I confess that my shoulders ache all the time. I confess that it seems to be worse in the winter than the summer. I tell myself it has something to do with how much I run but have no idea if running could cause shoulder pain, and I think I’m only telling myself that to avoid the reality that stuff just hurts when you are getting old. I confess that my friend Randy made it another week as a sober... Read more
This is one of the more creative videos I’ve seen this year. Jimmy Fallon takes it upon himself to help prove definitively 2) that Mariah Carey doesn’t need auto-tune (and if my voice sounded that good I’d never stop singing), and 2) that he has no rhythm. Holy cow. Anyway, watch and enjoy and maybe it will be stuck in your head, too. Read more
A little Friday Funny from the ever-hilarious Harvard Sailing Team. Read more
If you are buying a gift for a book lover this year I have some ideas. The obvious ideas – e-readers and such – I won’t bother with because you know all about them. But, there are also a lot of readers who have a very specialized set of needs when it comes to book gear. Often students, pastors, writers and folks have multiple books open at once and need their hands free to write or type at the same... Read more
The Fix‘s Chris Natalie Jennings and Sean Sullivan made a call to readers to submit their favorite presidential biography. Then they compiled a list containing the best one or two biographies on all 43 U.S. presidents. How fun would it be to start with Washington and read one biography on each president through Obama? I think it would be such a more effective way to read presidential biographies instead of picking and choosing here and there (Although you’d have to suffer... Read more
If Texas split into 5 smaller states they would be named: North Texas, South Texas, East Texas, West Texas, and Austin. That is so true! This is a great 3 minute video explaining why Texas can’t secede from the union. I love how they play up the Texas / California rivalry; California’s hideous flag, Texas’s pathological need to be the biggest at everything. Funny and informative: who could as for anything more? Read more
One of the occupational hazards of ministry is the increased exposure to other people’s pain. Not that ministry is any more painful than any other profession, but like an x-ray tech is exposed to more radiation than normal, ministry exposes one to a lot of pain. If I’ve learned anything in the past 23 years of ministry, it is this: Everyone I know is in pain… this means you, and me, too. Pain comes to us in an infinite number of... Read more
I confess that I am bothered by the inclusion of pedestrian tweets and Facebook status updates in the category of “news.” Those things might be news coming from a public figure or an expert, but when the anchor says, “John from Hiawatha says…” it feels out of place to me; forced; as though they are trying too hard to be relevant. I confess that I think relevancy is overrated and might be a dangerous thing toward which to direct our... Read more
I’ve never even heard of the BS Report with Bill Simmons from ESPN radio. I have no idea how he got Nate Silver to open up like he did (they are both sports numbers guys and talk like they are friends), but this interview was amazing. For one thing, Silver went off about Politico, (without mentioning Dylan Byers). His long quote is below. It’s a similar critique to what John Stewart always makes of 24 hour cable news, but still... Read more
I read the news for about an hour this morning, taking in everything I could read on the status of negotiations regarding the fiscal cliff. My up front disclaimer is that I’m chiefly concerned with theology and ethics, not government, but I really enjoy reading about policy. Nevertheless, as a Christian and a pastor my chief concern is that we live out our faith in Jesus Christ, and bear witness to the leaders of the nation in which we live... Read more
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