Great moments in journalism, part two. You've seen the blog, now read the interview with Jordon Cooper. The guy is a ruthless and tenacious interviewer! :-)
:: Andrew 17:12 + ::
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I now have a comment form. So please use it! Thank you, YACCS.
:: Andrew 17:04 + ::
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Great moments in journalism, part one. I swear, my sides were hurting after I read If the Passover Story Were Reported by The New York Times or CNN. The United States is demanding that Moses and Aaron, the Jewish leaders, continue to negotiate with Pharaoh. While Moses points out that Pharaoh had made promise after promise to free the Jewish people only to immediately break them and thereafter impose harsher and harsher slavery, Richard Boucher of the State Department assails the latest offensive. I love it! Link via Holy Weblog!
:: Andrew 14:33 + ::
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Good news. Ugly church websites, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, Dictionaraoke, Christian ghetto blasters and more -- it's all in today's edition of my fabulous newsletter.
:: Andrew 10:00 + ::
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:: Thursday, May 23, 2002 ::
Oh, the links I'll post. Former SNL cast member (or did he ever make full "cast member" status) Al Franken has written another book, and The New York Times reports about it (registration required; sorry but that's the Times for you). Among Franken's observations: Religion is "a crutch". Wow. That's some new thinking, now, isn't it? Way to go out on a limb, Al. (As the Times reports, Jesse Ventura had already made that observation.)
Open-source spirituality. Len Sweet says the big spiritual battle being waged these days is the battle between open-source and closed-source spirituality. (Or did he say open systems vs. closed systems? Same difference.) Oprah is an example of open-source spirituality at work. The church is the closed system.
:: Andrew 07:42 + ::
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:: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 ::
No nudes here. Sorry to disappoint the folks who found my blog by Googling for Christina Silvas nude or "Christina Silvas" image picture. (Thanks for boosting my site traffic, though.) If you really want to know what she looks like (fully clothed), here she is.
:: Andrew 08:05 + ::
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:: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 ::
1,000 maniacs? Woo-de-hoo! This blog got its thousandth hit sometime today. (It was unbeknownst to me, however, as I and the rest of campus was coping with an outage of MORENet. A thousand hits and I'm still not on blogdex? What's up with that?
Numbers game. Before I become too overjoyed about the throngs of visitors to this site, I need to stop and ponder for a moment the plight of King David. He got obsessed with numbers and growth, so he ordered a census. The results were not good.
Now what's wrong with conducting a little census every now and then? Just an occasional head count to see how many fighting men are at one's disposal? For that matter, what's wrong with checking the site meter to see how many Netizens are visiting the blog, and from where? I think it has to do with our obsession with measuring things -- and our obsession with bigness. Nearly every church wants church growth. Regular churches long to be megachurches, and megachurches become minitowns (New York Times registration required), where the average attendee can easily blend in, hidden among the crowds of spiritual shoppers -- and where, according to this article, it "is possible to eat, shop, go to school, bank, work out, scale a rock-climbing wall and pray there, all without leaving the grounds." (Link via Random Trout.
Megachurches aren't communities; they're small cities. This is something Chuck Smith Jr. hit on at Search Party.
Speaking of communities...
Scientists study how online communities form. Interesting MSNBC story about research into how various online communities coalesce and connect, and possible applications in the offline world. The article discusses the weblogging phenomenon and quotes Gary Flake of the NEC Research Institute, who says blogging is “the next logical step" in the development of online communities but adds: "while it is certainly changing the topology of the Web in measurable ways, I don’t think that this is necessarily a paradigm shift." The story also includes a link to a graphical presentation of weblogs, which isn't working at the moment but should look pretty cool once it does work.
Crosseyed and painless. Proofing the magazine this afternoon, I cranked up the Talking Heads, Remain in Light. A great snippet of lyrics from the "Crosseyed and Painless" track offers a lovely postmodern critique of the modernist concept of objectivity:
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
Even way back in the early '80s, while I was studying journalism and learning about the supposed objectivity of the journalist as impartial observer, I was listening to the Heads. While J-School was conditioning me and other wannabe journalists to carry on the farcical tradition of objectivity in reporting, David Byrne and company were speaking to me about the truth of "facts." I think those lyrics speak to me even more today.
