Category: What’s Going On Right Now

This is the almost Daylight Savings Time edition. Don’t forget to spring your clocks forward Saturday night before bed!

• At Northeastern University in Boston, a small minority of students protested adding a Chick-fil-A to campus and the student senate nixed the deal. Just another in a long line of “tolerance” activists being completely intolerant of biblical Christian values.
• Florida State grad Sara Blakely is the youngest woman on the Forbes billionaires list. You go, girl.
• Carolyn Weber writes about seeing Shakespeare as a sort of Psalmist. I posited that opinion in a college class years ago and was told the professor wasn’t familiar enough with psalms to know if I was right. Hm.
• I’ve been spending a good amount of time thinking about “getting the right people on the bus” lately (including figuring out whether I’d like to take opportunities to get on others’ buses or drive my own). Alison Green, Ask A Manager herself, writes about five interview practices to hire superstars.
• International Women’s Day was yesterday (I know; ptooie). On the Girls Gone Wise blog, Mary Kassian wrote a post calling all men and talking about how we have to stop feminizing the world. Amen, and worth a read.

Okay, are you ready? There’s little fluff and much substance in this week’s batch of links. I’d love to have some great conversation, in the comments or in person, about these topics…

• Life has a photo gallery called “Taboo then, typical now” that will make you miss the good ol’ days (or not, in some cases).

 

• Feminists, who I’d almost forgotten are still an organized group, are now holding events called Slutwalk, where women march barely clothed in order to reclaim the word ‘slut’. Makes me wish they weren’t still an organized group.

 

• USA Today pokes at media coverage lately, asking when college became just a way to land a fat job. Whatever happened to learning? (I actually think the higher education system happened to learning, but that’s another story.)

 

• Along those lines, on Front Porch Republic Jason Peters writes about a Trojan Horse in “Higher” Education.

 

• Seth Godin writes about the game theory of discovery and the birth of free-gap. He argues that using free products and services as a discovery tool will soon be less viable, and speculates on what model could come next.

 

• A recent McKinsey Quarterly survey has found that 30% of employers will stop offering health care coverage to their employees when the full provisions of the “health care reform bill” (aka Obamacare) kick in. That is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg; it’s hard to measure how many employers, especially small businesses, are holding off hiring because they don’t know what it will cost them to do so.

 

• Finally, Tony Woodlief has a great article in Image about how bad theology leads to bad Christian art. If you’re interested in discussing Christianity and the arts on an ongoing basis, head over to Terry Yount’s new blog Kulture Kafe and jump in.

Am I the only one who wonders how it can be June already?!

My iPhone’s browser crashed yesterday and lost some of the links I was saving for today. That’ll teach me not to bookmark ’em 😛

• On the Girls Gone Wise blog Mary Kassian discusses why female beauty matters for Christians.
• We were made to labor. On the Ligonier blog Richard Phillips writes about work, identity, and the effect of sin.
• Mark Bittman, the New York Times food writer, has an essay on how cooking gave him purpose. It’s how he cares for his family, and those of you who can’t cook will enjoy seeing his four stages of learning to cook.
• Do you have a Kindle yet? WHY NOT? The Kindle edition of John Piper’s latest book, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God, is on sale for $2.99. {Amazon Affiliate link}
• Speaking of, here’s how to get free Christian Kindle books.
• Seth Godin gives helpful tips on how to be interviewed by the press.
• Challies’ Reading Classics Together has restarted, reading Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism this month. {Amazon Affiliate link} Join in!
• I’ve been wanting to re-read The Lord of the Rings for a couple years. It’s not going to be in 2011 since narratives of that magnitude don’t fit well into reading 100 books this year, but in 2012 I’m definitely going to! On Front Porch Republic Mark T. Mitchell discusses the beauty of Tolkien’s quest.
• Happy I’ve been giving my friends all the right advice over the years, here’s a great point-by-point for job hunters on how to write a resume that gets the interview.

