Unblogged Ideas

In my blogging absence the last couple of months, there were numerous things that could have been blogged about.  This raises the tree-falling-in-a-forest question: if you don't blog about an idea, did you really have it? This may not be as crazy as it sounds.  Indulge me for a moment.

Ideas come in degrees.  Everyone's favorite skeptic (or sceptic, as the Brits like to spell it--which is a little too close to the tanks I used to install working on a crew one summer in high school), David Hume, recognized the need to distinguish between impressions and ideas.  For him, impressions were just the raw feels delivered by our senses, and ideas were the after-images that remain in our consciousness when we think about them.  I actually prefer Kant's understanding of the matter in that the contents of our consciousness get shaped by our minds (my former students will remember the Play-Doh Fun Factory analogy here).

I've come to think as blogging as a Kantian process of sorts.  The act of writing something out makes the idea take shape in my mind.  Even sometimes when I've been mulling something over for awhile, it is changed considerably when I take the time to write it into a paragraph.  For instance, this post is not at all what I thought it was going to be when I sat down to write it.  Writing happens in fits and starts for me.  There is generous use of the delete key and constant editing and shaping.  New thoughts come when I read over something written down.  So who knows what the "ideas" that I've had the last couple of months would have become?  Even if I were to write a blog entry on them now, I'm sure they would be different than if they were written at the time.  Let's leave it to the metaphysicians to decide their ontological status.  I'll content myself with listing a few of those ideas that never were, children never conceived, falling trees that made no sound.  In no particular order:

1. How my life has changed now that it revolves around an iPad
2. Watching White Collar on Netflix
3. Son #2 beating me in ping pong for the first time
4. Our culture's absurd rhetoric about gun rights
5. A trip to Seattle, complete with botched flight connections
6. The Crossfit competition at Bethel
7. Reading The Chosen for the third time
8. The evolution of my thinking on evolution
9. My good wife and her tolerance of all the testosterone around her
10. Battling squirrels at the bird feeder

No sense pining for what would have been.  We set our faces to the future and march boldly into that great unknown, hoping to shape it in these pages in ways that lend a modicum of understanding.

Blog Post #200

According to the stats that this free blogging platform provides, this is my 200th published post.  I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to redesign the look of the site (hopefully making it more readable) and to reminisce a bit...

It all began in April of 2007 with this post:  In the beginning.  I blogged pretty regularly through the summer of 2007--mostly philosophical meanderings.  Blogging became a pretty significant part of my mental landscape, and I guess that is what led to me ending the experiment in September once school started up again.  In my 87th post on the 5th of September I whined a bit about how it takes too much time and mental energy to always be thinking about what to blog that day (full post here).  But then I gave some positives I saw about blogging.  They were:

1. I love the medium of language. Others paint or play music or blend media together in movies or what have you; I like straight language. It is remarkable to me that a certain pattern of ink splotches on a page, illuminated pixels on a screen, or vibrations through the air can be such powerful communication tools.
2. Blogging promotes a reflective lifestyle. Most all life forms experience the world (I'm not sure about bacteria...); I'd like to think that we humans are unique among creatures (at least those on earth) in that we are capable of reflection and the organization of our experience. Writing about our experiences is a great way of expressing our humanity.
3. Blogging promotes an interactive lifestyle. I suspect most all bloggers refer consistently to postings in other blogs. The nature of the web has grown this aspect exponentially over things like letters to the editor in a magazine, and I see it as a positive dimension.
4. It feels so hip to mention that you blog.

I started back up on a more limited basis in March of 2008.  According to the aforementioned stats, my most popular posting of all time (in terms of page views) occurred then.  As of this writing, it has been viewed 1428 times--evidently primarily by robotic entities of some sort that leave anonymous messages about websites selling various enhancement pharmaceuticals (if you know what I mean).  I can't figure out why it is so wildly popular among that set.  I quote the Five Man Electrical Band classic song, "Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign."  Perhaps that is it.  We'll see if referring to it again here generates the same thing.

After a couple of months I petered out again--this time for quite awhile: 3 years.  It was May of 2011 that I started up again with a post about blogging eternal security (once a blogger, always a blogger?  Was I just backslidden for those three years??).

