Steven Foote

Placing Blame and Taking Responsibility

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Like water, it is natural for us to seek out the path of least resistance. The world is in turmoil around us. Possibly every person in the world has been affected by the upheaval caused by the global pandemic. Economies are crashing, communities are crumbling, faith is faltering, and nature seems to be rejecting our species outright in the form of storms, fires, floods, and earthquakes. Beyond that, we are rejecting each other. International borders are closing. We are afraid of each other. Peaceful protests seek justice, while violent mobs destroy justice.

In the face of all of this, 2020 is an election year in the United States. American politics have been divisive as long as there have been American politics, but this year seems especially troubling. As I have pondered my options, as a voter, appalled at the dearth, I have come to a disappointing, but heartening realization. It is natural for us to seek out the path of least resistance, and when the world is in turmoil, the path of least resistance is to place blame. Candidates blame each other, other countries, the inefficiencies of the system. Citizens blame their elected leaders. We blame our circumstances, our bad luck, our parents, neighbors, co-workers, the moron in front of us in traffic, anyone or anything.

There is an irony in placing blame: doing so does not change our circumstances, but it often does change our attitude for the worse. When we place blame, even when that blame is rightly placed, we give up our power to act. When I say “it’s his fault”, my subtext is “I am powerless to change my situation.” It is odd, indeed, that we are so quick to place blame and make ourselves weak.

The converse of this realization is as encouraging as our inclination to place blame is depressing. Taking responsibility augments our power and ability. More powerfully, perhaps, is that taking responsibility is not an admission of guilt or wrong-doing. Though I have not spilled a bowl of cereal in years, since becoming a parent I have cleaned enough soggy cereal off of counters, floors, walls (ceilings?) to fill a small swimming pool. By taking responsibility, I am able to make our home a better, less sticky place.

This is certainly a thorny issue, and I don’t intend to suggest that the ends of the law should not be met, or that justice should not be served. However, in cases like a global pandemic or natural disasters, there is not always a clear person, group, or even nation, on which blame can appropriately be placed. And even if there were, the act of placing blame does not change the situation. But taking responsibility, regardless of who if anyone is to blame, makes you powerful. True leaders take responsibility instead of giving away their power by placing blame.

The Modern Vitality of the American Dream

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We take it as our duty to review history and judge the great figures of the past. Their words and deeds, written and lived in their own times, are judged in ours. The scrutiny of contemporaries is harsh enough, but remove a life from its context and judge it against a modern value system and not even an angel can escape unscathed. A renewed focus on the nation’s Founders has brought renewed criticism. I do not here attempt to justify or condemn the actions of our Founders; I am not fit to judge. Instead, I hope to elucidate a consistency in the American system that stretches from today back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence and beyond. I will set forth a new interpretation of the American Dream and, in doing so, demonstrate that the American Dream is not dead, nor can it be killed.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, are among the most inspirational to ever flow from any American pen. For many, these words bring feelings of patriotism and great pride. For others, though, these words bring feelings of betrayal and great pain. All men are created equal. All men. What did Jefferson, a slave-holding Virginian, really mean when he wrote that “all men are created equal”? Did he intend to free his slaves, or all slaves in the Colonies? That does not seem to be the case, considering he did not emancipate his slaves even at his death. Was he, then, referring only to white men being created equal? On the one hand, he is a duplicitous hypocrite. On the other, he is an insufferable racist. This is the man whose face is on our currency, whose semblance is seen next to Washington on Mount Rushmore, and whose monument in Washington D.C. dominates the southwest end of the National Mall. How could we?

Indeed, some in modern society, in the face of protests for racial justice, have called for the Jefferson Memorial to be removed. Why should we celebrate and immortalize a man who so clearly does not embody the ideals of our nation? While I will not come to the Memorial’s defence, nor will I attempt to analyze his every word or action, I will present a possible alternative meaning for Jefferson’s seemingly contradictory words in the Declaration. Rather than being hypocritical or racist, they may have been aspirational. The Founders, the signers of the Declaration, speaking through Jefferson, may have been declaring the ideals of the nation they were founding, rather than stating the condition of the nation as it already existed. In July 1776, America was in turmoil. The independence then declared was in jeopardy of being lost within the year. Even at that time, though, the issue of slavery was on the minds of many founders. When the war was won and the states eventually sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention, northern States proposed the end of slavery. Southern States, voiced by Thomas Pinckney, refused to join such a union. The end of the Atlantic slave trade was proposed, and the Southern States again balked. So the Constitution states that the issue of the slave trade could not even be discussed in Congress until 1808. Without this compromise and others (like the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act), we would have no Union. There would be no United States and there would be no possibility of an American Dream.

