bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Saturday, August 03, 2002 ::

Invest in beer? Russ Reeves, proprietor of Tolle, Blogge, notes that $1,000 invested in canned beer a year ago would have yielded a better return than a $1,000 investment in Nortel stock (assuming you recycled the cans). But does he consider some of the hidden costs for a $1,000 beer binge? (Aspirin for hangovers, etc.)

A new look at Jesus. That's the point of rejesus, a site that hopes to re-introduce the King of kings to cyberculture. "Rejesus has a single focus -- it goes to the very heart of Christian life and faith -- the person of Jesus Christ himself." So write the people behind it all. "Its aim is to connect with people who have little previous knowledge of Jesus or the Christian faith and to encourage a step or two of faith."

There's plenty to do and see at rejesus. I especially love this gallery of Lizzie Everard photos, and the poems of Steve Turner. Here's an excerpt from one, "If Jesus Were Born Today":

If Jesus was born today
it would be in a downtown motel
marked by a helicopter's flashing bulb.
A traffic warden, working late,
would be the first upon the scene.
Later, at the expense of a TV network,
an eminent sociologist,
the host of a chat show
and a controversial author
would arrive with their good wishes
-- the whole occasion to be filmed as part of the
'Is This The Son Of God?' one hour special.

Thanks to Richard Hall for this nugget.

The mobile digital. In Smart Mobs, cyberculture maven Howard Rheingold talks about what will happen when the rag-tag mass of "[w]ireless community networks, webloggers, buyers and sellers on eBay" come together to form mobile smart mobs that will roam the earth. "Communication and computing technologies capable of amplifying human cooperation already appear to be both beneficial and destructive, used by some to support democracy and by others to coordinate terrorist attacks. Already, governments have fallen, subcultures have blossomed, new industries have been born and older industries have launched counterattacks." Rheingold points out the threats and opportunities of this phenomenon. "Smart mob devices, industries, norms, and social consequences are in their earliest stages of development, but they are evolving rapidly. Current political and social conflicts over how smart mob technologies will be designed and regulated pose questions about the way we will all live for decades to come." Link via WarLog.

The church and the churchless. A couple of good links from Jordon Cooper: A summary of George Barna's State of the Church 2002 (the church in the USA, that is); and A Churchless Faith, an article by Alan Jamieson on why people leave the church and what happens to their faith once they do. Anyone in any sort of ministry should read this article -- and probably should read Jamieson's book of the same title. I actually first learned about Jamieson's work from Rachel Cunliffe.

This is my first-ever AKMA link. AKMA notes that a blogless friend and his pals "have discovered the joys of electronic translation games." They're keying song lyrics in English into an online translation tool, translating them into German, and then back to English. Here's what happens when you do that to lyrics, such as the first lines of U2's "When I Look at the World":

The original:

When you look at the world
What is it that you see
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees

Becomes, when put through the Babelfish wringer:

If you regard the world, which it is that you see people to find all kinds things which get it to their knees

Taken another level (from English-to-German-to-English and then to French and back to English again), it becomes:

If you consider the world, that it is that you see people to find all the things of kinds which obtain it with their knees

I don't know what the point of that exercise was, but it gave me an excuse to link to AKMA. And isn't that enough? (Dean Peters would probably disagree. But he'll do anything for a link.)

And now, a legitimate link for Dean Peters. Dean's blog, this blog, Stephen Shields' Faithmaps blog and Holy Weblog! were featured on Youthchurch.com. Hope it doesn't go to our heads.

:: Andrew 08:58 + ::
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