Why I enjoy Wednesdays
Wednesdays are a particular enjoyable day for me. There are a hosts of reasons: it’s the middle of the week, and once Wednesday is through the week is almost over, my sweet small group meets on Wednesdays, I occasionally give quizzes/tests on Weds, so I don’t have to teach as much. But there is one thing, one thing that I look forward to every Wednesday, comic books.
Yes, that’s right comic books come out on Wednesday and I like to buy them and read them. Now I know what you are thinking, “Joe, you’re 23, working on a Master’s in Applied Mathematics, reading economic journals by obscure European economists, and you still read comic books!”
To which I would retort, “You bet I do, and you should try one!” Here’s why:
First off based off the super-hero genre alone, seriously millions of dollars have been made in converting comic book heroes into silver screen stars. Who among you hasn’t seen a Spiderman or Batman movie? What about the X-Men trilogy? And of course, the most iconic of all superheroes, Superman? Comic book culture has permeated society and people not only love it, get tattoos of it (I know a fair share of young adults with the Superman ‘S’ emblazoned somewhere on their body), but they also pay for it. People go to see these movies in the theatres because they are those summer block-busters we all know and love and want to see on the big screen because that is how they were made to be seen!
And just like any movie, the source material is always better. The comic books themselves, where some figurative elements of the movie, came are always richer in dialogue, characterization, and something unique to the comic book world, art. Now at this point you may think to yourself, “OK, I’ll watch a two hour movie, you know, just to kick back and relax, but to actually read a comic book, that’s just immature.”
And again, I would be forced to disagree. I would remind you that movies such as 300, V for Vendetta, the soon to be released Wanted, Road to Perdition, and American Splendor are all based off the source material of comic books. Mature movies. (Some mature for content, some mature intellectually). Comic books, or as they are more commonly called in their complete form, graphic novels, appeal to a wide spectrum of readers covering such a broad range of topics including politics (Ex Machina, the story about a super-powered mayor of New York city, or try Marvel’s Civil War, a seven part miniseries that tackles the affect of the government licensing super powered individuals and the heroes that resist this law as a display of patriotism), prejudice (the tagline of the X-Men genre for years has been, ‘heroes in a world that hates and fears them’), sexuality (Y:The Last Man, an amazing 60 issue story that captures one young man’s progression from boyhood to manhood as he lives as the last man on the planet (soon to be the next great trilogy, calling it now)), and sometimes just life (Spiderman has often been known to lament his inability to pay his bills, or make his marriage work, which is one of the reason’s his character has succeeded so much in the media, his relateability!).
So I enjoy Wednesday’s because comic books come on Wednesday. If you’re interested, you know how to get a hold of me.
Grace and peace
The light at the end of the tunnel!
I did it!
I solved the steady state solutions for my thesis. And although not many of you may understand what this means (steady state solutions are the points that attract or repel and are solved by setting all derivatives=0) it is great news for me! I have seriously been working on these for over a month and today while coding in MATLAB, I solved for the last one. (The first four we’re more or less easy to solve for, that last one was tricky, and at one point we we’re afraid that there would be no solution, which is hardly anything to write a thesis on!)
But now they are all solved for!! (I still have a lot of work today, but hey at least this is some major headway!)
In, FHAC news, Drew Gooden was traded from the Cavs for Ben Wallace. And although the trade is for the best in my opinion, I still mourn the loss of a great facial hair asset to the city of Cleveland.
grace and peace
The Rubrics of Relationship
So, since Cf is doing a three week series around dating and since I know this ever-so-popular comment will generate more posts (which I love and crave) and since I am (ever) trying to figure these things out. I decided to post briefly (or maybe extensively, who knows at this point, it’s not like I draft these things) on relationships.
I’ll start off with Valentine’s Day. I started off my Thursday (2/14/08) just like every other Thursday: a crap-early thesis meeting and an hour and a half of equation explanations and derivations. I then spent the remainder of the morning grading tests (I think I watched the Best of Will Ferrell SNL disc, but I can’t recall) . I did some other routine chores and tasks, and then made dinner for a friend.