It is easy, on this side of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, to condemn the Southern States for their role in perpetuating the institution of slavery. The institution should in no way be justified, but we are not in a position to judge fairly.

The Founders created a foundation upon which we can build a great nation. Under this interpretation, the American Dream can take on a more expansive meaning. Our Dream is more than just the possibility that anyone in any situation can improve their economic situation. We can elevate our dream to mean that any of us, and all of us, can become better. That we can have hope that tomorrow can be better than today, and that sometimes it will be. We can improve ourselves as individuals and as a nation. Economic advancement is part of the dream, but probably not the most important part.

The Founders of our nation set up a system and a culture that encourages improvement. The Constitution itself, recognizing itself as incomplete and potentially flawed, dedicates one of its seven articles to outline the process by which the Constitution itself can be improved over time. We can also see the Dream being lived out in the lives of our Founders. Benjamin Franklin kept a list of virtues, and he daily took an account to track his improvement in these virtues. Washington, having received much less education than his fellow Founders, worked tirelessly to study on his own. Hamilton and Jefferson were both voracious readers with interests that spanned far beyond politics, into topics such as medicine, botany, economics, manufacturing, and clothing design. Lincoln, who I consider a Founder in the second generation, with no education, looked to improve himself throughout his life, progressing from an aggressive, sometimes conniving, unsuccessful local politician, to the inscrutable president who preserved the Union.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights guarantee freedoms essential to our individual and collective improvement. The right to peaceably assemble, religious freedom, and the freedom of speech, along with the rights to a fair trial, all work together to set up a system that allows us to improve ourselves and look forward with as much hope for our future as we can have pride for our past. These rights are not always completely or universally applied. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I know this well. My ancestors were imprisoned, beaten, killed, and driven from state to state, with the knowledge, consent, and sometimes direct order of the government. Even today, ridiculing my religion is considered fair play, even celebrated. In 2012, the Tony for Best Musical went to a musical which openly mocks my faith. Though it makes me a little sad that we, as a people, can still be so prejudiced that we would celebrate a piece of work like that musical, that is clearly intending to be unkind and not in good fun, without batting an eye, I am nevertheless encouraged. Violent religious persecution has decreased dramatically since the time my ancestors lived. I would much rather have someone sing a silly song about how daft I must be than be tarred and feathered while my house is burned. We are, as a people, making progress.

In a similar vein, we have made great progress, as a people and as individuals, toward being accepting and kind to people of all races. We aren’t perfect, but we are, as a whole, improving. We have a long road ahead of us, as recent events have made painfully clear. But we are walking that road. We can look with gratitude at how far we have come, and we can look forward with optimism at how far we have to go. If we have come this far, we can and will keep improving.

This, I believe, is the American Dream. It is not just about earning more money and moving ever higher in the social stratosphere. The American Dream is about becoming better. Finding a better way–a more excellent way–to live, to govern, to be governed, to self-govern. This dream, this relentless pursuit of improvement, is our national character. It is more American than apple pie, more enduring than baseball. It ties us together, to past and present. It moves us forward and makes us great. Eventually.

The Modern Vitality of the American Dream

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

How Humans Are Different Than Animals

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In the past I had done a lot of research on every post I write. Or, almost every post. I spend a lot of time; I proofread and add links and footnotes. I polish drafts, I ask friends and family to read and make suggestions. Then I finally publish my post and very few people actually read it. In fact, I’ve already asked most of my regular audience to proofread the drafts, so they aren’t very interested in re-reading the final product.

As a result, I have not written much and I have not written often. I don’t think I have a huge audience clamoring for my work, but I would like to write more, so my writing in the future may be a bit less polished.

I’m also working on finding my voice in writing. It’s probably going to come out a bit pitchy for a while. I may scare away the few people who do read my work. Some pieces may sound like a country song, others like a textbook. I want to eventually sound like me. There will, I’m certain, be missteps along the way, but I will get there eventually.