• “It was too much, really. It’s one thing to titillate progressive theatergoers with scenes of physical abuse and psychological torture and lines like “You’re f—ing f—ed.” But David Mamet had at last gone too far. He’d turned into a f—ing Republican.” Read this fantastic piece on converting David Mamet in the Weekly Standard.
• I’ve often had to explain why I love LOST so much, and this post does a great job of getting at some of the reasons: The Six Year Journey to WTF?!
  
• Did you know the USDA has finally revised their cooking temperature recommendations? You now officially only have to cook whole meat to 145 degrees. Finally I can quit explaining to my non-cooking friends why yes, it really is okay to eat pink pork. 🙂
• There’s a lot of psychology in sales and marketing, and you need to stay alert, know how to bargain, when, and the real value of your finds. Here’s a great post on when a discount isn’t really a discount.
• Fabs writes a great post on when saying less is saying more with advice from the great C. S. Lewis himself, who was a succinct, excellent and very prolific writer.
• The Gospel Coalition blog had a great post on why nostalgia is no solution; in the recent batch of TV shows depicting the 50s and 60s, we must remember that while feminism has done damage, objectification of women wasn’t biblical either.
• If you’re a new freelancer, Jennette Fulda has pulled together some information and resources from her research as she’s tried to find post-COBRA coverage with a chronic health condition. It’s a good place to kick off your own search and save a little bit of time!

Tim Challies writes about date nights and devotions:

But what if we are missing the point? What if the point of devotions is less about learning about God and more about spending time with God? What if it’s less about Bible study and more about building relational intimacy? What would change about our devotions if instead of trying to learn about God, we focused instead on spending time with God, time spent hearing from him through his Word and speaking to him through prayer?

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Amazon is now selling more Kindle books than print books… hardcover and paperback combined!

For all you photography lovers, here’s the history of Nikon’s first digital camera (in 1988!).

“Even Thor has grown richer through acquaintance with Jesus,” writes Lars Walker in his review of the film.

You’ve already heard the world is ending tomorrow, but have you heard Vladimir Putin is St. Paul? This has been an episode of Really?! With Seth And Amy. 🙂

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides comes out today!

(Moving from spring images to summer ones… I don’t know about where you are, but it was 97 degrees here last week!)

Speaking of, John Piper reminds us to think rightly about summer.

“You are immortal until your work is done” has always been one of my favorite maxims on the sovereignty of God. Fabs writes about famous Christian last words.

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about Ann Voskamp’s bestseller One Thousand Gifts (and some of the controversy that surrounds it). This review about its romantic panentheism is the best and most comprehensive I’ve read. (Found through Everyday Mommy’s blog, where she’s also conducted some great biblical discussion of the book.)

Tim Challies is resurrecting Reading Classics Together, and in June we’ll begin Christianity and Liberalism {Amazon Affiliate link}. Looking forward to it!

It was with sadness last week that I read Presbyterians (PCUSA) have removed celibacy as a requirement for single pastors. I wonder how they think “submitting joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life” allows for this. More here, like “Those attempts to invent new morality look for me like attempts to invent a new religion — a sort of modern paganism.”

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Seth Godin talks about the future of libraries. I agree–mostly– and think the Orange County Library System is doing a great job moving forward. I sure hope they keep all those “dead books”, though!

Continuing a thread of recent posts, over on Front Porch Republic Mark Mitchell writes about the attributes of a gentleman. I hadn’t thought about it before, but among several interesting points he notes that the concept of a gentleman only appears in Christian societies. (That makes sense.)

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I’m looking forward to a week where I can reset my clock a little bit and gather my scattered thoughts. The weekend, Lord willing, brings in sweet time with friends and a beautiful violin recital at Saint Andrew’s.

 

Today is the National Day of Prayer, with the theme A Mighty Fortress is Our God.

The new classic A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World by Paul Miller {Amazon Affiliate link} is available on Kindle for a limited time for free!