Since then I've been going fairly regularly at the one-or-two-posts-per-week rate.  Occasionally I'll miss a couple of weeks when something has come up.  But I don't really feel too bad about that anymore.

I gave a post here about why I write.  Essentially it is because that is how I work things out in my mind.  Many of the posts that generate feedback are on these kinds of posts where I try to tell it like I see it.  Of course many of the posts are just goofy things, and probably too much of what goes on here is shameless self-promotion.

I've always been a data guy, tracking all kinds of things, and for bloggers the main data is how many people are reading what you write.  It appears as though I've developed a somewhat loyal following.  Most posts get around 100 views these days (except when I give my "New Book Update" posts--those are lucky to get 40 views).  Here are the most popular of all time (though I think Blogger only started keeping track of page views since I started back up in 2011):

1. The previously mentioned: Signs, signs, Everywhere a Sign (1428)
2. My eulogy to Gene Carpenter: Eugene Carpenter (1943-2012) (646)
3. A lot of recent traffic due to my mention of angels and shepherds:  Christmas in June? (549)
4. On biblical interpretation:  We should all mean what Olson means... (545)
5. My soccer recap:  Champions league fun (442)
6. Crossfit bragging:  Pilot Crossfit Burpee Champ (417)
7. End of TV:  Wireless and Cableless (343)
8. End of Cornerstone:  Cornerstone R.I.P (311)
9. A new profession:  Philosopher Kings (or at least consultants) (235)
10. More on biblical interpretation:  It's not that simple (sorry) (219)

It's pretty tough to find a common theme in these.  Most of them got re-blogged or re-posted by people from Facebook.  I enjoy hearing from people out there who read.  I'm sure there's some fancy way to track that, but I have to rely on comments to know who you are.

So, thank you for the platform.  I'm open to suggestions for making this better.  200 down.  How many to go??

Speed Blogging

I have several ideas of things to blog about in the future.  A couple of them are:  my recent viewing of the movies Argo and Skyfall; and I'd like to write one called, "Oh for Three at the BMV" about some of my recent frustrations with bureaucracy.  But writing those is going to take some time.  This week I'm kind of short on time.  So I'm going to fall back on a variation of an old trick: when you run out of things to write about, write about the fact that you don't have anything to write about.  I guess this version would be: when you don't have time to write about something interesting, write out quickly that you don't have time to write about anything interesting.  I'm also going for a record: how many sentences in a paragraph can use a colon?

In my former life as a blogger (which is somewhat distinct from current life as an occasional blogger), I had a weekly feature called "Tuesday's Blog on Blogging".  It was an attempt to think a bit about this medium that was then exploding onto the scene.  It gave rise to one of my favorite posts, when blogging imitates real life (or is it when real life imitates blogging?).  And it was influential in giving rise to this series on the Philosophy of Blogging by Derry Prenkert (one of Elkhart County's most popular bloggers--I'm assuming).

If you're interested in more up-to-date blogging information, this post from the Unequally Yoked blog has some helpful advice (and some good blogging cartoons).

If I can successfully disentangle myself from the red tape that hinders and so easily entangles, I'll be back with something more interesting.

Blogging Eternal Security

It has been almost two years since I was a blogger.  Sometime after I stopped, I saw Derry Prenkert and he informed me that he is a blogging Calvinist: If you're really a blogger, you'll persevere to the end; if you fall away, you were never really a blogger to begin with.

Well, we'll see how that theology plays out.  I'm considering getting back into.  I'm sure my faithful followers (both of them) have moved on to other things.  The thing that I got tired of was going through the whole day filtering all my experience through the grid of "how could I turn this into a blog post?"  I don't want to do that again, but may use this from time to time to chronicle some part of my thoughts.

Stump Speeches has a new awesome, inc. template.  I'm going to put some updated pics on the sidebar.  And I'll try to see what other improvements for blogging have happened in the last two years.  I'd be happy to take suggestions.

My Blogging Summer

This is my 87th blogging entry (though there are a handful of those still in unpublished draft version), reaching back to April 27th with this post. With the passing of Labor Day, it feels like the summer is officially over, and as I reflect on the themes in my life during this period, blogging is definitely one of the noteworthy ones.

