:: Friday, May 31, 2002 ::
afk. I probably won't be blogging much this first week of June, as I'll be spending my days with some 15-20 teens and a few adults working on painting a homeless shelter. If I decide I miss the Net too much, I'm sure I'll log on and post something.
:: Andrew 12:08 + ::
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Looking for Christina Silvas nude? Check this out instead.
:: Andrew 11:03 + ::
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:: Thursday, May 30, 2002 ::
Mama's got a brand new gig. Ex-stripper Christina Silvas, whose 5-year-old daughter was kicked out of a Christian school because of mom's job, has found a new source of income. Posing nude for a certain popular men's magazine " is the American dream for a woman," she says. (Thanks to this story, traffic to this blog has increased manifold since garnering its 1,000th visit on May 22.)
:: Andrew 10:54 + ::
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Egg on my face. My apologies to John Hiler, who, in his recent blogosphere article, really did credit Bill Quick for coining that now-ubiquitous term (ubiquitous, at least, on this site over the past 48 hours). I think I'll leave the wordsmithing to the seasoned professionals and go back to whatever it is that I do best. :-)
John (may I call you John, Mr. Hiler?) even paid a visit to this site and posted a comment. Very cool.
:: Andrew 18:53 + ::
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Yet another new blog word. Say hello to blogonomics. Matt Welch is credited with coining the term. Someone oughta catalog all these blogterms into some sort of blog lexicon. Oh, wait! There's already a blogicon. And just when I was getting ready to coin my very own blogword. Hmmm...how about blexicon?
On an unrelated note... I finally printed out The Manual (PDF file) and am looking forward to a bit of offline reading.
:: Andrew 10:30 + ::
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:: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 ::
Freakinophobia. I'm amazed at the coarsening of our language these days. For example: Last night in our teen Bible study, a couple of teens nonchalantly tossed around the adjective freakin' in our discussions of scripture. I ask them not to use that word, and they roll their eyes or look at me as though I'm from another planet. (Or maybe, from another generation.) Gramps has got his Depends in freakin' a wad again...
On Monday, when I went to see Star Wars: Episode II, I was exposed to the euphemistic f-word yet again when the trailer for the next Austin Powers movie, Goldmember, came up: He is brilliant! He is deadly! And he's still surrounded by freakin' idiots! Now I'm no prude, but I've never been too turned on by coarse or vulgar language, especially when it does nothing to aid in the communication. (I have to admit, however, that intro to the Goldmember trailer was pretty funny, and wouldn't have worked without the f-word.) In my conversations, I try to adhere to Ephesians 4:29 and Psalm 19:14.
More on the blogosphere. According to this piece by John Weidner, the term blogosphere was coined by Bill Quick of DailyPundit, whose blog, for some reason, isn't loading on my browser this morning. (Update: The site now loads, and Quick's blogosphere entry is here.) Thanks to Bene Diction at MartinRothOnline.com for tracking down the info.
:: Andrew 08:34 + ::
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:: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 ::
Today's word: blogosphere. In yesterday's article, John Hiler of Microcontent News claims to be "introducing the blogosphere" to readers. Not so fast, bub. I found a blogosphere reference way back when. Google finds about 2,330 references to the word. But for the life of me, I can't find a really good definition. (Although the first link in today's entry comes close.) The folks at NetLingo don't have a definition. (Heck, they don't even have an entry for "blog" in their lexicon. What gives?) Webopedia, too, has no definition for blogosphere. Even the follks at Wired Style have yet to define it. What is the blogosphere? Update: In keeping with contemporary Christianity's desire to maintain a parallel universe with the secular world, there is apparently an evangelical blogosphere.
:: Andrew 08:31 + ::
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The Gamma sorority. The latest Newsweek has a fascinating package of stories about today's American teenage girls: the alphas (the popular ones), betas (wannabes) and gamma girls. According to this article, gamma girls are confident, poised, athletic, and cool in their own way -- without having to be one of the popular cheerleader types. "Blessed with confidence and self-knowledge, gammas are equipped to shrug off the social pressure to experiment. Drug use is more of a joke than a temptation."
The package of articles is a fascinating sociological study of one particular southern California high school. But too often the categorizations fall into caricatures. The popular girl is an updated version of the Valley Girl, complete with sentences that always end with a question mark. For example, there's Wendi, the archetype alpha girl for this story. "As part of a crowd proud of being 'cute and bratty,' she boasts of their image. Which is? 'Most of us are, like, blonde. When we walk into a room we let people know that we're there. We always have to look so cute. We match. We wear cool stuff? Like skirts and capris? We all have cute cars?'"
I suppose we have the Midwest's version of alphas, betas and gammas among the youth in our group. But fortunately, very few fit the alpha or beta modes as portrayed in this article. I think it might be more a California thing than anything else. Newsweek might want to consider a story about high school life here in the hinterlands.
:: Andrew 18:44 + ::
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Extended rant. With the encouragement of several, I decided to expand my earlier rant about clergy's view of cyberspace into a full-blown article, which is now online in the most recent issue of Next Wave (along with a lot of other good reading). I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.
:: Andrew 07:57 + ::
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Simon Dawes, 