Now, don’t get too excited, the friend wasn’t a lady. It was a male collegiate friend of mine who struggles with SSA (that is Same Sex Attraction) And I made dinner (which is never too extravagant because, I’m not that much of a cook) and we caught up on life, talked about our various ministries and how they were going, encouraged each other to be men and lead well, laughed, and enjoyed each other’s company.
*Aside: Contrary to what many may think, one of the most potent ways of dealing with struggles in homosexuality isn’t “just finding a girl,” rather it is the acceptance and affirmation of heterosexual men towards the struggler.*
And I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful irony. Valentine’s Day evening and there I was making dinner for a dude. But a dude who needed to talk. A man who needed a friend and affirmation.
And I thought to myself, had I a girlfriend that evening probably wouldn’t of happened. Would I have been free to hang out and make dinner and catch up? And I began to wonder more how being in a relationship affects all other relationships that we have. And I began to observe that many times people don’t do this well.
There’s the classic disappearing act; where the friend starts up a relationship and then in an instant he/she’s gone. But I’ve also noted other dynamics of this disappearance: initiation. For example, I watched this semester as a young woman I know started her first year of college. And she was thriving, initializing hang-out nights, meeting new people, making people feel welcomed and invited wherever she was.
And then she got a boyfriend. She still attended events and was sociable; and to some extent she was still thriving. But she stopped initiating with others, stopped inviting people to hang out after the event was done. And I didn’t quite know what to make of it. From one standpoint, I was excited that she was happy and in a healthy relationship. However, from another vantage point, I mourned the loss of someone who would welcome new people as vigorously and who would invite the uninvited to hang out with her.
Or I consider some ministry or service I am involved in. I have often seen people meet at a particular ministry, initiate a relationship, and then proceed to leave that very ministry where they met. And again, I am happy for them as they live life together, but I can’t help wonder why they had to leave (and I understand the myriad of excuses: we’re too busy, real job, need money, we need “our” time, etc, I just question the validity or wherewithall of those very excuses) a place where initially they we’re both excited to serve at or be a part of. If as a single person you desired to serve or be there, why do you not share that passion as a married/engaged/dating/talking to/courting/going-steady/seeing someone person?
That is why I love and appreciate the Leys. Jacob and Alicia got married over a year ago. And as I have seen them grow into their marriage I have seen them continually invite the uninvited in, initiate fellowship with other people beside themselves, serve together in ministries, love each other deeply, and also love the communities that they are implanted in. They seem to me an exception to the disappearance standard that I too often see in relationships today. (You can view Jacob’s thought at http://jacobley.typepad.com/. )
And they give me hope. Hope that being in a relationship won’t necessarily cause one to “settle down.” Hope that you can find someone who shares your passions and you can in turn serve together. Hope that being bound to someone doesn’t necessitate being unbounded from everyone else.
Grace and peace
Count it corban
I read an amazing book entitled “Theirs is the Kingdom:Celebrating the Gospel in Urban America” by Dr. Robert Lupton.
Here’s an excerpt from it that I find particularly relevant today for reason I won’t go into on the internet.
IT BELONGS TO GOD
corban: an ancient Hebrew practice of dedicating property to God, thus removing it from secula diposition, while still retaining ownership. Literally: itbelongs to God.
It was an ingenious inventio, really. Corban was something like a tax incentive plan conceived by the religious leadership. A donor could make a contract with the church to dedicate certain of his holdings to theLord but still use them for collateral in business dealings. Like most religious schemes, corban fell into abuse and soon took precedence over other more fundamental commands of God. It was on this point that Jesus offered some unwelcome words to the church’s leadership.