But now it is time to take stock of the priorities for the fall semester, and I'm afraid that blogging is not going to be very high on the list. I have thoroughly enjoyed it for a season, and am not going to completely remove myself from the blogosphere. But I'm not going to be very regular at it for the immediate future. There are too many other demands on my time right now and I need to be a good steward in that area of life.

I've discovered that blogging well is pretty significant commitment. It is not merely the time to write things down, but there is the time spent reading other blogs, and (perhaps more significantly) the mental commitment to blogging in the sense that it is one of the projects that never ends and competes with the other things in life.

Lest I end on a downer, I'd like to note the things about blogging that I see as positive:

1. I love the medium of language. Others paint or play music or blend media together in movies or what have you; I like straight language. It is remarkable to me that a certain pattern of ink splotches on a page, illuminated pixels on a screen, or vibrations through the air can be such powerful communication tools.
2. Blogging promotes a reflective lifestyle. Most all life forms experience the world (I'm not sure about bacteria...); I'd like to think that we humans are unique among creatures (at least those on earth) in that we are capable of reflection and the organization of our experience. Writing about our experiences is a great way of expressing our humanity.
3. Blogging promotes an interactive lifestyle. I suspect most all bloggers refer consistently to postings in other blogs. The nature of the web has grown this aspect exponentially over things like letters to the editor in a magazine, and I see it as a positive dimension.
4. It feels so hip to mention that you blog.

I have appreciated very much the feedback I've received. Perhaps I'll see you again next summer...

Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

It's Tuesday again. That means we step back from what we're doing here in Blogopolis and reflect on it.

Two weeks ago today the dialogue I posted (here) received lots of traffic and positive comments (more off the official site than on). Several of these insinuated that it was a nice piece of creative writing--probably conditioned to think in such ways from some familiarity with the genre over on ABUNCHALIES. However, the only accolades I should receive for the posting should fall along the following lines: "Your typing is very accurate." or "You really transcribed well!" For in truth, the dialogue was almost entirely exactly as it took place in real life. This might suggest one of a couple of things:

1. The Stimp household sounds like a lot of fun.
2. The best blog postings are really shows about nothing.

There have been several times since that posting that something very normal happens and one of us (in our best George Costanza accent) says, "There's a blog." I suppose that would get pretty old after a while.

I read about an Arabic guy out east somewhere who was arrested as a terrorist suspect; he was innocent, but to continue proving his innocence he has started logging everything that he does for the public to see. He keeps a gps on him transmitting to his website so you can always know where he is, he logs all of his financial transactions, etc. This is interesting for about 2 minutes.

In graduate school in an ethics class I remember a discussion about virtual reality machines and whether people would choose to hook themselves up completely to an alternative reality if given the chance (yes, philosophy graduate students really talk about such things). I argued that many would--after all, that's what TV and the lottery is to some extent--but only if it gave them a significantly different life than they currently had. The point was that people would prefer "real" life to virtual life if the quality of those lives was equal.

I guess the relevant point here is that blogging about nothing might be cute and funny once in a while, but no one really wants a steady diet of your normal life. Just give us the good stuff.

Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

A conversation between two sitting at the table and one in the adjacent room (only the names have been changed to protect the innocent):

Mr. Stimp: Do you have any ideas for my Tuesday's Blog on Blogging?

Stimp Jr: What is your Blog on Blogging about?

Mr. Stimp: It is where I write a blog entry about writing blogs. It is my most popular posting of the week, but I'm not sure what else to say about it.

Stimp Jr: Just say you don't know what else to say about it.

Mr. Stimp: I already did that once.

Mrs. Stimp: [overhearing, laughs from other room]

Mr. Stimp: [to other room]: What do you think?

Mrs. Stimp: I think it's funny.

Mr. Stimp: Can I quote you on that?

Mrs. Stimp: Yes.

Mr. Stimp: Are you serious?

Mrs. Stimp: Yes... but why would you want to?

Mr. Stimp: Because that would be funny.