Tim Challies is restarting his Reading Classics Together book club on his blog. If you’d like to be involved and have a Christian classic you’ve always meant to read (or one worth reading again), make sure to suggest it in the comments on his post.

It’s recently been announced that the C. S. Lewis classic The Great Divorce will be made into a film.

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My mom is featured as a homeschooling success story on the FPEA website! 🙂

Did you see friends posting the quote “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy” attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. after the death of Bin Laden? Dr. King never said that, as explained in this article on the anatomy of a fake quotation.

My friend Kate and I went to see Atlas Shrugged on Friday, and were amazed we’d seen the same movie as the critics lambasting it. Really. Go see it.

If you weren’t at the George McPhee organ concert on Sunday you missed something really special. All the concerts in the Fine Arts at Saint Andrew’s series have been spectacular. You won’t want to miss any more, so mark these dates on your calendar for the rest of 2011 (and Like us on Facebook while you’re at it)!

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Finally, Mother’s Day is this Sunday. If that takes you by surprise, why not give Mom an Amazon gift card? {Amazon Affiliate link} Let’s face it: you’re running out of time!

 

You can hardly escape coupon-mania due to all the buzz around the TLC show Extreme Couponing. Those stockpiles are a little nuts, but if you’re like me you’re also a little jealous (guilty?) they’re getting household necessities for next to nothing (or in fact nothing)! I don’t know about you, but I don’t have 60 hours  a week to devote to couponing or a spare room to serve as storage facility. Still, it seemed like there were some sound principles at the core of the extremity. I don’t need 250 deoderants just because they’re $.10, but can I get five or six?
A friend pointed me to the awesome site SouthernSavers.com, where someone does the legwork for you! There are lists of deals by store or product type; by under-$1 items and good-stock-up-price lists. You can make printable shopping lists by store right from the lists she gives. All for free!

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Chris Brogan wrote about storefronts, where he discusses how digital marketing coincides with traditional retail sales tactics. A great post to share with those who still don’t understand why they should market online. He also wrote a very practical list of tips for flying. He sounds like me at the airport, which makes me feel good! I can’t think of a tip to add, except to suggest that you buy a Kindle {Amazon Affiliate link}. 🙂

Seth Godin makes a poignant point on the way our economy is changing as a whole:

It takes a long time for a generation to come around to significant revolutionary change. The newspaper business, the steel business, law firms, the car business, the record business, even computers… one by one, our industries are being turned upside down, and so quickly that it requires us to change faster than we’d like.

It’s unpleasant, it’s not fair, but it’s all we’ve got. The sooner we realize that the world has changed, the sooner we can accept it and make something of what we’ve got. Whining isn’t a scalable solution.

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“If you really believe that those who don’t have faith in God will burn in hell for eternity, how much do you have to hate someone not to share the gospel with them?” An atheist (Penn Gillette) tells the story of a man who gave him a Bible.

Gene Veith discusses how a group of atheists is trying to get a chaplain approved for the military. I’m all for it. We already have Buddhist, Muslim, and other types of chaplains. Of course atheism is a religion. Faith in “chance” (the Big Bang, etc.) is definitely a religion. I’d much rather them be recognized this way than always trying to pretend (like in the school system) atheism is the lack of a religion when in fact it probably requires more faith than the rest of them put together.

Jennette Fulda wrote a great review of Wendy McClure’s new book The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie {Amazon Affiliate link}:

Know that those places you visit might seem smaller because you’ve become bigger. Sometimes you have to go there, though. Sometimes you need to know where you came from so you can better see where you are and who you love.

The CHOW blog did a great post on the recipes found in a handwritten cookbook from 1889.

Gene Veith posted some of a piece Sally Kohn wrote in the Washington Post. He sums it up:

She concludes that the problem is that liberals are just basically good tolerant people, while conservatives are mean.  Liberals, she argues, need to stop being tolerant of conservatives.

The rest of this week will be posts related to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. The Resurgence blog tells some of the history behind our traditions– Since When Did Bunnies Have Eggs?