Are Humans Better Than Animals?

This is not meant to be a controversial piece at all, though people are capable of taking issue with anything and everything. But, again, I don’t know that anyone is going to read this anyway. Still, I’m not here to make an argument that humans are superior to all other animals. I think that many animals have a lot of great qualities that humans sometimes lack, like the compassion and loyalty of dogs, or the independence and scrappiness of cats.

But humans are different. I think this is difficult to dispute. We invented indoor plumbing, so in that sense we are better than all other terrestrial life forms. Because toilets are truly amazing.

But beyond toilets, humans are different in one significant way: we can write. Many other animals can communicate through language. Apparently crows are as intelligent as a 6-year-old. But no other living thing can write. It is truly a miracle that we can, in full fidelity, record anything we can speak. Although a great deal can be communicated through non-verbal communication, there is virtually no idea or concept that cannot be expressed in written form.

Records Make Each Generation Smarter

Writing is foundational to being human. Not every human has learned to write, but (nearly?) every human has been affected by the existence of written records. Writing gives us multi-generational memory. In other words, I don’t have to learn from experience the things that my grandfather wrote down. Every other animal has to rely on instinct and personal experience for everything they learn. To an extent, they may be taught by their immediate family, but they can never learn from someone they have never met.

For humans, each generation gets to stand on the shoulders of previous generations. It takes some time to get up to speed with what the previous generations have discovered. Then we can take what they have learned and build on it. There is nothing remarkable in this observation, but imagine the course of human history without writing. First, there would be no history, at least not a reliable history, because history requires writing. Second, we would never really progress as a species without writing. It is a remarkable, miraculous tool, and perhaps the one thing that most separates us from the animals.

So I will keep writing, and keep trying to improve my ability to record my thoughts and ideas.

Why You Should Write a Journal

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

For many (but certainly not all), writing a journal is something we want to do, or we feel we ought to do, but actually writing can be hard. Perhaps we have started journaling, but given up long before forming a habit. Or before even starting. I believe that understanding some of the benefits of journaling can help get us over the line. As the creator of Caneta, an online personal journal, I may be a bit too excited about keeping a journal, but these benefits are real, even if you don’t spend all your free time thinking about journaling.

Reflect and Process

At the end of a hard day, or a good day, or just a day, it’s good to take some time to reflect. What went well today? What went poorly? Why are you so happy, or angry, or excited, or frustrated, or sad? These are probably not subjects you want to share with the world in a social media post, but writing it all down can help you process what is happening in your life. You can be more capable of coping with hard times, and more grateful and appreciative of good times. Writing a journal gives you the opportunity every day (or week or month) to write and reflect and process. I have come to really enjoy this time, and I think I am a better person for it.

Learn

Writing can help you solidify your ideas and what you are learning. Explain something difficult to your journal and you will understand it better yourself. The best part about keeping a journal is that no topic is off limits. You can write about learning a new recipe you tried for dinner (I once tried mixing curry paste with scrambled eggs—not as good as it sounds, and it doesn’t even sound good), and you can also write about what you understand about linear algebra, or how you interpret a Tennyson poem, or what you have learned about raising children, or some new technique for cleaning a toilet. Writing about what you learn is a great way to improve your learning. And, by writing it down, you are more likely to remember it, but if you don’t…

Increase Your Memory

A journal is an amazing way to increase the capacity of your memory. The way our memories work is not completely clear to medical science (or at least to my understanding of medical science based on a fair amount of online research—at the very least, it’s not completely clear to me), but we do know that some memories fade, while others are reinforced. Writing things down can reinforce your memory, but it can also offload your memory so you don’t have to carry it around in your head. For example, I like to write down the funny things my kids say in my journal. Caneta has a “Topics” feature, which lets you mark your entries with topics. I don’t have to remember all of the funny things my kids say in my head (though some of them are hard to forget), but I can easily find them all by looking at the “quotes” topic in my journal. It makes for some entertaining reading!

Look Back

One of the rewarding benefits of journal writing for me has been looking back. When I first started keeping an online journal through OhLife (a service which, sadly, no longer exists), I loved getting daily emails telling me what I had written in my journal one year earlier. My reaction was almost always, “Wow! That was a year ago?!”, but I also enjoy looking back and reliving good days and even hard days. Looking back at my life has a tendency to make me feel grateful, both for where I have been and for where I am now. One of my favorite features of Caneta is the “This Day” feature. “This Day” will show you what you wrote one week ago, one month ago, one year ago, two, three, four years ago, and so on. I can watch myself change and watch my children grow over the years as I read through past journal entries every day.

