Dan Reid’s post on Mike Bird’s book with the pithy title is also worth a look (and Mike’s comment): Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission, and His Message.

Scot, thanks for posting about the virtual party. It seems to me we could all be inspired by the genius of Shinabarger in pairing pleasure and community with doing good.

On the Broder piece, as I’ve watched the first month of this new administration, that great line from Apollo 13 keeps coming to mind: “Let’s work the problem people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing.”
I feel like I’m on a distressed airplane. The crew is punching all the buttons on the panel hoping something works. I’m all but convinced their actions are making things worse and they are taking us down to disaster. But as a passenger, I’m praying I’m wrong.

#3 Me
I meant Brooks, not Broder.

We could make the death penalty cheaper if we cut out all the appeals — which is a tongue in cheek way of pointing out that it’s expensive because we take such care to make sure we don’t execute the innocent.
Someone pointed out the other day that right not capital punishment appeals get a priority in the courts and, if we take away the death penalty, the innocent are actually more likely to spend the rest of their days in prison.
Not an argument; just food for thought.

Re toll of abuse:
If love constitutes life, the un-love will take life apart- on all levels.
In my work as a transcriptionist for a cancer specialist, I see a very high correlation of younger women (under age 50) with breast or uterine cancer with social situations including physical abuse, divorce, common-law relationships, therapeutic abortions, and substance abuse. I asked my doctor client about this. He agreed with me, and said that studies are not likely to be done with current patients (the one referenced in this post was done after the people had already committed suicide) because the whole thing is so subjective and therefore unquantifiable.
Dana

Nice that you’re noticing a lot of Facebook/Twitter online commenting stuff now. I’m obviously really stuck on this. I think I’m just surprised by the consistent maledictions toward social media… when it seems so obvious to me that media theory predicts that the way we use this stuff today is hardly the way it’ll be used in the coming years…
All that to say… that Death of Facebook article by Brett McCracken is another example that makes me wonder why I feel like the one Christian marching to a different drummer on this…

I, too, feel frustrated about the way the facebook articles have been handled lately. I thought it was especially strange that the Relevant article was written by someone who had never liked or used facebook. It seems like good journalism would supply an author who had experience and objectivity for such an article.
I wrote this in response to relevant article, as I felt his article was a contention for humanity yet dehumanizing in the process.
sigh.
Why does Relevant feel so sarcastic these days?
My article (that I’m sure you never have time to chase down):
http://joiningtheconversation.blogspot.com/2009/02/death-of-facebook-authors-come-to-life.html
no big deal. but i felt like it should be no.big.deal.
(P.S. Stay at home moms have a totally different facebook experience. Especially those in deep winter climates. that’s an article in itself.)