Random

• CT has an insightful interview with Daniel Radosh, a secular NY Jew who spent a year observing Christian pop culture and then wrote the book In Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture. Apparently it's not all as bad as he thought it would be. ~ Link

• Speaking of Christian pop schlock (and I'm not commenting on the poem itself -- just the cheesy way that it has been marketed), two families are in court arguing over the authorship of the anonymous "Footprints in the Sand" poem. I'm sure Jesus is pretty pleased about that. ~ Link

• A new article in Nature says that photosynthesis occurs at a fairly consistent temperature of about 21°C (70°F). Somehow the leaves maintain that temperature. How does that happen -- especially in places like Guam where the night time temperature never drops more than a degree or so below 76°? I'm not sure that I really get it -- perhaps someone with a more developed scientific mind can explain how the plants air condition themselves to get down to 70°. ~ Nature Link | NPR Link

• The world's population is expected to hit the 7 billion mark in 2012 -- four years from now. We were 6 billion in 1999 -- 13 years to add a billion people. India is expected to surpass China as the most populous country. ~ Link

As I see it, there are only two ways to slow things down -- educate women and address the issues surrounding poverty. I know -- "simplistic" -- but the reality is that the population grows the fastest in places where women are under-educated and people are poor.

• I continue to see references to the archaeological discovery of the "world's first church." Whether that discovery is what the experts think it is will probably be debated for some time. I'd like to suggest, though, that since the church is people rather than a building -- something which the early church clearly understood -- that they are confusing the place where the church might have gathered with the church itself. There is nothing wrong with church's having buildings -- the problem comes when we start to think of the buildings as churches. It changes the whole way that we approach the mission.