I’m trying to play catch up from link postings. Since I normally post these on Saturday, this is a couple of days late. Nevertheless, here are some links I found very interesting over the past few days. Again, my disclaimer – I don’t necessarily agree with all that is within these links. They do, however, make for interesting read and discussion. Enjoy!
Is the Internet replacing our own memory?
When you rely on having information stored somewhere, you may be less likely to remember it yourself.
“We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where information can be found,” the study authors write.
But before you freak out about machines doing all your remembering for you, consider that people have always relied on each other for retrieving information, even before computers.
The Handwriting Is on the Wall
State officials recently announced that Indiana schools will no longer be required to teach children to write longhand, so that students can focus on typing. This is because writing by hand is so very–well, so very 4000 B.C. to A.D. 2010. We have now entered a new era: A.H., After Handwriting.
Cultural Expectations
Basic to our missiology are the concepts of cultural norms and expectations. Every culture has pre-determined ways to think about and interact with different kinds of outsiders. Everyone has their place. In a global city, for example, some outsiders are the scapegoats. These are usually a lower-status immigrant group that takes the blame for all of society’s ills. These cultural norms tend to be built around social stereotypes, and when an outsider doesn’t behave as expected, he doesn’t fit the pigeonhole. This can be seen as good or bad, but it’s always remarkable.
But blending in isn’t always our goal. As Jesus-followers, there’s a time to blend in and a time to stand out.
1950?s Philco TV Inspired Computer
Here is a computer design, inspired by the 1950?s Philco television. This looks so awesome! I wonder if it comes in Apple!
Dear Church: Read the Cursive Writing On the Wall
The Indiana State Department of Education now allows individual schools to decide whether or not to continue teaching cursive or completely stop teaching it altogether.
So what has become ‘cursive writing’ in the Church?
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The Confessions of a Cage Figher: Masculinity, Misogyny, and the Fear of Losing Control
A former cage fighter turned divinty student considers MMA on its own terms. He takes its self-descriptions at face value, attempting a sympathetic reading of MMA.
In doing so he engages selections from The Confessions of Saint Augustine in order to ground his sympathetic reading of MMA theologically. By putting MMA in conversation with the Bishop of Hippo, he hopes it will become clear that the sport does not shore up the particular notion of masculinity that Mark Driscoll and others like him imagine it does.
Homoerotic Churches
It is ironic that the churches and pastors who are touting MMA are doing so in order to inject some masculinity into American Christianity. What they seem to be missing – or maybe just what they refuse to admit – is that they’ve chosen the one sport on the American scene that is highly sexually charged. And the sexuality in MMA is not hetero.