Digressions » JakeBouma.com

Twitter is The New Facebook. 03/08/2008
The latest quote from @jbquotes on twitter, taken from The Omnivore’s Dilemma, p.68:
The short, unhappy life of a corn-fed feedlot steer represents the ultimate triumph of industrial thinking over the logic of evolution.
03/06/2008
Pepsi Raw is made without any high fructose corn syrup, instead using coffee leaf and cane sugar. This intrigues me for two reasons: 1) I’m in the middle of reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and 2) I love carbonated beverages. 03/05/2008
Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) (@ Amazon) comes out on April 1, and it will be very interesting to see the reactions in the blogosphere.
You can be young, passionate about Jesus Christ, surrounded by diversity, engaged in a postmodern world, reared in evangelicalism and not be an emergent Christian. In fact, I want to argue that it would be better if you weren’t.
I agree with the first sentence, but not the value statement of the second sentence. Anyway, you can download in the introduction and first chapter to whet your appetite. 03/02/2008
Welcome to the Table: The Green Evangelical Movement. “If these green evangelicals are beginning to embrace terms like ’sustainable,’ ‘green,’ and even ‘carbon neutral,’ but still shudder at the sound of ‘environmentalism,’ are we really all sitting at the same table? Or are we sitting at completely different tables, looking at the same evidence, but pretending to ignore each other’s solutions?” 02/28/2008
GOOD Magazine is presenting a five-part documentary called On Skid Row about the homeless district of the same name in downtown Los Angeles. Here’s Part 1 on YouTube. “Los Angeles’s police chief called Skid Row ‘the worst social disaster in America.’ In LA county there are 80,000 homeless each night. Los Angeles is the first third would city in the United States.” I’m really looking forward to the rest of the series. 02/24/2008
The Freakonomics blog recently ran a contest asking for a new six-word motto for the U.S., and after receiving 1,200+ comments, they narrowed it down to five finalists: (1) “The Most Gentle Empire So Far” (2) “You Should See the Other Guy” (3) “Caution! Experiment in Progress Since 1776″ (4) “Just Like Canada, With Better Bacon” and (5) “Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay”. Voting is open for 48 hours… I voted for #1. 02/20/2008
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard voted to circumvent traditional (overpriced, under-read) scholarly journals by publishing their scholarly articles on an online open-access repository for free. “The goal of university research is the creation, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge… We have an essential responsibility to distribute the fruits of our scholarship as widely as possible.” This is huge. (More @ NYTimes) 02/15/2008
I’ve been sick the past few days with the flu and bronchitis, but these top 9 unique structures soon to be built were still able to blow my mind. 02/14/2008
Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War looks at the tight race between (the) Clinton(s) and Obama. “However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.” 02/11/2008
My recent rating of There Will Be Blood at 4.5 stars (on the right-hand side of the page; not visible to RSS readers) marks the 100th movie rating since I rated (and reviewed) Superman Returns on June 30, 2006. Thats an average of 0.17 movie ratings per day for the past 588 days. The average rating for a movie is 3.5 stars (3.445 to be precise); the highest rated are Little Miss Sunshine, Once, and Juno at 5 stars, and the lowest rated is The Final Season at .5 stars. I’m sure you wanted to know all of that. 01/31/2008
Drumming to Super Mario 2 is wizard (thank you, Juno). “Super Mario 2 has a great soundtrack. In this awesome rendition, though, Andrea Vadrucci proves that everything sounds better with percussion. We’re also impressed by his drum set itself — that thing is at least fifteen pieces.” (ht: iamjoshbrown) 01/23/2008
Jim Wallis, the author of God’s Politics and head honcho of Sojourners, tells us why he wrote his new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (@ Amazon). “The Great Awakening speaks of two great hungers in our world today—the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice. I believe that the connection between the two is one the world, and especially a new generation, is waiting for.” 01/18/2008
The Official Google Reader Blog recently listed some helpful and interesting ways to use your feedreader. It’s a good example of how practical and time-saving using a feedreader can be, if only you take the time to familiarize yourself with the concept. Click here and watch this video if you’re still confused; it’s worth it. 01/16/2008
I’ve been chosen as a panelist for the Eighth Annual Weblog Awards (aka “Bloggies”). Finalists are announced Tuesday, January 22, at which point voting will re-open to choose the winners. 01/14/2008

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