Random

FISH CAN BE SCARY! I once had a fish jump into my lap when I was floating down the Salt River in an inner-tube. I remember thinking that my heart was going to jump out of my chest.
DRC: Urban farming takes root ~ link

I THINK THE answer is fairly obvious. The reason that kangaroos produce less methane gas is because they bounce (that's what roos do). If we could figure out how to make cows bounce we could eliminate global warming altogether. ~ GlobalPost

HATE CRIME against Native Americans ~ link

SOME PEOPLE ARE going to worry over this: "...for the first time, there are more non-white babies than white babies in America." But it's really a global trend -- population shifts, declining birth rates among affluent white people... ~ link

I'VE ORDERED copies of the Parable of the Dancing God by C. Baxter Kruger to include in our MasterPiece Church visitor gift packets. I'm excited to find a booklet that has a lot of narrative, is blblically solid, and which presents Jesus in a way that should free a lot of oppressed minds. It is also available online as a .pdf.

"THE VERY MEN that worried about becoming the slaves of ol’ King George, perpetuated the worst system of slavery in the world!" ~ Kurt Willems

AREN'T PRISON TENTS in which the inside temperature is 130° considered "cruel and unusual punishment?" ~ link

PLEASE "LIKE" ME! What do you think? Does Neil Strauss nail it or is he over-reacting a bit? --

...As a result, we can now search not just for information, merchandise and kitten videos on the Internet, but for approval. 

Just as stand-up comedians are trained to be funny by observing which of their lines and expressions are greeted with laughter, so too are our thoughts online molded to conform to popular opinion by these buttons. A status update that is met with no likes (or a clever tweet that isn't retweeted) becomes the equivalent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewritten. And so we don't show our true selves online, but a mask designed to conform to the opinions of those around us. 

Conversely, when we're looking at someone else's content—whether a video or a news story—we are able to see first how many people liked it and, often, whether our friends liked it. And so we are encouraged not to form our own opinion but to look to others for cues on how to feel. 

"Like" culture is antithetical to the concept of self-esteem, which a healthy individual should be developing from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Instead, we are shaped by our stats, which include not just "likes" but the number of comments generated in response to what we write and the number of friends or followers we have. I've seen rock stars agonize over the fact that another artist has far more Facebook "likes" and Twitter followers than they do. 

Because it's so easy to medicate our need for self-worth by pandering to win followers, "likes" and view counts, social media have become the métier of choice for many people who might otherwise channel that energy into books, music or art—or even into their own Web ventures. ~ Nil Strauss in the WSJ

"DO YOU THINK I speak this strongly in order to manipulate crowds? Or curry favor with God? Or get popular applause? If my goal was popularity, I wouldn't bother being Christ's slave." ~ Galatians 1:10 (MSG)