet.Paste '  End If  End If End Sub Sub RightShift() ' ' RightShift Macro ' shift line right ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+D ' ' To overwrite cells with contents, delete 2nd If statement '  If (ActiveCell.Row <> Columns.Count) Then   If (IsEmpty(ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1))) Then     Selection.Cut    ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1).Range("A1").Select    ActiveSheet.Paste   End If  End If End Sub Sub LeftShift() ' ' LeftShift Macro ' shift line left ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+A ' ' To overwrite cells with contents, delete 2nd If statement '  If (ActiveCell.Column <> 1) Then   If (IsEmpty(ActiveCell.Offset(0, -1))) Then    Selection.Cut    ActiveCell.Offset(0, -1).Range("A1").Select    ActiveSheet.Paste   End If  End If End Sub

  Looking at the code, it seems like a fairly simple cut-n’-paste. But what are all of these weird if statements? The first if checks for boundary conditions (in Excel, the world is flat - it’s nice to sail west, but are we going to fall off the end of the world?). The second makes sure no cell contents are in the adjacent cell that might get overwritten*. Otherwise, cutting and pasting at random would be like running with scissors.**

  *You might ask why it looks like I’m cutting and pasting when the adjacent cell IS occupied. I dunno. It just works. Another quirk is that moving groups of active cells works with up, left, and right directions, but not down unless you delete the second If statement in that macro.

**This might actually be the effect you want.

  Zoom: It’s always bothered me that Excel doesn’t allow you to zoom in with hotkeys. It almost tempts users to whip out Windows Magnifier to peer at microscopic cells. I found an instructive macro online that used an exact 1.1 scalar to increase screen size by 10%, but that resulted in less desirable values on the zoom level display (107%? Yuck.). For a cleaner look on the interface, I added and subtracted zoom by increments of 10, offering the eyes more textually pleasing zoom steps (110%, 120%, …).

Sub ZoomIn() ' ' ZoomIn Macro ' zoom in by 10% ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+I '  If ActiveWindow.Zoom < 400 Then   ActiveWindow.Zoom = Int(ActiveWindow.Zoom + 10)  End If End Sub Sub ZoomOut() ' ' ZoomOut Macro ' zoom out by 10% ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+O '  If ActiveWindow.Zoom > 10 Then   ActiveWindow.Zoom = Int(ActiveWindow.Zoom - 10)  End If End Sub

    Toggle Comment: Comments can be inserted with a quick poke of the Context Menu Key (that’s the one between your right-hand Alt and Ctrl), followed by m. If you want to toggle them peekaboo fashion, here’s a little macro that does just that. I’ve always wondered how comments in Excel work. The most technical explanation is as follows: there are little elves living inside each cell, each holding a hidden comment flag. If you tickle the elf via context menu, it immediately jumps out in great distress and waves a big white comment flag of surrender. Here’s a shortcut to tickle them.

Sub ToggleComment() ' ' ToggleComment Macro ' ' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+T '  If Not ActiveCell.Comment Is Nothing Then   ActiveCell.Comment.Visible = Not ActiveCell.Comment.Visible  End If End Sub

Highlight: While highlighting in textbooks is of dubious value, highlighting in Excel is not only practical, but very aesthetically pleasing. You can make spreadsheets beautiful, as if painted lovingly by an artist demanding delicate shades of -0.349986266670736. Here are a few ‘subs for grey, orange, green, and white highlighting, if you’re looking to do some quick markup.

Digital Design Lab: In some circles, they call EEs wizards. But I bet even Gandalf would have trouble dealing with some aspects of Digital Design Laboratory…

 “I could think of nothing to do but to try and place a shunt diode on the port. I know many—Schottky, Zener, Esaki—but to do things of that kind rightly requires debugging time, and even then, it can be broken by reverse bias. Then something came into the RAM—I felt it through the status register, and the UART pins themselves were cleared and fell silent. It laid hold of the MUX selects …and then it perceived me and my watchdog timer. The ISR was terrible. It nearly reset me. For an instant, the selects on the multiplexer went to high and data began to enter. I had to speak a 16-bit word of control.”  - Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring Buffer Computer Architecture: As with most things, you experience duality. On the one hand, you get the MIPPY instruction set, which comes in three flavors (R, I, J)—a programmable cereal breakfast of sheer delight along the beaten datapath. On the other hand, you must embark on an endless pilgrimage through the land of memory, facilitated by the ponderous vehicle of PC. You may encounter feral and philosophical grad students prophesying strangely about opcodes stored in resistors, until the truth finally “registers” on your mind.

PCB: An ancient torture device with many sharp needle points protruding from one side. MOSFET: Arguably not a buggy device, but actually a real bug in your circuit, with the occasional side effects of switching and amplification. It can be killed by squishing its gate and source nerves together. Sometimes dies and blows up in your face if poked or provoked.