“You have a clever way of rejecting God’s law in order to uphold your own teaching,” the Master said. “You teachthat if a person has something he could use to help his father and mother but says ‘this is corban’ (which means it belongs to God) he is excused from helping his father and mother. In this way the teaching you pass on to others cancels out the word of God.” (Mark 7:9-13)
In other words, to commit wealth in any form to God and then refuse to allow its use for those things God commands is sin. Shewd sin. But sin nonetheless.
The practice of corabn has surfaced in various forms throughout church history. It is a sypmton of the struggle of redeemed yet fallen humanity, caught bewtween two worlds. Corban indicates the extent to which religious people have taken control over the kingdom they call God’s.
The church of which we all are apart of has not escpaed this tension. We too are pulled between the instinct for self-preservation and the yearning to spend our security on the intangibles of kindom reality. and being wealthy beyond historic comparison, the church is not immune from the influences of contemporary wisdom. We have learned to invest God’s resources in inflation-proof real estate and protect his options with legal documents. It is hard to imagine how much of the assets of the kingdom are reserved in the endowments, dedicated funds, and and certificates of deposit of the Western church. the Hebrews called it corban. We call it good stewardship.
We endow ministries that serve our needs, taking care to spend only the interest earnings while making the principle available to GM and Xerox for their operating capital. Meanwhile the poor in nearby inner-city churches are scattered for lack of shepherding, because their pastors must work two jobs to survive. This is corban.
We build magnificent holy places for our weekly worship.But when these houses that we call god’s are for our exclusive feeding while those without daily bread remain outside, this is corban. When those who have no place to lay their head are excluded from what we call God’s sanctuary, it is corban. It is corban when we dam up the flow of the Lord’s resources against his kingdom’s future needs, when these resources are required to provide employment and shelter for the very ones he affectionately calls “the least of these.”
The church is the only institution which, without irresponsibility, can expend all its resources on great and lavish outbursts of compassion. It is ordained to give itself away, yet without loss. The church, above all earthly symbols, bears the responsibility for declaring the outporing of resources, the utter dependability of God. To preserve its life is to lose it.
But Master, we have no money left to feed the hungry or clothe the naked or shelter the homeless. Our benevolence fund is completely used up. the restricted funds? Well, we want to be responsible stewards. Of course, all of it is really yours. It is corban
Good word Dr. Lupton.
Grace and peace
Facial Hair Awareness Campaign: Drew Gooden
I think we’re doing something right here at the FHAC. More and more I see big names and little names a like rocking the facial hair. (And Chris, I do support facial hair of all types, but have been focusing primarily on the beards of late, sooner or later, I will do a tribute to other forms of facial hair!)
Anyways, today we focus on Clevend Cavalier’s own Drew Gooden. Now at first Gooden was lost within a see of crazy hair styles…
He tried the duckbill on the back of his neck to set himself apart and help proclaim his greatness as a professional athlete, but it just didn’t work for him:
Alas (like all other Ohio sports) that season (although it was great) ended in defeat. But now, we see gooden who once barely supported a trace amount of facial hair, rock the beard!!
Could this beard rocket the Cavalier’s to a Championship? Perhaps a statistical review of Gooden’s play pre-beard and post-beard is necessary to understand the affect that facial hair has upon his gameplay (My hypothesis is that it has improved it.)
Regarless, thank you Drew Gooden for furthering the FHAC and reminding us that beards are both athletic and fashionable. Best of luck to the Cavs this season and may your gameplay be as great as the beards you sport!
Grace and Peace
the thesis blues
I have done an amazing job of balancing grad school and a rather large social network and social life.
Until now.
Now with graduation impending and due dates actualized I find myself in the math department at 6pm. I’ve been in and out of this building since 8:30 in the morning. And I have been working my tail off.
And I plan on working at a coffee shop once I’m done with my Cf small group tonight. And the rub of thesis work is that its tedious. You can’t just sit down for a day and pump it out like an undergraduate paper. You work tediously for an hour or two or three, then in a surreal daze you wander away from your work since your brain can no longer function.
