Sabbaticals

Bill relaxing and reading on sabbatical in Bolivia

Sabbaticals have been on my mind lately. The obvious reason is because my business partner, Mark, is just finishing up one and my good friend, John, is two weeks from starting one. (Check out Mark’s blog if you are curious about his experiences.) As I work very closely with both of them, their sabbaticals have a fairly large impact on me. I already was able to take mine thanks to them covering for me, so I’m glad they each have the opportunity to take a sabbatical.

The reason all three of us have had this opportunity is that our company, Principled Technologies (PT), has a sabbatical program. Mark and I were inspired by a talk we heard at TED a few years ago. The program we designed is one that both enables time to rest away from work and encourages folks to do something good in the world. A person is eligible every seventh year of employment at PT to take seven paid weeks off from work. We tell folks to not check their work email and to disconnect totally from work for that time. We also encourage them to do “something good in the world” with at least one of those seven weeks. If the person does so, PT pays $5,000 towards that cause or effort. Mark worked in a local soup kitchen and John is planning to ride his bike 750 miles to help children in Africa. 

Two years ago, and a couple years late, I took my sabbatical. It was a wonderful time of relaxing. Because of my personality, my idea of relaxing included lots of scheduled things and kept me fairly busy. I read quite a bit. I spent a wonderful week at Sandals in Jamaica with Susie. I did some things around the house I had been putting off forever. The highlight, however, was the two weeks I spent at an orphanage in Bolivia. (OK, it may have been two weeks of hanging out with some amazing kids!) 

The combination of time away from the pressures of work and of time helping others enabled me to focus on what is important. It was a great seven weeks and I would have loved to have had more time, but I also was glad to get back to work. When I returned, Mark and I reevaluated my role at PT and made some adjustments in light of what I learned and what Mark and PT learned in my absence. 

Beyond the value of the sabbatical to me personally, I think the sabbatical program is a valuable benefit for PT. There is an obvious cost to PT of the seven weeks of salary with no work in return. In a small company, someone being gone for that long can be very difficult to deal with. The benefits, however, outweigh the costs. Over time in any job, stuff just piles up. The time away allows that to go away and for the person to only pick back up what is important. I’m hopeful as well that the sabbaticals will help people avoid burnout. And, I really like that people from PT are making a positive impact, however small, on the world. 

I’ve also given some thought to the Biblical perspective on sabbaticals. I’d like to claim that I suggested the program based on concepts from the Bible, but that is not really the case. In truth, I don’t know whether the idea was mine or Mark’s. (As an aside, I seldom can remember whether “our” ideas start with Mark or me. Maybe it is because we see any credit as shared regardless of who thought of it first.) 

The word sabbatical is from the same lexical roots as Sabbath. The Hebrew word for Sabbath means to cease, desist, or rest. In Genesis 2:3, God blesses the seventh day as a day of rest as He rested from Creation. (I’ll leave what it means for God to rest to theologians!) The key is that from the very beginning, we were created with a need for rest. Matthew Sleeth does a great job of looking at that need for rest and a Sabbath day in 21^st Century American in his book, 24/6: A Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life.

The Sabbath also made God’s top ten list as one of the Ten Commandments, “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8) Just to make sure we did not miss its importance, this is the longest of the commandments and includes details about how and why we are to implement the weekly day of rest. There is quite a bit of irony in the fact that what seems like the easiest commandment to follow is one that we have so much trouble with. In the New Testament, Jesus spends a decent bit of energy arguing with the religious leaders of the day to not be so legalistic about the Sabbath, but affirms its importance.

The concept of the Sabbath in the Bible extends beyond just resting one day a week. Every seventh year for the nation of Israel was to be a Sabbath Year. The land was to be left fallow and debts forgiven. (See Leviticus 25:1-7 and Deuteronomy 15:1-6.) One of the sins of the nation of Israel was its failure to implement the Sabbath Year.

I don’t claim that PT’s sabbatical program fills the same role or importance as the Sabbath or Sabbath Year in the Bible. I do think, however, that we were created with a need for rest and I hope that PT’s sabbaticals help in that direction.

