Another week gone by and what do you have to show for it? I have some links. Would you like to see my links? They’re shiny links and they sparkle in the sunlight. Well, that really depends on if your computer monitor is facing the sun, doesn’t it? Welcome to the Weekly Town Crier, where I pass along some of what made me pause and say “hmmmmm,” for one reason or another. Remember, linking is not the same as endorsing. Enjoy:
See what I hear at Last.fm.
Sign up for eMusic, find lots of DRM-free downloads and help me earn free downloads in the process. Everyone wins!
Browse these statistics of the world: “of the 6,691,484,000 people in the world in 2008, in the broad-brush-painted sense, 2,231,421,000 are Christian; 1,412, 301,000 are Muslim; 887,991,000 are Hindu; Buddhists number 391,122,000; and Jews list 15,044,000. Every twenty-four hours the world has a population net growth of 219,000 people. Christians number 170,000 converts per day but find 91,000 defectors, so the net growth is 79,000 Christians each day. Of the 2,113,199,000 “affiliated” Christians, 1,476,690,000 are “church attenders.”
Read about increased American interest in “spiritual” matters.
Read about Britain’s Prime Minister “overhauling the country’s organ donation system to make it easier for doctors to remove body parts from deceased patients without prior consent.”
Watch this guy get fancy with the yo-yo.
Meet America’s “most wired” city.
Meet Pantone’s color for 2008: No. 18-3943.
Read about Hillary and Romney’s wins in NV.
Watch this piece which says antidepressants may not actually work.
Watch this video of people, ages 1-100 banging on a drum.
Congratulations to Colossians Three Sixteen favorite Doug Burr, who was recently named one of “Four to Watch” by Paste Magazine and found himself a spot on their February sampler CD. Read my interview with Doug here and my review of the wonderful On Promenade here.
Read about the WI pastor challenging the “Internal Revenue Service by writing an open letter that criticizes rules against ministers getting too political in their pulpits.”
Read this article which wonders if the rift between Evangelicals over Romney and Huckabee might just books McCain.
Read about the California company that has “created the first mature cloned human embryos from single skin cells taken from adults.”
Read about the resentment many Sikhs have towards “profiling” at airports.
Read presidential candidates becoming increasingly vocal about their faith.
Read this piece which wonders just what Huckabee means when he proposes “that the US constitution be brought more in line with God’s law in the Bible.”
Read about French President’s “increasingly frequent and positive references to God and faith” that “have drawn fire from critics who accuse him of violating France’s separation of church and state.”
Read about the “one word change” to the newest edition of the Book of Mormon that has caused some controversy.
Read about Chuck Norris saying that John McCain “is too old to handle the pressures of being president.”
Read about Oliver Stone’s plans to make a “fair” biopic on George W. Bush.
Browse the week in photos from Yahoo.
Read the newest report from Barna examining Americans’ “moral and social concerns.”
Read about the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Browse as Popmatters lists their favorite albums that missed their year-end lists.
Read as Justin Taylor interviews Tim Keller.
Read as John Mark Reynolds tries to make sense of Huckabee’s recent comments on the Constitution and the Bible.
Watch this video of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Read a reprint of King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”
Browse Slate’s photo essay on the life of King.
Read about the man who “survived 96 hours pinned under his all-terrain vehicle in the Rocky Mountains by eating rotting animal carcasses, drinking melted snow and thinking of his grandchildren.”
Read about live music now being performed in the Nashville airport.
Read about NBC possibly returning to iTunes.
Read about the revival of church discipline from the Wall Street Journal.
Read about Fred Thompson dropping out of the presidential race.
Read about many long-lost jazz albums finding new life as downloads.
See, and be amazed by “dirty car art.”
Read as SFist interviews Raymond Raposa of Castanets.
See and hear instruments made of ice.
Read about the print version of CCM Magazine coming to an end.
Browse as the 2008 Coachella music festival has announced its lineup.
Read this Christianity Today piece which notes that: “Although only 10 percent of SBC pastors identify themselves as Calvinists, nearly 30 percent of recent seminary graduates do.”
Read as John Ensor at Desiring God urges us to pray for the “third wave” of the Pro-Life movement.
Read as Doug considers the “Big Gap” between instruction and application.
Read about Starbucks’ new $1.00 cup of coffee with free refills!
Read about U2’s Sundance debut.
Read as Pitchfork reports that Scarlett Johansson’s album of Tom Waits covers (plus one original song) will finally see the light of day.
Read this piece which considers the impact of “music bloggers” (what they call “average joe critics”) on the music industry.
Browse the Village Voice 2007 Pazz and Jop Critic’s Poll.
Read as Christianity Today interviews Obama.
Read this piece examining the increasing gulf between the “middle class” and the ever-increasingly “super rich.”
R.I.P. noted Southern Baptist scholar, L. Rush Bush.
Read about Jimmy Carter calling for “Baptist Unity.”
Read about Koreans protesting churches being used as polling places.
Read about the Catholic church openly challenging Communist officials in Vietnam over land issues.
Read about the recent shift among many Hispanic Evangelicals to the Democratic Party.
Read this piece which wonders what impact the recent drop in abortion rates will have on the ongoing debate.
Read about the recent ruling that Missouri inmates can have elective abortions.
Read this piece which wonders if Apple’s “unique” designs are really all that new, or if they’re “borrowed” from “Braun products designed by Dieter Rams” in the late 1950s. See this piece also wondering the same thing.
See pictures from my son Carson’s second birthday.
On the article about more Americans taking an interest in “spiritual things,” I find it interesting that even among the apparent evangelicals who were in the article, there was no direct mention anywhere of Jesus Christ. What seems to be the focus instead in this article was that you could be “spiritual” on your own terms. Well this isn’t a new revelation, is it? ;) Rather there was a focus on things you could DO to be “spiritual.”
And most importantly, there was no mention of SIN in this article either. So all that busy activity and attempts at rituals strikes me as simply a well-intentioned cover-up, yet another handful of ways that people are dodging the accountability of their basic sin nature.
Of course, it is USA Today after all… ;P
I found out too late that Bono was gracing Sundance. He may be the one celebrity that could have turned me into a celeb-watcher up in Park City. Next year I think I will have to get up there.