Look Forward

Journals are good for more than just looking back at the past. You can also write down your goals, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Writing your goals can actually help you achieve them, and a journal is a great place to write them down. One of the curious features in Caneta is that you can set the date of your entries, so you could write an entry in the future. I have tried it a few times, but I actually prefer writing my goals and how I feel about them right now, rather than setting a date I hope to accomplish the goal. Either way, writing my goals has helped me turn them into reality. The very existence of Caneta is proof of that.

In the next week or so, I will write another post about how to start writing a journal, so you can reap all these benefits. Until then, please check out Caneta.

Caneta

Fri, 26 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Today I am launching a project I have been working on for over a year. That project is Caneta (https://caneta.co). Caneta is an online personal journal that is designed to help you actually write in your journal.

Here’s how it works. When you sign up for Caneta, you can connect to your other online accounts, like Facebook, Instagram, Strava, and Google Photos. Then, if you post to Facebook or Instagram, or record a run or bike ride on Strava, or take any photos that are backed up to Google Photos, you can add your posts, bike rides, and photos to your journal. It’s also really easy to just write in your journal.

Although Caneta is an online journal and it connects to other online services like Instagram and Google Photos, Caneta is really all about your real life. I’ll explain, but first a bit of backstory.

Caneta’s Origins

I started journal writing when I was in my childhood, probably 8 or 9 years old. My parents gave me a green journal for my birthday. For a long time, I wrote in it every day. The habit dropped off in my teens, and I had largely stopped by the time I went to college. I remember some of the things I wrote, and I’m glad I can’t find those journals anymore. Still, it was a positive and cathartic experience for me.

As I was preparing to graduate and start my career, I discovered an online journaling service called Oh Life. Every day, Oh Life would send me an email, and I could reply to that email with my daily journal entry. It was simple, and I loved it. In the summer of 2010, I started keeping a journal again. After a month, the email Oh Life sent me had my journal entry from the previous month. I think this was the first time I actually read my own journal. I suddenly loved Oh Life even more.

Oh Life offered paid subscriptions, which I considered buying, but the free version had everything I wanted and needed, so I decided to be frugal. Apparently, most of Oh Life’s other users felt the same way, and Oh Life went out of business in September 2014. I panicked. Then, I got to work.

My First Attempt

Fortunately for me, I am a software engineer. I spent the week after Oh Life shut down rebuilding the features that I really needed. I spent all of my energy on reverse engineering the email-to-journal system, and had nothing left when it came time to give my project a name, so I called it “My Life”. I shared it with my family and a few friends. I made a total of 14 commits (code updates) over 13 months. It was good enough, but it was not good.

When I would write in my journal at the end of the day, I realized that I was opening a bunch of other apps to try to help me remember the important things I had done that day. In some cases, I was copying things I had written in those other apps and pasting them into my journal-email. Somehow it took me over a year of doing this (and several more years doing the same thing with Oh Life), before I thought about connecting my journal directly to these other apps.

My Second attempt

I decided to build a connected journal for myself, and I decided to start from scratch. As I mentioned, “My Life” was working, but it was not good. I wanted my new journal to be really good, and I’m finally to the point where I feel that it is actually good enough to share. The reason I feel this way is that Caneta is at a point where it gets out of the way and lets you live your real life, while still making it easy to record the important parts.

Caneta is Different

In many ways, Caneta will be familiar as soon as you use it, but it is different in some very important ways. Caneta’s main page is a list of your journal entries that looks a lot like a feed. But you are the only one who posts to this feed, and you will never see an ad (or a “sponsored” journal entry). Your personal journal is not the place for intrusive advertising. Or any kind of advertising.

You also won’t be pestered to ask your friends to sign up for Caneta. Much of the value on a social networking application is the size and activity of the network. Facebook with only 5 people would not be very interesting or useful, but a Facebook that virtually everyone uses is much more useful. However, Caneta is not a social networking application, and the value does not increase as more people sign up. That doesn’t mean I don’t hope lots of people will sign up; I just don’t have to be aggressive, deceptive, or dishonest about it.