I know I’m looking forward to my next one. Only three more years!

Easter reflections

Throughout Easter I kept being drawn back to this photo. I looked at it during church and multiple times later in the day. 

I don’t claim to have any ability as a photographer, but I love this picture. I took it a couple of years ago in Bolivia on Good Friday. The children at the orphanage I was visiting acted out the Stations of the Cross. Many of the roles were portrayed by girls. The drawn-on beard makes me unable to be sure who this girl was, but that is not really important. There is just something touching about the innocence in her face that I cannot get out of my mind.

Sunday evening some friends, Susie, and I watched the final episode of the History Channel’s The Bible. Like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, it attempted to depict the horror and cruelty of crucifixion. They both manage to convey that aspect of the event, but left me feeling like something was missing.

I think the pendulum may have swung too far toward the pain and suffering aspect of the crucifixion. I often hear phrases like, “the most painful death possible” or “suffering that no one else has endured.” I don’t know that those claims are true. Rome crucified lots of people in similar fashion and other forms of execution may even be crueler or more painful.

The girl in this photo is at an orphanage, so there definitely has been pain and suffering in her life. At the same time, however, there is an innocence, a serenity in her face. So too, I think that during Jesus’ suffering there was some sense of serenity in knowing that because of His innocence of sin, what He set out to accomplish was about to be completed.

I am grateful for, and must not forget, the suffering. At the same time, when I look on that innocent face, through the drawn-on cuts, bruises and beard, I see a glimpse of the serenity of Jesus’ face. 

It is finished, paid in full. Amen. 

Gadget review - Jawbone Up

Jawbone Up with its cap removed to show the plug

One of the items I received from the recent TED conference was the Jawbone Up. It is an activity monitor that you wear around your wrist. At the simplest level, it detects the motion of your and then uses that information to determine things like the number of steps you take and how well you sleep.

I used the Up for two weeks including the week of TED. My general impression of it was fairly positive, though I kept thinking of things I wished it could do. I think many of those features will be added to future versions of the Up or future competing products. 

How the Jawbone Up looks on my wrist

The Up comes in different colors, but the black one I had seemed the most practical. I don’t claim to have much of an eye for aesthetics, but I liked the look of it. 

The only visible evidence that it is an electronic device is a small LED that can appear in different shapes (such as a sun to indicate it is day mode or a moon for night) and colors (green and red to indicate things like charging, low battery, and the like). 

The other end of the band is a silver square that serves as an input button. A single short tap reveals what mode it is in (the LED indicates day or night) and a long push switches between those modes. To work properly, you need to remember to change the mode when you go to bed and when you get up. I did not find that to be a problem, though I did make a mistake one of the first days I used it. 

The Up requires another device to read, process, and display the data. I used my Up with an iPhone. To connect the Up to a phone, you remove the silver cover on the other end of the band from the square button. Under the cover is a standard headphone/microphone plug. You connect to the headphone/microphone jack on your phone or other device.

You also charge the Up using the same plug and an included microphone jack to USB cable. The Up has a battery that lasts a little over a week, so charging it is not much of an issue. Of course, you have to remember to put it back on when it is charged. I made that mistake one time. 

Evidence I don't walk or sleep enough

The key to making all of this useful is the app on your phone. It has some features which I did not bother to use such as the ability to indicate how you are feeling. I figured what would the point be of recording “Meh” constantly! You can also record what you eat and what exercise you do. The general idea of having a single place to record all of these things makes good sense and the Up app’s implementations seemed fine, but I already have other apps for those things. 

Data from a night's sleep

The main features I used were the ones that showed how many steps I took each day and how well I slept at night. The answer is not enough on both of those fronts! The app also has the ability to show trends over time on most of the data points such as this one showing my sleep over a week. I found the sleep data very interesting, though I wish there were more in-depth analysis and possibly some suggestions on how to improve my sleep. The app gave some suggestions that were rather simplistic like telling me to sleep longer or walk more. 