Mrs. Stimp: I don't understand why anyone would want to read that I think it's funny or that I washed the car today or that I did anything else today. Why do we just put boring things out there for everyone to read? Seriously, what is the point?

Mr. Stimp: Ummm.... you should read Derry's Philosophy of Blogging. It has five parts. It's really quite good.

Mrs. Stimp: I don't have time to read Derry's five part philosophy of blogging. I have to go put the laundry away. [exits]

Mr. Stimp: This is going to make a cool blog entry for today.

Stimp Jr: Yah. Cool. I'm going to go take a shower. Can you cut my hair?

[Some minutes pass. Mr. and Mrs. Stimp meet at the bottom of the stairs.]

Mrs. Stimp: So I was thinking while putting the laundry away that maybe conceptual, academic types are more into blogging, because they spend their day immersing themselves in the realm of ideas and reading lots of words. But for someone like me who is busy doing things, if I'm going to make the effort to sit down and read something, I'd like for there to be some substance.

Mr. Stimp: Yes. I think you're right.

Mrs. Stimp: Do you know what I mean? I don't want to make the time to read a blog and then just hear that someone washed his dog today.

Mr. Stimp: This is great. I need to go downstairs and type it before I forget it.

Mrs. Stimp: I reserve the right to edit or veto.

Mr. Stimp: OK. You'll come out looking like the sane one.

Mrs. Stimp: I'd better because I might be the only one.

Stimp Jr: [from upstairs]: Dad, I'm ready for you to cut my hair.

Mr. Stimp: OK, just a minute, I need to go write my blog.

Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

So my plea for a carefully articulated philosophy of blogging has been heard! There's a very nice series going on over on Derry Prenkert's blog about this topic, beginning with this one. I expect that in the future, serious philosophy departments around the country will have specialists in the philosophy of blogging who point back to the Prenkert Series as the seminal work in the field. Seriously, it is worthwhile for both readers and writers of blogs to ponder what it is they're doing and why they're doing it.

But then, you probably know all about that series already, because it appears that nearly everyone who reads this blog is somehow connected to Derry's. It seems to be the case that Derry is a kind of godfather of blogging related to the web of linked sites in which we live and move and have our digital being: a good word from him and you'll get visitors; his shunning of your site would be its death knell. I appreciate the chance to ride his blogging coat tails.


Interesting name, Derry... the only other I know of is the guitar player and lead singer of my favorite band of all time: The Choir. His name is Derry Daugherty. I think his real name is Derald. Unfortunate name, Derald...

tuesday's blog on blogging

At some point, you run out of things to say on some topics...

Tuesday's Blog about Blogging

Communication 101 drills into you that the first rule in communicating is to know your audience. Blogging by its very nature renders that almost impossible. I tried to do something about that.

Last week's blog about the blogging process yielded six people who revealed themselves from behind the mask of anonymity. How does that affect things? If I know who is out there, am I no longer blogging and now essentially writing letters to them?

I really want to be hip and with the times (though by using such a locution I probably render myself unfit for membership in the club), but I still would like to see a carefully articulated philosophy of blogging.

Tuesday's Blog on Blogging: Show Thyself

So during my hiatus from blogging over the last week and a half (or has it been longer?) I was in a couple of places where, rather unexpectedly, some people would come up to me and say, "Hey, I enjoy reading your blog." It got me wondering who all is out there. My readership fluctuates from about 15 to 40 readers per day (of unique visitors). Some of those are the very random "5 second stop by" variety who stumble onto Stump Speeches by scrolling through blogs on Blogspot. But many of them appear to be regular readers from places like New Jersey, Hawaii, Atlanta, Texas, and British Columbia. Who are you people?

I realize that one of the attractions of blogging is the anonymity that goes along with it. But I'd like to know who you are. If you are a regular reader (i.e., you stop by at least once per week), I'd appreciate you showing yourself. Perhaps you don't want to leave a comment to this post where everyone else can see you. Then you could send me an email at jstump46544@hotmail.com. If even that somehow ruins things for you (the way that, say, TV shows are ruined when the creative tension between two long-time characters is dispelled when they get hooked up), at least leave an anonymous comment as to why bloggees (is that a new word?) should not be coerced into exposing themselves.