Finally, Caneta is different because there is no free version. If you read the last two paragraphs carefully, this should not come as a surprise. Though we consider many of the apps we use to be “free”, the companies running these applications need money to come from somewhere. If the users aren’t paying for the app, the money has to come from somewhere else, and that usually means advertisers and investors (and “freemium” subscriptions). Caneta will never have ads, and without aggressive, rapid user growth, Caneta will probably never have investors (I prefer it that way). Oh Life had inverstors and tried the freemium model, and that didn’t work out too well; the free account was good enough that (nearly) no one would pay. The company will serve the interests of the source of its money. If the money comes from advertisers, then the app will be optimized for advertisers, often at the expense of the free users. If the money comes from investors, the company focuses aggressively on growth, often to the detriment of current users. If the money comes from the app’s users, the app will be optimized for the best user experience.

But the final reason that Caneta has no free version is that you value what you pay for. If Caneta were free, you might sign up, try writing an entry, then forget about it forever. Since there is a 30 day trial period, you might do that anyway. Caneta is fun, but writing a journal can still be hard, no matter how easy I’ve tried to make it. But, if you are really committed to writing a journal, enough that you’re willing to pay, you’re much more likely to have success in writing that journal. That’s what I really care about. No free version means that the money comes from real users of Caneta, which means I can do what’s best by real users of Caneta without worrying about backlash from advertisers or investors. And, by paying real dollars (though not very many—just $3/month), your experience with Caneta will actually be better because you will be committed.

The Future of Caneta

I mentioned that I’ve been working on Caneta for about 2 years. I’ve been using Caneta as my personal, daily journal for almost as long. I could have launched a long time ago, but I wanted to make journal writing easy, and that has taken some time. I have plans for what will come next, but I’m most interested to hear what Caneta’s users think and want from Caneta. If you have suggestions, please send them to steven@caneta.co.

Good News

Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I have not written an article for over 6 months. Life has been busier than usual lately. But I have been thinking about something for the last few weeks and I want to write it all out. Perhaps I’ll get back into the habit of writing every week.

Glad Tidings of Great Joy

A little over 2,000 years ago, in a little town just outside of Jerusalem, a baby was born. The birth of this baby, Jesus Christ, is the reason we celebrate Christmas today. But why does His birth warrant a month-long (and getting longer) celebration? Hundreds of thousands of babies are born every day¹. Some of them will cure diseases of entire populations, instead of just individuals as Jesus did. Some of them will feed millions, and even billions, instead of just thousands as Jesus did. Some of them will diffuse social tension and help avoid war, instead of cause division. What, then, was so significant about the birth of Jesus Christ?

The circumstances of His actual birth cannot be described as anything more than humble. But the events surrounding the birth are nothing short of remarkable. According to the scriptural record, Jesus was born to a virgin mother. A new star appeared, and some areas experienced no darkness at all the night before he was born. To the shepherds near Bethlehem, an angel came, bringing good tidings of great joy: “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”² Wise men came traveling from the East, guided by the new star, with gifts for the Child. Who was this Jesus Christ? Why is his name still held in reverence by so many³?

The Good News

Everyone likes to hear good news. I love when I get to tell my wife, “I have good news.” Though it may be small and insignificant, good news is always cause for rejoicing. The first four books of the New Testament are prefixed with the same phrase: “The Gospel of …” The English word “gospel” comes from “god” (good) and “spel” (news). Additionally, the word “evangelical” is derived from the Greek word “euangelion” which means good news. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were writing to give us “good news,” the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Jesus’ own words, the gospel can be summarized as follows:

Behold I have given unto you my gospel, and this is the gospel which I have given unto you—that I came into the world to do the will of my Father, because my Father sent me.

And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross, that I might draw all men unto me, that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father, to stand before me, to be judged of their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil—

And for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that they may be judged according to their works.

And it shall come to pass, that whoso repenteth and is baptized in my name shall be filled; and if he endureth to the end, behold, him will I hold guiltless before my Father at that day when I shall stand to judge the world.

And he that endureth not unto the end, the same is he that is also hewn down and cast into the fire, from whence they can no more return, because of the justice of the Father.