555 Timer: “Five-five-five timer” “Triple-nickel timer” It’s the Swiss army knife of analog DIP chips, and it has been used for applications as esoteric and gratifying as whack-a-mole. It can be configured for all three multivibrator modes: bistable, astable, and monostable. If your O’scope is to be believed, it’s *very* pew-pew-pew. In bistable mode: it can flip and it can flop. You can ground the trigger to set it (output high) or ground the reset to reset it (output low). Rudimentary, but it works in a pinch. O’scope Says: “Pew” or “Pow”

In monostable mode: the 555 becomes a holdout blaster. Hitting the trigger input will fire one short laser beam of a pulse across the output. Then the circuit needs to be reset. O’scope Says: “PEWW”

In astable mode: the 555 continually sends out a pulse at periodic intervals with a duty cycle greater than 50% (duty cycle is the fraction of time the signal is high). O’scope Says: “Pew-pew-pew-pew…”

A popular 555 timer contest was recently held in posthumous honor of its creator, Hans Camenzind. http://blog.makezine.com/2012/08/22/555-timer-contest-highlights/

Presumably, the 556 timer is born when a 555 timer has twins on the same piece of die. O’scope: A retro gaming system with vector graphics that can be unlocked by a special sequence of button presses. Savvy users are empowered to dodge flying asteroids and vicariously rotate and free fall down the screen. Some ingenious hackers discovered how to alter the O’scope’s functionality and measure AC signals, thereby turning the gaming platform into a useful circuit diagnostic tool. Tetris is arguably more fun, however, and consequently, the ever-popular O’scope can be found on workbenches of lab techs everywhere.

Finger tip: A probe handily applied to your circuit more often than even the beloved O’scope. Liberally calibrate your finger with your tongue and insert it into the circuit as a temperature probe. It’s like magic. 

Be forewarned that insufficient manna skill, or possibly circuit design experience, can cause the spell to backfire and burn your finger. In the event of a spell misfire, remove the probe from the circuit and insert it into your mouth. Then, quickly cast a shutoff spell on the DC power supply.

Long ago, a collective named ANSI was founded by a group of engineers who were antsy about current standards. It is often rumored that the ANSI collective not only cast dimension requirements for hex nuts, but also cast a hex on their creators and all other mainstream engineers, who would henceforth be cursed with cute names. Consequently, the following series of objectionable, but tongue-ergonomic mappings was instituted:

Mechanical engineers (ME) would be known as "mechies" Electrical engineers (EE) would be known as "double-E's" Computer engineers (CpE) would be known as "ceepies" Chemical engineers (ChE) would be known as "chemies" Civil engineers (CE) would be known as "civies" Environmental engineers (EnE) would be known as "envies", or even better, "eenies" Industrial engineers (IE) would be known as "indies" Petroleum engineers (PE) would be known as "petries"

Nominally a civie in my primordial pre-frosh state, I was told in CAD class that I would discover moments of joy, moments of excitement, and moments of inertia designing sewage pipes. However, environments changed and I changed phases as well, first from civie to mechie; then from mechie to EE, a more entropically favorable state from which to cause mayhem.  

Truth be told, I felt slightly out of depth. As a newbish wallflower who watched while other students had a ball with programming, I missed the EEPROM in high school.

But after a brush with the Dark Side of the Force, aka Digital Signals and Filtering (DSF), I learned the mysterious language of EEs. EE is a difficult major – we develop terminology to confuse the business majors and our enemies, but wind up scaring ourselves half the time. Now having climbed the mountain of checksheets and spoken with the zen masters in their office hours, I bear a mini-dictionary back to the reader for enlightenment.

  Digital Design: Face deMorgan le Fay’s wrath in the black sorcery of digital design. You must train hard. A geeky kung-fu master is impelling you to awkwardly flip-flop up a mountain of logic with a backpack load of strenuous K-mapping. We are his digital disciples and must follow his every 32-bit command. Students who speak up in class are given frequent “load from memory” instructions in class (usually resulting in cache misses). On the bright side, students are given the tantalizing abstraction of drumsticks and chicken wings for 1’s and 0’s. 

In my semester, students were serenaded at the start of every class with ukulele by a wander’ng minstrel on roller skates, which was faintly awesome. Dr. Lambda paid him no heed.

“Drumstick-drumstick-drumstick—CHICKEN WING—drumstick-drumstick…” – A class with Dr. Lambda

"Dr. Lambda, what is your favorite state?" – a lecture on state machines starting to get deep

Circuits: "And the voltage is one minus E to-the mi-nus T-over-TAU," chanted Dr. Phi, enshrined in that charged CCD frame of emotion as the high priest of TTL logic.