In fact I’m not even sure why I’m writing this post. Am I belaboring the hard workings of graduate school? Did I have an overall message moore than the primitive, “thesis hard!” I don’t know. I’ve been reduced to baser functions all I want to do is eat a subway club or lay down and watch something that will numb my mind.
At least I’m getting work done. For a more comical look at grad school check out “Piled Higher and Deeper Comics” at http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=971
I have to go do something mindless for an hour and refresh my head…
grace and peace
Mission Year (where I’ll be heading)
I was actually planning on delaying this post until I had more details figured out, but I have been encouraged by Mission Year staff to get rolling with the whole MY process.
So, if you haven’t heard by now, upon graduation from the University of Akron, I will spend the summer working/having fun/hanging out and then in August of 2008 I will be joining Mission Year for, well, a year.
The following is my support letter that I will be sending to, well, everyone. It describes a little bit of what is going on, why, and how people can get involved and all that jazz!
Enjoy:
Dear Friend,
“Applied mathematics? Well, what are you going to do with that when you graduate?” I have heard this question for about three years as I have diligently worked on finishing my degree at the University of Akron, and it is with great excitement and anticipation that I can finally answer that question with some degree of clarity: work with the poor in the inner city. Which prompts the question, “How does applied mathematics relate to urban poverty?” Well it doesn’t, directly.
But permit me to tell you what else I learned throughout my five year excursion at Akron. I learned about international development as I worked on my thesis on how poor regions economically grow. I learned about “The Cost of Discipleship” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and what it truly means to follow Christ as I lead CF Bible studies. I learned about God’s heart for the poor and down-trodden as I served in Reach Akron week after week. I learned what it truly means to love your neighbor as I lived in one of the poorer areas of Akron and actually befriended and loved my neighbors. And I began to understand the difference between empirically analyzing poverty and actually helping the poor.
And that’s where Mission Year fits in. Mission Year is a year long urban ministry experience that collaborates with both secular services (halfway houses, prisons, high schools) and local churches and ministries in order to effectively serve and love their immediate community. (I’m not entirely sure what city yet, more than likely Philly or Chicago!)
I could go on and on here. I could tell you of my aspirations in urban/international development. I could tell you about my heart for missions. I could… you get the point. But I can’t here. But I could over a cup of coffee (or three or four cups). So at your convenience, it would be my delight to meet with you sometime soon to share my thoughts, vision, heart, dreams, passions, etc.
However I must tell you of the logistics here. Mission Year asks me to raise $12,000 ($1000/month) of support for the year to cover the cost of living, eating, transportation, health insurance, and training during my one-year commitment to ministry in the city. And strangely I feel comfortable asking you for your help with this. Because I know how it edifies the church. Because you’ve already supported me in my life thus far. Because, many of you have been waiting for this letter from me for quite some time! So, you can send your tax-deductible contributions, made payable to Mission Year to P.O. Box 17628, Atlanta, GA 30316. Please make sure to designate your donation toward my support by writing my Account Fund # (08-0012) on the memo line of the check. Mission Year will send a receipt for each gift given. Do not write my name anywhere on the check, as this may negate the tax deductibility of your donation.
And of course, the money isn’t the end all. I need you. I need your support through prayers. I need your encouraging facebook messages and posts on my blog (which I will update regularly). I need you to look nostalgically at pictures of me and pray. Pray for my growth, energy, and service, but more so pray for the city I end up in and the people there.
It is with the deepest devotion of friendship and the richest ties of fellowship that I ask your support and prayers.