3 Nephi 27:13-17

The main points of the gospel, then, are:

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the very Jehovah, was born on Earth as a mortal, sent by His Father
Jesus Christ was lifted up upon the cross. God was crucified by man.
Jesus Christ was resurrected. Through His resurrection, every human will be resurrected, lifted up to stand before Jesus Christ to be judged of their works.
Jesus Christ, our Judge and Advocate, has provided a way for us to be held “guiltless” at that day of judgment: repent, be baptized, and endure to the end.

The Plan: Why This Is Such Good News

I have some good news and I have some bad news. You’ve already heard the good news, now here’s the bad news. Your life on this Earth is incredibly short (#YOLO!!!). You may live 100 years at most, and then you die. This end is absolutely unavoidable, no matter what the headlines in Popular Science may say. We will all die. Nearly everyone who has ever lived on Earth already has died. All of our accomplishments, all of our relationships, all of our identity, wiped away, it seems, in a single, terrible moment. This truly is terrible news.

Now back to the good news. Back to the reason that we celebrate the birth of a Child. When Christ was born, it was clear to those who looked for a Savior, that the plan was in motion. For centuries, even millenia, the birth of the Savior had been foretold by prophets and anticipated by believers. The coming of Jesus Christ into the world was one step, one very important step, in a much bigger plan. His perfect obedience another step. His death on the cross was a part of the plan from before He was born. His overcoming of death through the resurrection from the tomb another part of the plan. We celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas because He did everything He needed to do to fulfill His part of the plan. He did it! And along the way, He taught us what we need to do to fulfill our part. That truly is the best kind of good news.

Flour, Water, and Time

Fri, 13 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I tried something new a couple of weeks ago. I made sourdough bread. I think there is something to learn from almost every experience in life, and this is what I learned from making sourdough bread.

Starter

After watching the Netflix documentary Cooked, I decided I wanted to try making leavened bread without commercial yeast. I was fascinated to learn that until the recent creation of commercial yeast all leavened bread was sourdough bread. I learned that sourdough bread is made with wild yeast instead of manufactured from-a-packet yeast. Commercial yeast lets you make light, fluffy bread much faster, which is likely the reason for its rise in popularity. But the convenience of saving time comes at a cost. Much of the nutrition from the wheat flour is not extracted by commercial yeast the way it is by sourdough (according to Cooked, at least—I’m no food scientist or nutritionist—the documentary even speculates that the increase in gluten intolerance may be due, at least in part, to the use of commercial yeasts instead of sourdough). The taste of bread from commercial yeast lacks the richness and complexity of sourdough. A lot of people now prefer the taste (or lack thereof?) of commercial bread, but this is probably an issue of conditioning rather than true preference. Regardless, sourdough bread is awesome, even if it’s not filled with clam chowder.

So, how does one get started? Thanks to the internet, this question was not terribly difficult to answer. Sourdough bread is made with sourdough starter, and sourdough starter is made with flour, water, and time. I found several techniques for making sourdough starter, each one unique, but all of them basically the same:

Mix equal parts water and flour (either by volume or weight, but about 1/2 cup each)
Wait 24 hours
Dump out half of your mixture, then add equal parts flour and water again (this step is called “feeding”)
Repeat these steps every 12 to 24 hours until the mixture is “frothy” and smells sour (about 5 days to a week)

Turns out there is a bunch of wild yeast all over the place, including in the air and in flour. When flour and water are mixed and left out, they create a nice environment for the yeast to breed and grow. Apparently some bacteria (the good kind) starts growing in there as well, making the mixture smell sour. After about a week, the yeast is strong enough to make dough rise.

The Value of Time

Perhaps one of the best rewards of making sourdough bread, and even sourdough starter, is the delayed gratification. You can save a little bit of time here and there (for instance, some techniques recommend using warm, but not hot, water when feeding the starter), but no matter what the process is going to take about a week. We don’t put nearly enough value on waiting and delayed gratification. I love the internet, but I don’t love how it has glorified instant gratification. While it’s very neat (and economically powerful) that we can communicate instantaneously around the globe, there is something powerful about receiving a handwritten letter several days after it was sent. Sourdough has taught me to better value time, and to patiently wait and watch instead of rushing things to grow¹.