Sleep trends for a week

There are other related features to help you improve your behavior such as an alert that lets you know you haven’t moved in a while and should do so. Do some people really need to be reminded that they have been on the couch watching TV for too long? Scary.

There are some features that I think the Up application needs, mostly in terms of on what platforms it runs. There is finally an Android app, but there is not one for the iPad. Of course, you can run on the iPad as an iPhone app, but that does not take advantage of the additional screen real estate. There is also no Web app. Most apps like MyFitnessPal and LoseIt! have Web apps that give a deeper level of data analysis and understanding.

I also wish that the device had some ability to monitor my heart rate and upload the data wirelessly. One odd thing is that I found myself glancing at my wrist. Over the last few years I have stopped wearing a watch and instead use my phone for the time. My subconscious, however, seemed convinced that the strap on my wrist should be able to tell time. That left me wishing that there was some sort of small display, maybe just an extension of the current LEDs, that could show the time or other simple data.

The price of the Jawbone Up is $129.99 which is about the price of exercise watches and the like. It is by no means cheap, but it is not terribly overpriced either. 

Despite the limitations, I found the Up to be a very interesting device. And, one I expect to experiment more with in the future (my wrist is currently occupied by a Martian watch).

Thinking about thinking

After returning from the TED conference, I spent a week at Sandals with my beautiful wife. We had a wonderful time enjoying tennis, SCUBA diving, volleyball, and generally relaxing. That juxtaposition of thought-provoking talks and time to relax caused me to spend time a good amount of time thinking. 

Unfortunately, thinking is not what it used to be. 

In 21^st Century America, thinking has developed a bad reputation. We seem instead to rely a lot more on feeling than thinking. Even facts are considered subservient to our feelings or opinions. The book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society does a good job of describing that phenomenon. Stephen Colbert's concept of truthiness--truth is something that feels right, regardless of facts--has prevailed. We no longer know what is an opinion and what is a fact. 

Another aspect of the decline in thinking is that in discussing topics, controversial or not, we value quick responses over slow ones. The quick sound bite trumps the thoughtful, nuanced response. In contrast, in the New Testament, James exhorts Christians to be “quick to hear, slow to speak.” Proverbs 17:28 says, “Even a fool, when he keeps silent is considered wise; When he closes his lips, he is considered prudent.” I remember when someone who responded slowly was thought to have considered more carefully his response. Now, choosing your words carefully often is considered a sign of indecision. In communications, tweeting is winning over emailing, let alone letter writing. We prefer speedy responses more than ones that are the result of measured thinking. 

I think it is further evidence of the decline in the perceived value thinking that we look down on people who change their minds. In politics, it is often referred to derisively as flip-flopping. I’ve heard Christians say that being open minded is something to be avoided. As best I can tell, thinking and learning involve changing your mind. What is the point in thinking if at the end of it you are unchanged? 

In the face of all this, thinking is what I do—whether on a beach in Jamaica, riding my bicycle in Wake County, or taking a shower.  My goal with this blog is to make my thinking more systematic, rigorous, and Biblical. 

There are a number of controversial areas that I have been thinking about of late such as guns, inerrancy, homosexuality, and Hell. I want not just to think about topics like these, but to think Biblically about them. I also realize that I have much to learn and may well be wrong in my current thinking. 

I have been somewhat reticent to discuss these topics, let alone blog about them. These topics are pretty much guaranteed to tick off half the people out there. Worse, my thinking on them is such that I may well tick off everyone! 

My goal in writing about such topics is not to convince anyone else, though I’m fine with that! My primary goal is to organize my thinking by writing about them. Secondarily I want to expose my thinking to others so they can help me see the flaws in it. I am going to try one or two of these topics over the coming weeks.

I figure that once I have done that, I’ll probably have to stick to safe things like the latest gadgets (DIY drones look like fun) and keep my opinions on more controversial topics to myself! Of course, I’ll need to rename to blog to something like Grown up geek or Tech toys for tech boys. 

TEDActive 2013 – Day 4

Flowers line the grounds of La Quinta Resort

I woke up to another beautiful day here at La Quinta Resort.There are so many flowers on the grounds that you can smell their sweetness as you walk around. Being here would be very enjoyable even without the TEDActive conference. 