Easing and Blogging

Well, I'm back from 2 weeks of vacation just in time to jet off to Portland, Oregon tomorrow for the big denominational conference. It has been nice to have some time away from the office and do some exciting things. My writing and blogging rhythm has been knocked out of sync, though.

I suppose I'm at a crossroads where I need to decide whether to double down and ingrain the discipline of blogging deep into my DNA, or whether I say, "that was a fun season" and merge back into the analog world.

By the time I get back from Portland, I feel like the summer is gone... it will be time to go hammer down getting ready for a new school year.

Tuesday's Blog about Blogging

I'm up late, so the body clock doesn't know it's Tuesday yet, but technically it is. So here is the Tuesday post:

One of the virtues of blogging is that it forces you to reflect on life a bit. Among you regular bloggers, how often do you think throughout the day, "I can write about this in my blog"? It think it is a positive thing to have to systematize your experiences through the process of writing.

However, there is a downside to this as well. I have an uncle who used to do a lot of world traveling with his wife. I remember one time asking him if he had some pictures of these places, and he said he no longer takes any pictures, because picture taking got in the way of experiencing the moment.

I suppose there is something to that for blogging too. Does knowing that you're going to have to write about life get in the way of experiencing life?

Rarely (but occasionally) is there unadulterated good.

Tuesday's Blog about Blogging

In the analysis of my blog traffic by statcounter, it tracks the last 500 page loads. Of these, about half have gone directly to this page. Then, there are the links out there from which people find this blog. Of these, my Facebook Profile page narrowly leads the way over the links on the blog of the very hip Derry Prenkert . Holding a solid third (not that it's a competition) is the blog of one of the very few successful youth ministers who became successful deans: Terry Linhart .

Then there are a couple of other bloggers out there giving the occasional electronic shout out to Stump Speeches: Bob Carder is an old district board buddy now involved in church planting out in the plains somewhere. Find his blog here. And Nate Loucks--my star epistemology student--directs a few folks here from his xanga site.

Today I'm trying to return some love. I can't help wondering if the first people who wrote books on dinosaur skins or chiseled them on rocks passed them around to each other and said, "I'll read yours if you'll read mine."

The web is a wild, wonderful place.

Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

Here continues my public reflections on the process of reflecting publicly. I'm settling into the rhythm of posting almost every day. I feel like the Israelites going out onto the desert sand every morning to find some manna. The thrill of seeing it the first few mornings probably wore off after a while. Then it became work.

Some must have been thinking, "God, if you're going to miraculously make manna appear, why can't you just make it appear in our cupboards?" It would be any harder for him, would it? And it would save us a lot of work! Evidently that's not God's style.

Blogging, then, becomes the metaphor for manna collection, which is the graphic reality of God's decision to work with us--not to work for us. And then again, the benefit of blogging is primarily for the blogger--not for the bloggee.

It's easy to read other people's interesting thoughts, good ideas, profound insights; but that rarely does much for you. Having to work through it yourself, putting your own hiney on the line--there's where the benefit lies (or is it lays... pretty sure it's lies).

Of course there's the continuing irony that if there weren't a few people out there actually reading the stuff, then it wouldn't really be blogging... it would just be keeping a diary. Thanks to the readers who keep us honest.

Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

The following was submitted via handheld email device.

----- Original Message -----
From: Stump, James
To: Stump, James
Sent: Mon Jun 04 10:13:24 2007
Subject: Tuesday's Blog on Blogging

So I keep getting sucked further into this electronic universe. I now no longer trust the Feedburner Stats, but have this new counter on the side that keeps track of unique visits (I promise I'm not just doing them all myself). I also have a map that should start generating a list of where people are coming from. I saw this on another blog and thought it pretty cool. I've also gotten an account on Technorati that helps to manage all this stuff. I fear that I could spend hours doing this sort of thing. Just implant a chip in brain!

I guess I'm pretty results oriented. I've kept a journal for many years, writing about similar stuff that no one but myself ever read. I see a lot of value in doing that as a spiritual discipline. So I continue to feel that if I'm blogging in a forest and no one is there to hear the tree fall, I can easily go back to journaling off-line and that part of the merit of blogging won't change. But now there is increased accountability in doing it if there are people out there watching. And it is fun to see that someone actually posted a comment, or that someone in Switzerland visited the site (maybe it was just an automatic search engine... but it is still cool that it was from Switzerland!).