One of the surprising trends of late in the software industry is the idea that we can turn novices into expert developers in a matter of weeks by putting them through a “bootcamp.” What is surprising is that this trend is coming from the same industry that created Brooks’ Law, which is most humorously summarized as “nine women can’t make a baby in one month.” Leaders in the industry seem to agree that learning to program takes a long time (Peter Norvig wrote a great article on this subject called Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years). The value of time in learning a skill, including programming, cannot be overstated. As with gestation and fermentation, some things just take time.

Baking

Once the starter is ready, you get to incorporate it into a dough and let it rise. You may note that my loaf did not rise very well. It tasted pretty good (even my kids ate it), but it wasn’t amazing. I made some mistakes, but at least it was good enough that I want to try again. Preparing a loaf of sourdough to bake is a surprisingly intricate process. Here are the things I think I did wrong:

Following multiple recipes at once. I was following one recipe until near the end, when it stopped being a recipe and started sounding more like an opinion column. I had just finished “knocking down” when I switched to another recipe that explicitly told me not to “knock down.”
I forgot to add salt (partially due to the stress of switching recipes half way through). The ingredients in my bread were literally just flour and water. I’m shocked at how good it tasted, considering it had only two ingredients.
I forgot to slice the top of the loaf before putting it in the oven. Apparently this helps with rising and makes it look cooler.

The Value of Practice

While time is important, time alone won’t make better bread (or better programmers, pianists, hockey players, etc.). My first loaf wasn’t a smashing success—I’m not about to go open a bakery. I’m not surprised, though, because it was my first try and it will take some practice (and maybe mentoring) before I figure out how to make a really good loaf of sourdough bread. Practice is in fact the very reason I have been writing so many articles on my blog. Occasionally one of my articles will attract some attention, but for the most part I just write for practice. It takes a lot of concentrated effort to get good at something, it seems. Not even writing a book is enough to ensure you are a good writer.

Hopefully I will get the chance to keep practicing bread making. It’s a fun process, even when the result isn’t amazing.

How Charity is Different Than Love

Fri, 22 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I wrote about why I run, but I didn’t mention how I keep my mind occupied while I’m running. A serious racer needs to stay focused the entire time, monitoring pace, effort, and (during races) the competition. I, however, am not fast enough to be a serious racer. I try to distract myself during many of my runs. Lately I’ve been listening to General Conference talks while I run. This week I was listening to a talk by Ezra Taft Benson about Godly Characteristics, and I learned something interesting about charity and how it is different than the popular view of love.

Is Love Selfish?

I really don’t want to be controversial with this topic, but I have been wondering about this idea for a while: is love selfish? The love described on the radio and in the movies is often quite selfish. “I love you because you care about me.” “I love you because you make me feel good about who I am.” “I love you because you love me.” This kind of love is not just conditional; it is conditional on the other person doing something to benefit me. While it is not necessarily a bad thing, it does seem to be a lesser form of love. I think this is what Jesus was referring to when He gave the higher law of love:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you...

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

Matthew 5:43-44, 46

The Pure Love of Christ

In some translations of the Bible, the word “charity” has been replaced with the word “love”, perhaps because “love” is a bit easier to understand and has not been conflated with the concept of alms giving. Truly, love and charity are very similar, but I think the distinction is strong enough to warrant some examination (and to warrant two separate words). Paul wrote to the Corinthians about charity, saying that is “suffereth long” and “is kind”, “seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil”. Contrast this with the common, but selfish, love described earlier. When we have charity, we love someone not because of what they do for us, but sometimes in spite of the things they do to us. Truly, this is a higher law, much harder to follow.

In the Book of Mormon, the prophet Mormon describes charity as “the pure love of Christ.” I have heard and considered many explanations of this phrase: “the pure love of Christ.” I would like to add one more possible explanation that has been beneficial to me. The scriptural proof of Christ’s love for us is beyond debate. For the faithful, the living proof of His love for us is similarly concrete, though harder to prove by physical means. On the other hand, the scriptural and empirical proof of our individual and collective rebellion against the laws of God is indisputable, “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. Therefore, Christ does not love us because of what we do for Him, nor any benefit that He gains from our relationship. Rather, Christ loves us because He is full of love, grace, and truth. He loves us because of who He is, not because of what we do. He has taught us that we too must have charity, and He has shown us the way. Through much faith, work, and prayer, we can each be “filled with [that] love.” I can’t imagine a happier way to live.

