Genesis 17:19a

(NIV) Then God said, 'Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son,
(NKJV) Then God said: 'No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son,
(KJV) And God said, ' Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed;

The King James Version doesn't even include a "yes" or a "no."

I was pretty happy to finally receive my copy of Baseball Prospectus 2003. For those who don't know what this is, it's a 550 page baseball book that produces cutting-edge, objective baseball analysis using nerdy statistical techniques.

One example of this is the Pitcher Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm (PECOTA) that they've developed to predict the chances that certain players will "breakout" or "collapse" with performances that are 20% better or 20% worse than their performance last year.

Amazingly, the system notes that Barry Bonds has an 18% chance to "breakout," or perform 20% better than his performance last year, which was worth 1.04 runs per game more than the average player (a major league record).

I just sent out an e-mail to ficb-chat about filling out a marketing survey, and sending out these e-mails always makes me evaluate how people react to e-mail.

Here's my breakdown:

1) I think the most important thing in an e-mail is it's title. If my title were to sound like other spam, people wouldn't even bother opening it, especially if they use web-based e-mail like hotmail or yahoo (since those services don't come with preview panes).

2) One thing I made sure to do was to make the e-mail as short as possible... if I'm going to ask people for a favor, it makes sense that I would spend as little of their time as possible. Plus, I needed to reassure them that the survey wouldn't take long, by citing a maximum number of minutes. Saying "a few minutes" doesn't work as well as "5 minutes" because there's no guarantee with how long "a few minutes" is.

3) Another thing is to provide fool-proof directions. But I have to keep in mind that I need to make the e-mail as short as possible, so this is a bit of a challenge.

4) Also need to make sure there's plenty of white space in the e-mail. Hitting the return key a whole bunch of times makes the e-mail so much easier to read.

5) Numbering steps is also helpful, like I've done here.

6) Finally, thanking them is always a nice touch. I don't want to sound like I'm forcing them to do anything.

Wow... I'm such a geek... most of this is from what I learned in my business communication class a few semesters ago. But the most disturbing thing is that I do this type of analysis with every e-mail and blog I write.

"Is there any college that puts a premium on good teaching? Is there any university that rewards--in pay and promotion--outstanding teachers? Always and everywhere in academia, recognition, promotion, tenure depend on what a faculty member publishes.

Teaching? Exciting the minds of undergraduates? Turning them on to learning? Weighing pounds of print the way butchers weigh beef, faculty fathers more often butcher those who show brilliance in lecturing or in the classroom.

Publish or perish is an option. Teach well and perish is for sure."

--Malcolm S. Forbes (1980)

Yesterday in small group bible study we were reading over Genesis 17:19.

In the NIV it begins, "Then God said, 'Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and your will call him Isaac."
In the NKJV it reads, "Then God said: 'No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac;"

We were all pretty amazed at how different the translations were. It confused us about how to interpret the previous verse, because it depended on whether the translation was yes or no.

Wow, I've added the FiCB alumni to the links portion of my blogpage, so you'll have to scroll down even more to get to the bottom of the page.

Just came back from the freshmen and senior co-ed softball games...there were a ton of people at the freshmen game, especially because they were playing the KCPC oldies...

I'm not playing for the senior team... if I did I'd have something to do every night except Saturday, so I'll just fill in if they need me. OK, the real reason I'm not playing is cuz our team's named Forever 21... haha...

Most people left before the senior game, but they missed out on John Im's spectacular catch, both of Sammy's LONG bombs (his homers went past the 2nd base bag of the other field), and G1's juggling unassisted double play from the outfield... good stuff, but the game ended in a tie. All this while the girls had to persevere through various injuries (Jamie's hand and Isabel's leg were hit by softballs).

Good stuff...

I'm trying to add as many links to my blog site as I can... let me know if you want to be added!

Just checking to see if this works

I'm not sure how often I'll post