The final day of TED is a short one and has generally been a letdown in previous years. So, my expectations for the day were fairly low. Instead, the day started with some interesting talks and ended with some that were genuinely touching, even inspiring.

Jim Flynn, the formulator of the Flynn Effect (which says that IQ tests have risen over time), gave a presentation on cognitive development over the last one hundred years. He showed how thinking during that time has changed from being very concrete and literal to very abstract and hypothetical. Daniel Ogilvie explored from a purely secular perspective why people believe in the afterlife. Daniel Reisel told of his studies on the brains of psychopathic inmates and how helping to develop their amygdalas might help rehabilitate them.

Jared Diamond is one of my favorite authors for his brilliant work Guns, Germ, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Unfortunately, it turns out he is not a very good speaker. He described how growing older in traditional societies compares with modern societies. I came away thinking that the ideas sounded interesting enough that I should buy The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? even if the talk was not so interesting.

Dan Pallotta spoke on the need for charities to be more like businesses. He lamented that if a charity spends much money on attracting top notch talent or advertising to attract donors, the charity is considered to be squandering money. He gave the example of an MBA earning $400K. Why would that person go to work for $84K as the CEO of hunger charity? Instead, he would be better off earning the $400K and donating $100K to charity. Pallotta said that we don’t like paying people well for doing good, but we are fine with people making high salaries doing something bad for society. His point was a good one.

He also said that charitable giving has been unchanged at 2% of GDP for the last 40 years. How are we going to change that without allowing charities to recruit the best people, take risks, advertise, or generate a return on investment? He argued that a low overhead charity raising $2M per year was less desirable than a high overhead one raising $20M. Again, his points were very compelling though he left me wondering how we would be able to tell a legitimate charity from one just squandering money. His points are well worth pondering.

Peter Singer is a utilitarian ethicist of whom I have never been a fan. His views have led him to say things such as if it were solely up to him, he might not allow his mother with Alzheimer’s to live. Similarly, he maintains that since an unborn child does not have preferences or desires, those of the mother hold sway and abortion is permissible. So, I was prepared to be offended when he spoke.

Instead, Singer argued in favor of what he called effective altruism. He gave both anecdotal and logical arguments for donating 10% (or more) of your income to help causes like fighting poverty. While I found some irony in Singer advocating tithing, I came away somewhat disappointed that it was a utilitarian rather than a Christian arguing for taking care of the less fortunate.

Joshua Prager told his story of meeting the man who broke his neck in a car accident that left him partially paralyzed 20 years earlier. It was not a simplistic story of an encounter that made them great friends or brought any easy answers. Instead it was a captivating and heart-breaking story of the messiness of real life, of tragedy and of triumph. 

Orly Wahba is a middle school teacher who told how she started doing acts of kindness to strangers. She turned those actions into a viral video and a movement. I’m often struck by the impact someone like her can have and at the same time disappointed when that person does not cite their Christian faith as their motivation. I guess I can either lament that or go out and do something myself.

Nothing like a nice incline on a bike to clear the brain

After all of the thought provoking talks today and throughout the week, it was refreshing to go for a good head-clearing bike ride.

It was a week of challenging talks, beautiful weather, stimulating conversations, and bike riding. Yes, it was a good week at TEDActive 2013. 

TEDActive 2013 – Day 3

Day 3 of TED was not as mentally challenging as Day 2 was, but there were plenty of interesting talks, some strange ones, an infuriating one, and a couple that really touched my heart.

The interesting talks included one by John McWhorter, another Columbia professor. He explained his view that texting is not the death of writing. Instead, texting is not writing at all, but rather fingered speech. Adam Spencer is an Australian radio host and mathematician who talked compellingly about large prime numbers. Ben Affleck spoke of his work in the Congo and introduced a Congolese string orchestra.