In Him Who Is Able,
Joe Tucker
Grace and Peace
Yeah, so that’s the letter! Mission Year also does a lot of stuff online and I will update a blog that they operate as well as this one. (So a lot of copying and pasting, although I will keep serious posts like the FHAC and pure randomness primarily on this site). The link to that blog is http://missionyear.org/blog/josephtucker
Grace and peace
What I have spent the afternoon doing to no avail
function [A,INTER,IFLAG]= LRGE(A,n)
%
%A is output LR factorization
%INTER an array for recording row changes
%IFLAG is a singularity flag
%
%a is the original matrix
%n is the size of A
tol=2e-38;
S=zeros(n,1);
INTER=zeros(n,1);
for i=1:n
INTER(i)=i;
S(i)=max(abs(A(i,:)));
if (S(i)<tol)
IFLAG=1;
break
else
IFLAG=0;
S(i)=1/S(i);
end
end
if (IFLAG==0)
for k=1:n-1
%Row Interchange
m=0;
for i=k:n
if (abs(S(i)*A(i,k))>m)
m=S(i)*A(i,k);
L=i;
end
INTER(k)=L;
INTER(L)=k;
end
if (m<tol)
IFLAG=1;
break
else
for j=1:n
t=A(k,j);
A(k,j)=A(L,j);
A(L,j)=t;
end
%Gaussian Elimination
for i=k+1:n
A(i,k)=A(i,k)/A(k,k);
for j=k+1:n
A(i,j)=A(i,j)-A(i,k)*A(k,j);
end
end
end
end
end
if (A(n,n)<tol)
IFLAG=1;
else
IFLAG=0;
end
Not that many of you even understand MATLAB or care that much. I just felt like posting the piece of code that has been annoying from 1pm to 4:30 pm (now)
Alas, I’ll figure it out…eventually.
Grace and peace
to the church in…(part 2)
Church. Ekklesia. I’ve still been thinking about it a lot. (Even though the last couple of days have been packed with Superbowl, computer codes, sister’s birthday, homework grading, bill paying, and the like.)
Ekklesia literally means the called out ones. It was a political term corresponding to representatives to come forth. The elected ones in a sense. So when Paul initializes all his letters with “to the ekklesia,” what is he saying?
To the called out ones in Thessalonica. To the set apart Corinthians. To the elected ones in Galatia.
It’s almost more of a reminder of where we stand with God, then where we stand physically. I think it easy for us to assume today that these letters were addressed to some physical building church, but in all truthhood, the letters were sent to a group of individuals, who were set apart, called out, elected by God. It was a term that reminded the recipient of the letter, where they stood spiritually.
And it’s interesting to check out Philippians and Ephesians, which don’t use the word “church,” but rather say:
To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:1)
To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons (Philippians 1:1)
So. What does this mean? Is this even remotely relevant or just another exercise in procrastination for me?(And for the record I have had an uber-productive day, got some code done and two hw proofs for ANA II done, as well as a good night at Reach Akron!!)
I think it means a paradigm shift in the way I (you/we) think about “church.” I’m still working on how to quantify that paradigm shift (which is why I put my thoughts (or attempt to) on this blog).
Hmmm. You the reader can now note that I have stared at the screen for about 15 minutes while feeling the effects of my espresso charged coffee courtesy of Caribou, pondering what to write and how to express myself. And the conclusion I have come to in that time frame has been to start backwards. So, what is Paul not saying???
Paul is not talking about a physical building. He is not writing to a casual assembly of people. He uses a word that stresses both calling and election.
Relevance?—> Hmmm—> (that hmmm is the sound of me thinking)—>
A called out voice. That is who Paul writes to. The living representation of Christ. Those who are elected to proclaim His existance, love, hope, and truth.
is this true of “church” today?
more soon…
grace and peace
Facial Hair Awareness Campaign: Beard T-shirts & Febu-Hairy
So as I was checking facebook, I found an add for an amazing T-shirt (which I have no intention of ever buying, but may possibly accept as a gift sometime in the future…)
Which of course started me on a search to find more Shirts that encourage facial hair. Here are some of my favorites:
And of course, i classic New York style:
So, I’d encourage anyone to wear these shorts and support beards and facial hair publically. In the campaign to promote the attrativeness of facial hair, every step is important including day-to-day fashion.
Plus, the first beard pun is amazing (they grow on you…)
Also, Febu-Hairy starts today. So fella’s grow out your beards for the month of Febu-Hairy. Updates will be posted on here (hopefully…)
Grace and peace