  It is a mystical class of wonder and electrical shamanism. You will learn all about the tribal resistors and their trichromatic war paint markings. With a touch of kind humor, Dr. Phi initiates you into the rituals of capacitors and inductors (if you put a capacitor and an inductor in the same enclosed circuit, they will fight), as well as op amps, those weird analog idols no one in the course understands. Savage circuit analysis techniques from the times of druids like Kirchoff are taught, requiring brute-force computation.

  Digital Signals and Filtering: In DSF, you begin to entertain aspirations of being an archaeologist in the ancient Land of Laplace, searching for rare and cursed artifacts hidden in the discrete sands of time-domain. But in the seedy underworld of time-invariant systems, we learn to shift first and ask questions later. Dr. Delta is rigorous in his methods and will challenge you.

Common question: “Why am I having so much trouble with a problem made from imaginary numbers?”

Microprocessors: Enjoy the existential pleasure of blinkenlights plugged into warm underpinnings of a USB firestorm. View daguerreotypes of ye olde microprocessor in your friendly datasheet. Good fences make good neighbors, and we learn from Dr. Phi that good tristate buffers make good bus communications. As you struggle with writing simple LCD menus, you will atavistically stop wondering who were these cave men of the 1960s, who gazed in unabashed wonder at 16-bit graphics of yore.

Solid State Devices: It’s like kindergarten all over again, if intrepid kinder were allowed to drink from a firehose. Dr. Mu loves his pictures, and you will draw neat little diagrams that rival your childhood drawings for nonconformity during the time pressure of tests. His sardonic grin will tunnel students through the oxide layer of time into the fairyland of picture books, while occasionally inducing wild handfuls of hair extraction.

 Dr. Mu also tells bedtime stories about cat-whisker diodes, blue LEDs, and Nicolae Tesla, although naptime comes at the premium of missing the sweetness of the firehose. While the solid state models of our minds form sleepy depletion regions to force out what we've just learned, slowly we hum and smile to the good vibrations of phonons skipping through the crystal lattice.

  Electromagnetic Fields: EM tango! So says Ullaby, that one textbook with the special peel-away cover, shedding black fuzz like a Pekinese. Dr. Theta teaches physics well and has a phlegmatic voice that drones soothingly. We think fondly about the marriage of E and M; suddenly we see the whole spectrum of their existence as they propagate and produce little wavelets, their time-harmonic lullabies lulling us to sleep in our one nighttime naptime class.

  Electronics Lab: “Electronics lab is my new home!” - Random student

Student A: “I’m having trouble believing I’m not in the Matrix.” Student B: “I’m having trouble believing I’m not in Electronics lab.”

It’s a time vortex that can suck up over twenty hours of your week. Not to say it isn’t fun. You will learn many important life lessons that you never knew before. For example:

Although crime doesn’t pay, being a thoughtful, law-abiding EE doesn’t always pay off either. It has been proven by algorithmic analysis that building a CS amplifier by working out the theory on paper takes O(N^2) time. Behind you, your lab partner frenetically swapping in random resistors from on high will create a circuit with supremely high gain in logarithmic time. He will, however, require a trash can with space proportional to N to store the freshly toasted components who failed to pass the test of fire. By empirical analysis, we can infer that analog circuits are magic. And engineers are people who make things work.

If your sine-wave signal on the oscilloscope screen is getting fuzzy, it may be because your 1k resistor has given up on life and is now doing a feeble impression of a whale blowing smoke out of its red-hot blowhole.

In your time, you may learn practical tricks for surviving in the wilderness, such as setting traps. Turn several DIP chips upside down and forget where you put them. Your friendly TA will arrive, come to rest his elbows while checking your work, and helpfully find your lost chips with loud honks of surprise.

“OW!!*$! Is that why you brought me here? To trap me?” – Mr. Kappa, our TA, after using his elbows to step on our trap

“Ow, my head—my head!” – Unlucky student struck by a piece of someone else’s bright idea

Student: “Hug me Kappa.” Mr. Kappa: “Ok.” <slumps on student’s back> – Consolation after a frustrating debugging session

Discrete phases in life are often difficult to define, but I suppose that a chapter in life has closed and another has opened (one containing fewer cliches than this one, it is to be hoped). The University is meant to be a place of learning - for life, not only academics, and I am grateful for the lessons it has taught me. As I prepare to depart alma mater, some final thoughts from the college experience come to mind:

This blog has been long in the making. After the flurry of college admissions, I chose to attend a public university in the Bible belt, and was reincarnated as a wide-eyed frosh. That year, I inadvertently created a 7-page personality study called 5RT, which, while too emotionally lumpy for actual consumption, sparked my interest in creative writing. All further ideas were pushed onto the 5RT stack, which thusly nourished, grew to a respectable 183kB (about 40 pages). Now clarified with a clearer purpose, chunks of 5RT are hereby regurgitated for the benefit of the reader.

Some topics I hope to pop from the stack in the distant future:

Bible analysis patterns

a survey of New Testament books

exegesis methods

Forth applications