James Lyne, a cyber-security expert told of tracking down some malware developers. He also explained how vulnerable we all are and even showed some telling information he was able to gather about the TED attendees in Long Beach just through their WiFi connection information. Though nothing he said was a big surprise to me, it did make me think about some steps I should take to try and be more secure. His final point was probably the most important—don’t be an easy target.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas (an alias) spoke of his undercover journalism work in Ghana. By going undercover, he had exposed things from government scandals to sex trafficking to prison conditions to the trade in human albino body parts. Because of the danger, he wore a mask through his talk to try and protect his identity. His courage was inspiring.

One strange presentation was that of Liu Bolin. He is a camouflage artist who paints his clothing and himself to blend in with things like store shelves, buildings and even TV studio sets. While the many photos and descriptions where interesting, I kept wondering why he had been doing the same thing for so many years. I guess I am not very good at understanding art! 

One of the strangest talks was by four people, Diana Reiss, Peter Gabriel, Neil Gershenfeld and Vint Cerf. They spoke about implementing an inter-species Internet. I think there are probably a few more important things to put our resources into! That talk was followed by an even stranger one where Eleanor Longden told her story of mental illness and how she had come to terms with the voices in her head. Amazingly, there is an organization, InterVoice for just this issue. I don’t want to belittle her situation, but it did make for a strange progression of talks.

The infuriating talk was by Christopher Ryan on human sexuality. He contended that humans evolved to have multiple partners. He spent lots of time giving his reasons for this. While his research was somewhat interesting, I kept trying to figure out what was his point. If someone shows that we evolved to kill each other, would that make murder right? The host, Chris Anderson, basically asked him that question. Ryan insisted that was not his point, but instead that we should be understanding of people’s promiscuity or at least their desires in that direction. My view is that we want to do all sorts of things we should not do. Blaming those things on evolution doesn’t change that they are wrong.

The first of the two heart-wrenching ones was Hyeonseo Lee's compelling story of her escape from North Korea. She told how later she helped her parents escape as well. The long journey to South Korea seemingly ended unsuccessfully with her parents in jail in Laos and she with no money to get them out. A stranger, however, saw her crying, asked what the problem was, went to the ATM and gave her enough money to free her parents. As someone later said to me, it was a God thing that someone showed up with the money she needed to get her parents out of jail. Indeed, it was hard to not see God’s hand. Her story was one that demanded a standing ovation and brought me to the verge of tears.

Despite the power of her story, it was not one that I could relate to. The next presenter, Shane Koyczan, however hit me much closer to home. He was a spoken word poet and performed his story of being the fat, outcast nerd. He weaved into that the stories of other outcasts. He did a entrancing job of telling those stories and again brought me to my feet and the verge of tears. When I was talking with someone later in the evening about the talk, I said that it had struck a chord with me because I felt like I had experienced what he was describing. The person responded that she had felt similar rejection for different reasons and that probably everyone had similar experiences. She was right. Koyczan had hit a universal chord with his performance.

My evening conversation reinforced that TEDActive is about more than just the TED talks. I managed to exceed my goal of meeting three people. I met two people at lunch, but then met four very interesting people (Kate, Marla, Ken, and Caren) in the evening. The conversations again confirmed the interpersonal value of TEDActive. 

It was another good day at TEDActive. 

TEDActive 2013 – Day 2

Wow. Days like Day 2 at TEDActive 2013 are the reason I come here. The morning was beautiful and then the conversations and sessions started and things got even better.

Over breakfast I had what I think of as a unique to TEDActive conversation. I sat down next to someone who was talking about the great comic book artist Jack Kirby. The man turned out to be on the board of the San Diego Comic Con. He was comparing Stan Lee interviews he had done with a woman from CNN who had also interviewed him. Somehow the conversation moved to US energy policy. The guy next to me was a PhD student in geophysics. I asked him how he would solve the energy problems and he argued that we should give the responsibility to the oil companies because they had the experience and vested interest. I joked that I guess I trusted them more than I did the government, but it was close. The entrepreneur across from me then started talking about the right way to get energy investment. Things went on from there. Definitely not a typical breakfast conversation! 