So whereas the internet's first stage was a move toward our entertainment becoming very private (no one sees what I'm doing or looking at), I think this is a pretty health development now in that there is a new openness and accountabilty that is fostered through blogging.

Tuesday's Blog about Blogging

So I have down somewhere on my sidebar a blurb about the book Chad Meister and I are writing. I've been using this blog to start a groundswell of support that will launch the book onto the best seller list. LOL. (Aside: that's the first time I've ever written "LOL" in an electronic medium; I'm not sure if the context or syntax is entirely correct. Also I feel a little bit deceptive in that I wasn't actually laughing out loud--more like chuckling to myself. But I didn't think anyone would know what CTM would mean.)

Actually, I've been using this blog as a sort of propaedeutic to writing the book. In the evenings when I work on the book, I prime the pump of the writing by putting words down in this blog. It is interesting to me that writing anything can help the process of writing well. This is one of the positive effects of blogging even if no one is listening.

Last Tuesday when I wrote a kind of whining blog (maybe this will become a Tuesday Tradition competing with Terry's Tuesday Travel Tips here?!) wondering about the merits of blogging, two apparently faithful readers responded with encouraging comments. I followed the links to their own blogs where they were kind enough to mention Stump Speeches by name. This advertising has resulted in my Feedburner Stats yielding the following: I've gone from 2 subscribers down to 0 subscribers; and from 3 live hits in 21.5 hours down to 1 hit in the past 25 hours. Ouch! Don't put those guys in charge of your ad campaign!!

To be fair, I've had more comments this week than the others. But the moral of the story is that whether or not anyone reads this, it is getting the writing juices flowing. If that's all that comes, then it will have been worthwhile. I'm signing off to edit chapter seven.

If PowerPoint makes you stupid, what does blogging do?

I just finished leading a seminar on using PowerPoint for some faculty. I gave the qualifier at the beginning that I'm very sympathetic to the charges going around a couple of years ago that PowerPoint makes you stupid. There was an article in the New York Times with that title. The claim is basically that the way PP is used by most, it becomes a dumbing down of complex issues into lists of bullet points. The cognitive style of PP does not lend itself to critical thinking. So, I tried to steer people into what I think are more legitimate uses of the program--namely showing pictures and giving quotations.

I wonder what the cognitive style of blogging is... How is this training us to think and interact? The threaded discussions that appear on Facebook, etc., are interesting in that they provide a forum for you to think about something before saying it--as opposed to the classroom discussion where I have to be more impromptu and off the cuff. I like that. (Of course there is a lot of off-the-cuff threaded discussion, but the possibility is there for it to be more reflective.)

Blogging, however, is more like a monologue. It is like making speeches or writing essays. It can certainly be used to sharpen one's own thought. But as far as impacting others, I'm not confident that there are many bloggers who are going to change the world. According to my Feedburner Stats, there have been three hits on my blog in the last 21.5 hours. I assume that means there have been three people who have actually made it to the site. That's not exactly a crowd.

So if it were this difficult thing to get "published", then only the strong survive and everyone who wants to read goes to the same thing. Now getting "published" on the web is as easy as writing a letter. Supply and demand. Given the glut of blog supply, there's not much demand.

It seems, then, that the benefit of writing this is primarily for myself. Why put it on the web, then? Hmmm...

In the beginning...

"Words, words, words" -- Hamlet

"In the beginning was the Word" -- Apostle John

The proliferation of blogs seems to be saying something similar to Andy Warhol's Mona Lisa -- what is the point of a masterpiece if it can be reproduced ad infinitum? The explosion of words has rendered them almost meaningless. Who can hope to say anything worth saying? Who would read it? Perhaps it is enough that these words exist in cyberspace as electronic blips on a server somewhere. Are they ideas in the mind of a silicon god?

And yet write we must. There is something essentially human about keeping a written record of our thoughts. So begins my blogging journey...