:: Andrew 15:24 + ::
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The stripper's daughter can go back to school. CNN reports that the 5-year-old daughter of Christina Silvas, a single mom who dances in the nude at a place called Gold Club Centerfolds, can return to the private school from which she was expelled because of her mother's line of work. Earlier, the church running the kindergarten expelled the girl over disapproval of her mother's dancing. Some interesting commentary on the story comes from Salon: So compelling, so biblical is the story of Christina Silvas that the media (one of the mysterious ways) has chosen to tell it, and suddenly, the 4,000 members of the Capital Christian Center, reportedly one of the largest Assemblies of God in the country, are not so much the judges as the judged. And from Mitch Albon of the Detroit Free Press: If you don't approve of a mother's work, fine. Counsel her, speak to her, try to convince her every time you see her that she could do better. But don't kick out her innocent daughter. ... At the very least, acknowledge the mother for wanting a more ethical environment for her child.
:: Andrew 20:16 + ::
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Basic blogging. I've spent much of the morning in a Myers-Briggs personality workshop with a dozen other folks from work. But as an INTP, I can only take so much interaction before I need to collapse in my office chair and re-energize with a bit of solitude and contemplation. And if solitude and contemplation cannot be found, a bit of basic blogging can help.
Blogging about blogs. About a week ago, Aaron sent me this article about the difference between a blog and an online journal. It all boils down to whether the work is externally focused or internally focused: "a traditional weblog is focused outside the author and his or her site. A web journal, conversely, looks inward." Not sure where that leaves me and this site. Maybe it's a blournal. Or a jog.
More about blogging. The author of the journey wants to know why we blog. So go to his site and answer him.
The greatest Sci-Fi movies ever, from Wired.
We built this city on gays and rock and roll. If cities are to remain economically viable, they need two things: gays and rock bands. Link via Daily Vexation.
So much for copy-proof CDs. From Reuters comes this report, headlined "Copy-proof" CDs cracked with 99-cent marker pen: Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music's elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disk with a felt-tip marker. Link via blogdex.
Roger Wilco. I'm really getting hooked on Wilco's new CD, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. (Especially "Heavy Metal Drummer," a song that's really gotten its hooks in me. Must be the nostalgia of that song. It takes me back to the '70s of my youth: I miss the innocence I've known/playing KISS covers, beautiful and (censored)) Maybe this article helps to explain why: Wilco, according to my Webster's New World College Dictionary, is radiotelephony code for "I will comply with your request." Yet last year, when Reprise execs ordered the celebrated alt-country band Wilco to normalize their electronically eccentric new album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the band reprised the classic John Cleese line: "Can do—but won't!" The result: Reprise defenestrated Wilco, its fellow Warner Bros. label Nonesuch scooped up the band, massed choirs of rebel-friendly critics sang hosannas, first-week sales approximately tripled Wilco's previous sales, Grammys beckon, and the ruckus boosted this summer's forthcoming movie I Am Trying To Break Your Heart about the making of the album.
More on Search Party. What Is Church? posts some thoughtful comments about Search Party 2002. I promise to post more about the conference as well.
:: Andrew 14:32 + ::
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:: Monday, May 20, 2002 ::
Bye, Jeff and Crystal. We said goodbye to Jeff and Crystal during youth meeting Sunday night. After spending more than a year living with a family from our church, they are leaving foster care and returning to their mother in a small town in southeast Missouri. Jeff is 14 and Crystal is 12. We had a nice little going-away party for them. A few of the teens got together Sunday afternoon to make posters, banners and balloons for them. Several of the kids were sad about the party, though. They had established strong friendships, and a true community with Jeff and Crystal. About a dozen of our teens regularly work together in the spring and summer in weekend tent revivals in local trailer parks. That's where they really have forged bonds. Church meetings have been ancillary to that process. The strongest bonds were formed outside of the church activities -- working with the tent ministry, coming together in homes, and so on. I'm thinking more and more about Andrew Jones' Search Party comments about the party outside the institution known as church.
:: Andrew 07:29 + ::
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Hypocrisy, thy name is Andrew. So I lay down all this smack about how we Christians need to escape the ghetto. Yet I haven't changed the links of this blog one bit. Give me time. No need for radical discontinuity here. I'm also not planning to discontinue my blogroll of mainly Christian blogs, but add some diversity to the mix. I haven't yet figured out how to do that. But I do need these Christian blogs. As one commentator on my recent rant explained, "I need especially the online spaces to ask questions and meet people who are not hard work to talk to."
I agree with him. The life of a disciple of Jesus is one of dynamic tension -- of being in the world but not of it. We have a dual citizenship.
For anyone wanting some different perspectives about Search Party 2002, check out Palmer's entries, or Alan Creech's. I met Palmer and Alan at SP02. Great guys.
New look for an old book. The Bible Gateway has a new look. Much improved.
:: Andrew 09:56 + ::
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Simon Dawes, 
