Liveblogging -- Fans of John Piper will want to check out Tim Challies and Doug McHone this weekend as they live-blog the Desiring God National Conference.
Blog Bubble -- Chances are that you've never heard of Luxist, Slashfood, Card Squad, or the other 82 blogs that comprise Weblogs, Inc. But apparantly someone (or somebot) is generating the 30 million(!) page views the sites generate each month. AOL is so impressed that they are reportedly paying $25 million for this bundle of obscure blogs. That kind of money can buy a lot of bandwidth.
If this is the direction that blogging is heading I suggest we start selling out while the selling is good. If the 85 sites in Weblogs is worth $25 million then The Church Directory, with 255 blogs that most people have also never heard of, should be able to get at least $10 mill (a cool $40,000 per blogger). Maybe those of us who missed out on the last Internet bubble can get in on this one before it burst.
The Subculture War -- Marla Swoffer says that that, "There's been a lot of talk about the culture war, but a similar polarization is being mirrored in evangelical christendom." She draws an interestingly amusing chart describing the two sides of the subculture war, with the Retros (Rural, Conservative, Calvinist, PC-users) on one side and the Metros (Urban, Liberal, Arminian, Mac-lovers) on the other.
Evangelical Ecology --Polluters will have to answer to God, not just government, says green evangelical leader Richard Cizik in an intriguing interview with Grist Magazine. Hopefully, evangelicals will soon realize that enviromental concerns are at least as important as fretting over gay marriage. Marriage, after all, isn't the only thing worth protecting.
GodBlogCon Update -- For those who don't want to spend the $100 registration fee for the entire conference, Biola is opening the Friday evening session with Hugh Hewitt, John Mark Reynolds, Tod Bolsinger, and Mark Roberts to the general public. Advance tickets are $10, while tickets are $15 at the door. There is now a Saturday only price of $35. (See the Registration page for more details.)
The Bible in Public -- Tom Berg from Mirror of Justice -- an excellent blog dedicated to Catholic legal theory -- has a fascinating quote from evangleical historian Mark Noll prescribing how to use the Bible in public life:
Premise 1: [T]he Bible is true for all people in all times and in all places.
Premise 2: Therefore, the Bible can never be the possession of only one modern nation or of only one faction within a particular nation.
Premise 3: While everything in the Bible can be construed as political, politics can never exhaust, equal, or contain the message of the Bible.
Implication 1: American society would be immeasurably poorer if it was no longer possible to bring the universal message of Scripture to bear on the particulars of American public life as did Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., with such memorable effect.
Implication 2: Narrow use of the Bible for partisan political advantage violates what the Bible itself says about the dignity of all human beings under God and also what it says about political power as a stewardship bestowed by God for the maintenance of order, the guarantee of justice, and the care of the powerless.
Implication 3: Given the current American situation, the only hope for using the Bible in public life that conforms to the Bible's own message is to employ it humbly, wisely, and on behalf of all people.
1
Must you be a PC user to love the doctrines of grace? I think maybe Ill become an Arminian before I give up my mac.
posted on 10.07.2005 5:16 AM2
the quicker we destroy the earth, the quicker the lord will come. we should be destroying the earth, not saving it!
posted on 10.07.2005 6:46 AM3
For 40,000, I'll gift wrap it for AOL.
I second jake, it is one thing to fret over free will, it is quite another to suggest returning to the dark pre-reformation days of PC and Windows.
It is right though to say "PC-users" and "Mac-lovers" because those who are stuck on a PC merely use the machine and grip, but those of us on a Mac love our sleekly designed hard drives and user friendly applications.
posted on 10.07.2005 8:29 AM4
Aaron,
It is right though to say "PC-users" and "Mac-lovers" because those who are stuck on a PC merely use the machine and grip, but those of us on a Mac love our sleekly designed hard drives and user friendly applications.
That is because you Mac-lovers cling to your Catholic ways while we Protestant PC-users have to work out our own salvation.
posted on 10.07.2005 9:28 AM5
Tommythecat: I see you're trolling again so I'll rise to the bait. I think that the well intentioned of the fledgling biotech industry have a much greater potential to make a mess that only God can straighten out than do polluters.
Also, from my perspective on God it seems unlikely that man can cause a change in the plans of an omniscient and omnipitent God. After all He knows what you're going to do before you do.
6
This selling of blogs...I'd like to know what exactly is being sold:
1 the name and rights to exclusive use of the URL
2. current and archived content
3. a promise of some durability that the blogger will continue to generate near daily postings of a sustained quality and on the topics that have gained the blog its traffic
4. for what period of time does the purchaser aquire any of these things?
#3 amounts to putting a fixed price on an unknown amount of my labor, an idiots career move if I ever saw one.
posted on 10.07.2005 6:49 PM7
Do any of you have the capability to think for yourself??? You've been brainwashed by small minded Bush voting pee-brains. It's not tough to think for yourself...all you have to do is grow a sack, and be a good person...you don't have to follow all the fiction that's been shoved down your throat your entire lives...religion kills...why do you think those jerkoffs in the middle east slammed the twin towers...religion...they believe things that may or may not be! These are just my beliefs, so if you're influenced by this as well...you're totally weak, and need to start thinking for yourself!
Religion is for the weak...or should I say meak!?