Why I Run

Fri, 15 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

I started running cross country in high school. I haven’t been running consistently since then, but I have run at least occasionally. Over the last 2 years, though, I have been running consistently. My wife and I have run a couple of half marathons (in this case, two halves does not make a whole), and a handful of other races. In the past few years, friends and family have asked why I run. For at least some of them, this is more than a flippant remark made with the intention of putting down running. For them, I would like to a thorough response. If you are not a runner, it can be hard to understand why anyone would spend the time, energy, and money on an activity that seems like a cruel form of punishment. But a lot of people enjoy running, and more people start every year. There must be some reason. Here are a few of mine.

I Love to Eat

One of the things I find interesting about weight management is how similar it is to money management. The basic principles are the same in both: spend more than you take in, and the balance goes down (accounting is some of the simplest math around, and yet we still find ways to make it complicated). There are certainly circumstances where these principles don’t exactly apply, but for the most part, it’s that simple. If you want to decrease your balance (read: weight), you need to expend more calories than you take in. You can either take in fewer calories or expend more. I have found running to be one of the most effective ways for me to do both.

I like food. I really enjoy trying new foods from different cultures, because the things we eat say a lot about who we are. I don’t ever want to go on a strict diet where I’m only allowed to eat from a strict menu. I also don’t want to spend all of my time counting calories on everything I eat. So I run. Running burns a lot of calories in not a lot of time. One of the surprises about running is that it has encouraged me to eat better. Maybe not less, but better. My fuel as a runner is the food I eat. If I eat garbage, my fuel is garbage. Running is a lot easier if I eat better. My body craves the foods that will be good fuel.

Running Hurts

In high school I wrote a song with my band^[1] about my experiences running cross country. The chorus is below.

The pain is so refreshing
It keeps us coming back for more.
We all consider quitting
But we know we never could.
It feels too good to be broken at the end of the day
And to turn around and see how far we came.

Ironically, it is the suffering involved in running that attracts runners and keeps others away. When people ask “Why do you run?” (and I think what they really mean is, why would anyone run?), I sometimes respond, “Because it hurts.” I’ve run a few half marathons and I’ve never felt a “runner’s high”, and I’m beginning to doubt it even exists. I don’t run in hope that some “high” will make the suffering stop. I run because it hurts. I run to see how fast I can go^[2], and how far I can go. I doubt that this will make much sense to anyone who is not an endurance athlete. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but it’s true. Running has taught me a lot about life. I have learned to do hard things, not because in spite of their difficulty, but because of it. Running offers a sense of accomplishment every single time.

To the Races!

In high school cross country, I hated race day. If I remember correctly, we had about one race every week or so. There was a lot of sitting around in anticipation, nervous warm ups, followed by the stomach-churning wait at the starting line. My friend and I used to sing Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time” while we waited for the gun at the starting line. Considering how fast I would run the races, I think that song choice was appropriate. The gun would go off, and I would run my guts out for about 22 minutes, coming in long after the contenders, but I would still find someone with whom I could race the last 100 meters or so to the finish line in an all out sprint. Those last 100 meters were the reason I stuck with it. They kept me coming back for more. Still, I hated races almost as much as I hated track work. I didn’t really learn to love running in high school, which is probably why I didn’t stick with it when I graduated.

Over the last couple of years, though, I have come to see races as a reward for weeks and months of training. The weeks of training are full of anticipation. I usually have a goal speed for a race, and my training helps me guess if I’m likely to meet my goal. Then there’s the excitement of picking up the race packet, hanging around the starting line with all the other runners who are just as nervous as you, then taking off when the gun goes off. Then there’s the pain again, mingled with adrenaline and excitement. Depending on the length of the race, the adrenaline and excitement wear off long before the race is over, and then there’s just pain. But finally the finish line comes into view and after one final sprint, the pain is over. If high school cross country taught me anything, it was that you should always sprint to the finish line.

A strange thing happens there on the other side of the finish line. At the end of my half marathons, my wife and I (we like to race together) collapsed at the finish line. We sat speechless for several minutes, then when we had recovered enough, we said to each other, “Let’s never do that again.” The same conversation was happening all around us. This is where things get strange, because within about 10 minutes, as the memory of the pain fades, almost everyone starts planning for their next race. “Maybe we’ll do a full marathon next time.” That’s why I run.