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Weekly Meanderings

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: May 7, 2011 at 12:02 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings 2011-05-05T21:45:08-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Ah, Spring.

Karen: “But here, in this household, the news of bin Laden’s death was not met with fists pumps or high fives. The news laid me out flat. Forehead to the floor. Praying. Weeping. More praying. Yes, I’m grateful that our military has stopped bin Laden. If there is one thing I understand completely it is the sacrifices our nation’s military have made. I was 9-years-old when my father, Staff Sgt. David Spears, was killed in Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley.”

Gary David Stratton, on China and the Christian university student.

Jews and Christians at a bris. “Saturday we had a wonderful bris in our home (no, not our baby — we already have 8!). Many things were wonderful about it. First of all, a bris (circumcision ceremony) is always a joyous occasion (oo, maybe that anti-circumcision activist will post a comment again).Second, this was an intermarried family (mostly what we have in our community) and the Christian and Jewish family were present. Third, there was no disharmony between the Jewish family and Christian family. Fourth, I was able to see and enjoy the positive reactions of the Jewish mohel (the one who performs the circumcision and leads the liturgy) and the positive reactions of the Jewish and Christian families.”

J.E. Dyer: “A poignant aspect of this flurry of crimes is the hope for “tolerance” repeated over and over like a mantra by public officials. In response to the vandalism case in Calabasas, sheriff’s deputies have been mobilized to “educate students on the dangers of hate and intolerance.” Whether the deputies’ warnings will sink in better than the ones students receive about drugs and unprotected sex is a good question. But it’s the incessant invocation of “tolerance” that merits closer inspection. In the face of the seemingly ineradicable evil of Nazi-like anti-Semitism and racism, tolerance is a terribly inadequate word.”

Are Mormons Christians? Roger Olson. Take a look please. Gotta love that college student’s life.

Christine Scheller: “I’ve read numerous books on forgiveness. Some of them lead me to conclude that the authors have never known the kind of spiritual betrayal some Christians, including myself, have known. If they did, they could never write the pabulum they are selling.”

Mike Glenn on OBL’s death. Roger Olson on OBL’s death.

The missional manifesto.

Meanderings in the News

1. Pope John Paul II’s beatification: “Nick Squires at the Vatican 2:19PM BST 01 May 2011 Benedict XVI, in his homily on the steps of St Peter’s during the beatification ceremony, called him “beloved and revered”. In an apparent reference to John Paul’s bold defiance of Communism and support for the Polish Solidarity movement, Benedict said his predecessor “turned back with the strength of a titan … a tide which appeared irreversible.” The first non-Italian Pope in 455 years when he was elected in 1978, John Paul brought new vitality to the Vatican but alienated many Roman Catholics with his conservative social views. Baptised Karol Wojtyla, he was born in a small town near Kraków, in southern Poland, the son of an army officer, in 1920.”

2. Catherine Mayer on aging: “But the natural order is itself in flux. My father still dives in his 80s, still lectures, researches, writes books. People are living longer, sometimes much longer. Across the developed world the average lifetime has lengthened by 30 years since the beginning of the 20th century. The fastest-growing segment of the world population is the very old, with the number of centenarians up from a few thousand in 1950 to 340,000 in 2010 and projected to reach nearly 6 million by 2050. You might have thought we’d use all that extra time to squeeze in a few additional stages of life – from the seven ages of man observed by Shakespeare, when life expectancy at birth was below 40, to maybe 10, 12, 15 stages now that a man born in Stratford-upon-Avon looks forward to an average span of 76.9 years. Here’s the crazy, counterintuitive thing: the ages of man are actually eliding. Youth used to be our last hurrah before the onset of maturity and dotage, each milestone benchmarked against culturally determined expectations. Those expectations are now swirling and re-forming like glassfish in a current. What that means is that the premises on which our governments legislate are outdated. Our economies are based on data that no longer applies. There is a profound disconnect between how we imagine life and how it actually unfolds.

3. Internet entrepreneurs and this means I’m definitely over the hill: “Consumer Internet entrepreneurs are like pro basketball players,” a venture capitalist told me recently while discussing the prospects for a thirty-something founder, “They peak at 25, by 30 they’re usually done.” Why? Because young entrepreneurs are more creative and imaginative, and are willing put 100% of their lives into their startups, he said.“It’s not a guess, this is a data driven observation,” says the VC. He had a number of caveats. First, this only applies to consumer Internet entrepreneurs. Enterprise and hardware startups tend to do better with older founders, where experience (and direct sales experience) matter a lot. And there are plenty of founders that, like Michael Jordan, can peak way beyond 25 (and the peak basketball age is really probably at least a 27).“Those tend to be the repeat success founders,” he said, “the rules don’t apply to them.”

