Just Browsing

A few things that have become unnecessary essentials lately:
The Moth podcast
Sound Opinions podcast (you were right, Robby, it’s great)
BetterWorld Books: great selection, free shipping, and they are very conscientious, even towards local libraries.
The Iconogram and Blog Networks Facebook apps: windows into heaven, and into the make-up of the communities behind your favorite blogs.
1000 Recordings to [...]

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Secession Imminent

“Californians are less likely than other Americans to consider religion “very important” in their lives or to be “absolutely certain” in their belief in God.” (LA Times)
Read this just after hearing a radio interview with a group of young Chinese, who rattled off a list of American TV shows they regularly watch, and then talked [...]

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Six of one, half a dozen of the other

On the Media, one of my dearest podcasts, invited listeners to submit 12 word novels during November (NaWriNoMo). I just caught up to the results in last week’s episode. I may be anticipating another contest. Start counting words. Click below to see the actual results:
In the army, George discovered he was a coward. He told [...]

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Remember 2007?

Before I begin, let me just say, you won’t earn my love by reading the whole thing. It’s just nice to know you.
I’ve been so busy putting together a list of the Greatest Recordings Known to Humankind, 2007, that I didn’t have time to get around to this list of Albums I Really Liked This [...]

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Halo’d Be Thy Name

Todd posted an unsettling story about churches using Halo 3 as an outreach tool. I threw out the first thing that came to mind as a comment, but it’ll make an even better post.
This Spartan Life, featured in a recently reran Studio 360 story, creates a talk show in the Halo universe. The game [...]

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Lead us not into Palmolive

I was listening to an excerpt from Watchman Nee’s Release of the Spirit, from Christianaudio’s Devotional Classics podcast, and Nee said something like, “God will not deliver us from the dishes. He will only deliver us from our response to the dishes.”
And the disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
. . [...]

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Drivers’ Ed

Today, in my 10 minutes in the car, I caught two enlightening segments from NPR’s On the Media:
Seg 1: Apparently, the difference between people on MySpace and Facebook is indicative of the failure of the internet to prove an equalizing and democratizing force for the universe. I now feel guilty for calling Facebook “the upright [...]

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The Wrath of More Things I Don’t Have Time to Write About

1) One of my favorite reads as an MDiver was Larry Crabb’s The Safest Place on Earth. Crabb’s reputation as a Christianized pop psychologist (earned before his self-reorienting encounter with spiritual formation-in-community models), as well as the somewhat cheesy self-helpy cover art, has kept a lot of my friends from taking the recommendation seriously. So, [...]

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“Is it true firemen used to put out fires?”

There is a scene in Farenheit 451 (that’s Truffaut, 1966, not Moore) where Linda, wife of disillusioned book-burner Montag, greets his return home with great enthusiasm about her role in the evening’s television program. She sits on the living room floor in front of the screen, as a bland scripted conversation unfolds between two actors, [...]

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A rope let down from heaven

At the behest of my two favorite podcasts, WBEZ’s This American Life and WNYC’s On the Media, I tried out WNYC’s Radio Lab this week, and I’ve really enjoyed it. It sounds like what the Sesame Street/MTV generation did to visual culture happening in your ears. The two shows I’ve listened to have focused on [...]

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