The talks themselves today were incredible. An indication of how good the talks were today is that speakers like Elon Musk on electric cars, space ships, and solar power and Sergey Brin on Google Glass don’t even make my most interesting talks list. Here are brief descriptions of some of the day’s highlights.

• Alastair Parvin told how architecture is and always has been for the top 1%. His goal is to bring open source architecture to the masses.
• Danny Hillis gave a rather scary talk on the vulnerability of the Internet. He started off by holding up a printed directory from 1982 of all the Internet email addresses. It was about the size of a phone book and I wondered whether I was in it. He recounted how China “accidentally” rerouted all US military traffic through China for a few hours in April of 2012. He thinks the Internet is akin to the financial system where the individual parts all make sense but no one knows how it all interacts. His concern is that pretty much everything now relies on the Internet, including things we might not traditionally think of as using it. He argued for a backup system, a Plan B, in case of an emergency or attack.
• Amanda Palmer described how as a musician she is using people rather than record labels to finance her music. Through Kickstarter, about 25,000 people gave $1.2M. She noted how her last album for a record label sold 25,000 copies and was a failure.While I can’t say as that I care for her music (she later performed), I found her approach to relying on her listeners and fans to be compelling.
• Stewart Brand told about his newest passion, de-extinction. He described the current state of the technology and how they were on the verge of bringing back species like the passenger pigeon from extinction. He spent only a minute on the ethical considerations and possible unintended consequences of de-extinction, but it was a fascinating talk.
• Kate Stone was not a great speaker. She talked about making interactive paper by using electrically conductive ink, touch sensitivity, and wireless transmitters. It sounded interesting, but I was really wishing she would actually show something other than slides of posters that you could supposedly interact with. Then, somewhat clumsily, she started to show some. She was able to use a piece of paper to play sounds on an iPhone as if she were a DJ (which she correctly said she was not). I was left wondering how expensive the technology was, but I figure greeting cards may soon not just play annoying music, but allow you to interact with them.
• Ron Finley is from South Central Los Angeles and is planting food in vacate lots to help improve the eating habits and lives of his family and neighbors. He had some great quotes such as, “Gardening in the city is a defiant act. Plus, you get strawberries,” “If kids grow kale, kids eat kale” and “We are gangsta gardeners.”
• Michael Green is an architect who was pushing the 30-story wood buildings in order to cut down on the carbon footprint of steel and concrete structures in cities.
• Allan Savory gave probably the most controversial talk. He explained how to roll back desertification (the process where land in semi-arid regions is become desert). His claim was that desertification is not caused by so much by climate change or livestock, but by the removal of wandering herds of large animals (like bison in North America). His solution is to use large herds of livestock that are methodically moved from area to area to simulate the original wild herds. He claimed large scale success in doing this and made wild claims about the benefits of doing so. I am a bit skeptical, but wouldn’t it be cool if eating more beef was the answer to global warming!
• There were a number of teenagers making real scientific progress including Jack Andraka (invented a cheap and accurate way to detect pancreatic cancer), Miranda Wang & Jeanny Yao (discovered phthalate eating bacteria) and Taylor Wilson (proposed a new fission reactor design and is postponing college to develop the idea).
• There were also a number of good performances including Yo-yo Performer BLACK (an amazing yo-yo performer), Ji-Hae Park (an incredible violinist), Rich & Tone Talauega (dance choreographers) and Pedrito Martinez Group (a Cuban fusion music group).

All of that, however, did not hold a candle to the best talk of the day by Lawrence Lessig. I have long been big fan of his, but this talk was the best I’ve heard from him. The basic gist is that America is no longer a republic because before the people get to vote, Big Money decides who the candidates will be. He cited some statistics including that 30-70% of the time of a person in Congress is spent raising money. He argued for legislation, similar to what a few states have, that calls for small-dollar elections. This talk got my first standing ovation of the conference. I really can’t do it justice here, so I will let you know when it is posted.

Again, wow. It was an incredible day. I have trouble picturing Day 3 topping that, but you never know!

I wanted to mention that the folks from TED have started posting some of the talks, the first being Sugata Mitra’s TED Prize talk.  It is worth checking out.