Tuesday we looked at how the top 10 consumer product companies. Wednesday was a look at the top 6 broadcasting companies. Today is a snapshot of the banking industry. Over the past two decades in particular, the top U.S. banks have been buying smaller banks. In the 2008 financial crisis these banks were deemed “too big to fail,” thus they were a part of a $14 trillion buyout. The graphic above shows the trajectory of how big banks have become... Read more

Yesterday we explored the 10 companies that make most of the products we use on a daily basis. Today I want to show a snapshot of how the media companies have been changing over the past few decades, using this interesting infographic.  Some interesting facts from the Graphic are: In 1983, 90% of American Media was owned by 50 different companies Today, 90% of American Media is owned by 6 companies GE, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS, and News Corp... Read more

There is a pretty interesting graphic making its way around the internet right now, showing the hundreds of corporations and brands that are owned by just a few central companies. It’s pretty amazing to think that nearly every consumer product you buy traces back to just a handful of parent corporations. These enormous corporations are now considered to be “people” by the federal government. This means that they can give unlimited amounts of cash to politicians who are running for... Read more

The Kingdom of God is like taking a ride on the Copenhagen Subway, and the Copenhagen Philharmonic breaks out into Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt. Yes… it is! Read more

I confess that our family friend Jenny Hutchinson (Thompson), is in surgery at KU Med right now donating her kidney to a little boy named Hayden. I confess that I believe her act of kindness is an example of how normal everyday people can push back the darkness by imitating the life of Christ. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.” (John 15:13). I confess that on this day, Jenny Hutchinson has... Read more

Here’s an interesting little segment from NPR this week – 10 things you won’t hear at commencement… I’m resonating with some of what this author is talking about. It will do your soul some good to listen: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/02/151867383/the-ten-things-you-wont-hear-at-commencement Read more

A few months ago I ran into Don Chaffer at Conception Abbey. While we were catching up on what we were into at the time, Don started telling me about his work on musical theater projects. I knew Don from years of running into each other on the road w/our respective bands. Moreover, I’d never known what the process of writing and producing a musical was like. Don taught me that writers and producers of plays and musicals run a... Read more

One of the unique side-effects of No Child Left Behind has been the notorious necessity of “teaching to the test.” Parents, administrators, teachers, and students all seem to disdain this lamentable practice. This week I read an interesting blog post by Adam Kotsko who notes another and perhaps even more important problem with the way our entire culture views education. Kotsko has his Phd. and teaches at a unique liberal arts college called Shimer College. Kotsko is a unique talent.... Read more

On her program Fresh Air, Terry Gross conducted a fascinating interview with Pulitzer Prize winning author Steve Coll. He’s written a new book called Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power which is about ExxonMobil & how they wield power in the world. Coll describes how corporations have come to wield the kind of political and economic power that we have not seen since the Gilded Age and the Robber Barons (Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, JP Morgan & so on). Coll argues that ExxonMobil... Read more

  Ken and Kristen Deladurantaye are good friends of mine from Redemption Church. They run an incredible art school for children called Little Masters. Both Ken and Kristen are phenomenal artists in their own right. Ken has drawn for us during worship & Kristin threw pottery on a wheel once in a service, to this day one of the more moving images of worship I’ve ever been involved in. They have developed a whole style of teaching art to kids... Read more