4. Apple’s demands: “An investigation into the conditions of Chinese workers has revealed the shocking human cost of producing the must-have Apple iPhones and iPads that are now ubiquitous in the west. The research, carried out by two NGOs, has revealed disturbing allegations of excessive working hours and draconian workplace rules at two major plants in southern China.”

5. Do you Dashboard? “The blogging crew here at TUAW headquarters frequently gets inspiration from emails that we receive from developers and hardware manufacturers. As a perfect example, the inbox the other morning contained some information about an upcoming iOS app that syncs to a Dashboard widget. Fellow blogger Erica Sadun said she wouldn’t touch the app, since “Dashboard causes me to break out in hives,” and Kelly Guimont asked “does anyone use the Dashboard for anything?” Dashboard is SO yesterday. But, wait, what about those of us who don’t even know what a Dashboard is?!

6. Good ol’ George Will: “[Caterpillar] recently picked Muncie, Ind., for a major manufacturing plant. Says Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels of his neighboring state, “It’s like living next door to ‘The Simpsons’ — you know, the dysfunctional family down the block.” [Thanks Mitch.] A study by the Illinois Policy Institute, a market-oriented think tank, concludes that between 1991 and 2009, Illinois lost more than 1.2 million residents — more than one every 10 minutes — to other states. Between 1995 and 2007, the total net income leaving Illinois was $23.5 billion. The five states receiving most refugees from Illinois were Florida, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona and Texas. Two are Illinois’ neighbors, three have warm weather, two — Florida and Texas — have no income tax. In January, a lame-duck session of Illinois’ legislature — including 18 Democrats who were defeated in November — raised the personal income tax 67 percent and the corporate tax almost 50 percent. This and the increase — from 3 percent to 5 percent — in the tax on small businesses make Illinois, as the Wall Street Journal says, “one of the most expensive places in the world to conduct business.” Tim Storm’s presence in Beloit demonstrates how American federalism gives force to a familiar axiom: Businesses go where they are welcome and stay where they are well-treated.”

7. Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru: “In Sunday’s New York Times, we argued that along with the Paul Ryan budget, Republicans need to get behind some specifics for replacing Obamacare. Simply repealing the law would certainly be better than implementing it, since Obamacare would put in place a structure even worse than the status quo, but the status quo is very problematic and voters are right to expect conservatives to offer their own answer. As we noted, a number of conservatives have proposed such an alternative — the transformation of the open-ended tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance into a fixed tax credit that everyone could use in purchasing insurance of their choice.”

8. Robert Crosby’s excellent reflection on David Wilkerson: “David was up late as usual at midnight watching the “Late Show” when he first asked the question: “What would happen, Lord, if I sold the TV set and spent that time—praying?” After David Wilkerson prayed that prayer in 1958, the world would soon find out. “What would happen, Lord, if I … ?” After his television was actually sold, Wilkerson began to devote his midnight to 2 a.m. hours to prayer. One night while trying to pray, he found himself unusually drawn to an issue of Life magazine sitting on his desk. At first he suspected his interest in reading to be merely a human diversion pulling him away from the discipline of prayer. Nonetheless he couldn’t get away from it and finally asked, “God is there something you want me to see?”

9. By D.T.: “VISITORS taking the underground to Gangnam, the new money district of Seoul, often remark at the vast numbers of adverts forplastic surgery found plastered all over both trains and platforms. Those alighting at Sinsa or Apgujong stations in particular will find themselves bombarded with exhortations to “round your rectangular jaw”, or before-and-after images of small and large diamond rings. South Korea’s fascination with plastic surgeryis not a new development, but as the word has spread, the business has changed. Foreigners from the near abroad are getting in on the act. Korea is now benefiting from droves of Japanese and Chinese in particular taking the short flight over, having a quick nip or tuck, and doing a little shopping or sightseeing, before going home prettier. The head surgeon of BK Dongyang Plastic Surgery, a group which operates out of a 16-storey building, travels all around Asia giving consultations for prospective clients; in the words of BK’s own website, “South Korea is Asia’s plastic surgery capital … [Head surgeon] Dr Kim Byung-gun might well be its tsar.” (Mayor, tsar, what have you.)”

10. Looking for a job, listen to those young folks who got their first job on what helped: “For many college students getting a job in today’s economy may seem like a difficult feat, especially for those with little to no professional experience. Everyone’s heard the same advice: Network, use online search engines and go to the career center. But the way you utilize these tools is just as important as the resources themselves.”

11. Of all the stuff on Osama bin Laden, this was one of the best and most informative.

Meanderings in Sports

Wow, this is a sad story about the Rust Belt baseball teams.

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